The world is your office: being creative in a global virtual organization

Despite the increasing adoption of global virtual teams in industry, and their implications for traditional management practices, creativity within this context has been under-researched, with most studies focusing on students partaking in contrived virtual team projects in educational environments. This chapter focuses on a global virtual organization, Omega (a pseudonym), with the aim of exploring creativity in an organizational virtual team context. Using a qualitative case study approach in a single organization, the study makes the following contributions: (a) it identifies the personal values that motivate creativity; and (b) it explains how individuals, technology, task and organization influence creativity, drawing on the participants’ perceptions. Discussed also in the chapter are implications for practice and future research.