Journal of Business & Economic Policy

Virtual Teams in Sri Lankan Business Process Outsourcing Companies
U.L.T.P. Gunasekare

Abstract
Globalizing becomes an inevitable and the key characteristic of globalization has been expansion of multinational corporations and their related trade and investment activities. Responding to the increasing decentralization and globalization of work processes, many organizations introduced virtual teams that are collaborated by communication technologies across geographical and temporal boundaries. In this revolutionary process, major business innovation is called Business Process Outsourcing. Sri Lanka is still very youthful in the outsourced business and it is still gaining some momentum. This article attempts to capture the virtual team concept in BPO companies in Sri Lanka and explore how virtuality is practiced in these teams through a qualitative inquiry. Study found that the teams functioning in Sri Lankan BPO companies comprise of features of virtual teams. Interdependence, ICT utilization, geographical dispersion, time-based, dissolvable nature and knowledge sharing are the foremost characteristics to term these teams as virtual teams.

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