What are the key success factors that lead AIESEC global virtual teams to higher performance? AIESEC case study

The rapid globalization and the improvements in information and communication technologies have allowed organizations to benefit from geographically dispersed groups that work in a virtual environment: global virtual teams (GVTs). These teams represent a new way of working thanks to their level of flexibility and responsiveness. Despite many advantages, such as cost reduction, access to talented members, ubiquitous presence, GVT leaders still have difficulty to manage them because of the spatiotemporal distance that separates team members. The objective of this master thesis is to identify the main success factors that lead GVTs to higher performance. We first synthetize seven main factors from the literature: trust, culture, communication, social skills, goal & mission clarity, leadership and technology & tools. We then conduct a case study on the AIESEC international student organization. The objective is to analyze to what extend the success factors identified in the literature have an impact on AIESEC GVTs performance. We conduct a qualitative study: semi-structured interviews among 7 GVT managers from all parts of the organization. The finding is that AIESEC leaders recognize the 7 factors identified in the literature as key drivers of GVTs’ success. They even identify an 8th factor which is the selection of the right people. While this finding validates the concepts described in the literature, we take the analysis further and describe how AIESEC implements these factors to take into account the specificities of its organization: the yearly renewal of all teams and the young age of its members. Clearly, it appears that AIESEC leaders have developed a set of practices to cope with these two specificities. And they implement the 8 success factors with a lot of coherence.