It Is Certainly a Different Manner!

Abstract

The present study seeks to understand intercultural communication patterns, characteristics, and styles of team members that engage in virtual collaboration with people from diverse backgrounds known as global virtual team (GVT). Twenty respondents were interviewed in order to develop a rich understanding of the intercultural communication and styles within a GVT, based on Edward Hall's cultural dimensions. The results reveal that GVT members from high context cultures demonstrate indirect communication styles, use non-verbal approaches, and employ silence and polite gestures in certain situations, while low context GVT members are more prone to direct and straightforward communication styles with many verbal responses in online team discussion. In essence, the findings provide key implication to global managers: be prepared to work with cultural diversity in terms of being open-minded, develop a high level of tolerance, and become culturally sensitive to different approaches and preferences of communication styles as employed by team members when working at a distance.