MANAGING VIRTUAL TEAMS IN BUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATIONS. A SWOT ANALYSIS

Bureaucratic organizations are more often than not perceived by outsiders as thriving on paper overload and lack of accountability to the detriment of simplicity and time lined decisions. On the other hand, employees of bureaucratic establishments have no easy task in producing the stacks of paper by which to make sure that their share of responsibility is well documented and justified. What is more, the same employees are overloaded with work while their motivation is not necessarily boosted by the resource constraints that these organizations have to face. Such a conundrum can and has already apparently been solved by the use of information technology in streamlining the processes inherent of any organization and tackling the resource scarcity that has become the cliche of the day. Nonetheless, the cultural gap between the very essence of any bureaucratic establishment and the impetus of technology that requires and proposes at the same time new working solutions for increased efficiency and effectiveness needs to be first bridged. Virtual teams may be a solution and a tool in this respect by which both the demands placed by the stakeholders of bureaucratic organizations on the latter's performance can be met and the difficulties encountered by their employees can be overcome. To implement it, its use, misuse and disuse should be thoroughly investigated. Furthermore, a comprehensive understanding of the general features underlying the foundation of bureaucratic organizations needs to be acquired. To this end, this article proposes two SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analyses. One is to focus on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats raised by the use of virtual teams in bureaucratic establishments like the ones in the defense area. The other is to highlight the same dimensions from the perspective of the current challenges that defense establishments need to tackle as a result of both overt and covert variations within their external and internal environments. In the end, the analyses are to be overlaid in order to highlight the best means by which bureaucratic establishments can benefit from the use of virtual teams in excelling at their processes and overall performance.