In the context of distributed workplaces, how to maintain within teams the necessary cohesiveness for performance

This thesis embraces the concept of distributed workplaces and try to figure out how managers do to manage their team when its members are not working in the same physical setting. From understanding and defining the notion of distributed workplaces, to covering the notion of team cohesiveness and its impacts on performance, we are pushed by the literature towards to the notion of collaboration as an element of answer. This leads us to investigate on how collaboration can be organized from different workplaces by managers and how it requires knowledge sharing to operate. Moreover, as this thesis was being written, the world has been faced with the covid-19 crisis. This situation of “forced” homeworking is an opportunity to feed this field of research. For our analysis we focus on managers working for different Belgian companies. Afterwards, we examine the results of the interviews and assess them critically. Then, we link the theoretical part and the interviews together. Finally, we give a conclusion, along with practical takeaways for managers and the limitations of this research. We conclude from our results the importance of structure and effective communication to collaborate in dispersed workplaces and the imperfect substitute communication tools represent for informal exchange. We highlight that to collaborate effectively in a high level of dispersion, the solution cannot come from the managers alone, but rather must be incorporated at every level of the organisation and of the collaboration. Finally, our analysis, drawn on a larger scale could also open the door to new avenues of research on the viability of the extreme context of distribution on performance.