Globally Distributed Teams in Multinational Corporations: A Literature Review and Prospects

Abstract

With continuous development of China's economy, many companies have established globally distributed teams around the world to implement the going-out strategy. Compared to the fruitful researches in the international academia, few scholars in China have paid attention to this field, which is extremely unfavorable to the advancement of the development of globalization theory and the guidance of the internationalization management practice of Chinese enterprises. Based on the literature review of globally distributed teams, this paper finds that the core features of globally distributed team management are mainly reflected in three aspects：cultural distance, geographical distance and team diversity. These core features lead to conflicts between different sub-groups, as well as power contest and misunderstanding. Shared knowledge and effective communication moderate this process. Then it further discusses the performance of globally distributed teams, builds an integrated model of globally distributed team research, and points out future research directions, in order to provide the reference for further studies, globally distributed team building and performance improvement by multinational companies.