Global Virtual Teams Research Articles

Virtually, You are There! Exploring the Teamwork Challenges to Swift Trust Formation When Working in Global Virtual Team

Due to the nature of the GVT work structure in which people are unconstrained by geographic boundaries, teams must also cope with conflicting cultural values and time zone differences.This factor creates many challenges, in particular with a group of people who are strangers to one another and has no historical background of working together.The main purpose of this exploratory study is to highlight the challenges of swift trust formation within GVTs and to present the teamwork-related issues involved in globally distributed collaboration.We conducted two focus group interviews to develop a preliminary understanding of the phenomenon based on the Tuckman and Jensen (1997) teamwork model.This data yielded important insights into the initial process of teamwork and swift trust formation. Based on our findings, team members experienced key challenges such as delayed communication due to time differences, misunderstanding of tasks assigned, technical problems with the use of varied collaborative tools, work attitude, lack of responsibility and motivation among teams and difficulty to establish relationships.

Adopting global virtual engineering teams in AEC Projects

Purpose– This study aims to present an integrated conceptual model in order to highlight the major aspects of diffusion of innovations in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) context. To this end, a critical review of literature is conducted, accompanied by synthesising the findings of previous studies. The driving force behind this study is stemmed from the fragmentation of literature on innovation diffusion, and paucity of research on diffusion of Global Virtual Engineering Teams (GVETs) as the platform for many technological innovations in relevant literature. Thus, the present study is intended to facilitate filling the gap in GVETs literature. That is, the proposed model will offer a foundation for academia for grounding studies on any innovation including GVETs in the literature on innovation diffusion in the AEC context.Design/methodology/approach– This paper draws upon the qualitative meta-analysis approach encompassing a critical review of the relevant literature. To this end, the review builds upon studies found within 15 prestigious journals in AEC. The domain of this review was confined to areas described as “innovation”, “innovation diffusion” and “innovation adoption”, along with keywords used within a broad review of recently published GVETs literature. The rigour of review is augmented by incorporating 35 authoritative works from other disciplines published in 21 well-known journals in the manufacturing, business and management fields. Moreover, the study deploys the peer-debriefing approach through conducting unstructured interviews with five Australian scholars to verify a model presenting an aggregated summary of previous studies.Findings– The key findings of the study include the following items: synthesising the fragmented studies on innovation diffusion in the AEC context. In doing so, a model capturing the major aspects affecting diffusion of an innovation in AEC projects is presented; providing a foundation to address the drawbacks of previous studies within the sphere of GVETs, based on the developed model.Research limitations/implications– The developed model was only enhanced using a small sample size of academics, as such not empirically validated.Originality/value– As possibly, the first literature review of innovation in the AEC context, this paper contributes to the sphere by sensitising the AEC body of knowledge on innovation diffusion as a concise conceptual model, albeit verified through the peer-debriefing approach. This study will also further establish the research field in AEC on GVETs along with other methods reliant on virtual working such as building information modelling (BIM) through providing an expanded foundation for future inquiries and creation of knowledge.

Speaking of global virtual teams: language differences, social categorization and media choice

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore the interrelation between language differences, media choice and social categorization in global virtual teams (GVTs).Design/methodology/approach– An ethnographic field work was conducted in a Finnish multinational corporation (MNC). The study included interviews, observations, and language proficiency assessment of 27 GVT members located in five European countries.Findings– In GVTs, the combination of language proficiency differences and verbal media (e.g. telephone) tends to lead to social categorization, while a similar effect was not found when GVT members chose written media (e.g. e-mail).Research limitations/implications– The qualitative study only consisted of GVTs from one MNC, and thus the empirical findings might not be generalizable to other MNCs. Therefore, quantitative studies that can add to the robustness of the exploratory findings could be a worthwhile endeavour.Practical implications– Language training should be provided to GVT members, and virtual policies should be implemented to ensure the use of written media in GVTs characterized by language proficiency differences.Originality/value– Although it is well established in the literature that language differences are detrimental to co-located team effectiveness no study has explored how the relationship between variation in language proficiency and media choice affects social categorization in GVTs.

Shared Leadership Emergence in Global Virtual Teams: Role of Task and Team Design

The ability of a single leader to exert direct influence on globally distributed teams diminishes when members are scattered across boundaries. Sharing leadership responsibility over these boundari...

Building Collaboration in Virtual Teams through Emotional Intelligence: Mediation by SOAR

In today’s global business environment virtual teams have increased rapidly worldwide due to advances in communication technology that facilitate communication and sharing of information among team...

"Isolated Team Members, Perceived Proximity and Global Virtual Team Effectiveness"

This study focuses on the positive consequences of isolation in global virtual teams. Isolation index is the percentage of team members with no other team members at their site (O'Leary, & Cummings...

Achieving reliability in transnational work on complex projects: new directions for research

The delivery of complex engineering projects today often involves globally distributed teams. In these teams, engineers must check for inadvertent errors by following the assumptions, logic and computations of others and define processes to reduce these errors. Engineering firms are thus increasingly using digital technologies to enable teams to do transnational work. While project management research on global virtual teams articulates how team performance relates to composition and characteristics, it has paid less attention to reliability and how this is achieved in such transnational work. This paper considers how constructs related to reliability—trust, culture and communication—become inter-related in work on complex projects. Recent research on work practice, which examines dynamics over time, is brought into dialogue with the literature on global virtual teams, re-conceptualizing trust as enacted in practice; culture as a resource for action and communication as a mediated dialogue. Vignettes from...

Virtual Teams and International Business Teaching and Learning: The Case of the Global Enterprise Experience (GEE)

The increasing importance of global virtual teams in business is reflected in the classroom by the increased adoption of activities that facilitate real-time cross-cultural interaction. This article documents the experience of students from two Colombian universities who participated in a collaborative international project using virtual teams as part of the international business (IB) curriculum. The data reveals that in spite of challenges associated with time zone differences, technology limitations, and trust issues, the vast majority of students perceived that the use of virtual teams as a teaching tool facilitates cultural understanding and IB-relevant learning. The findings of this research suggest that online experiential exercises can be an effective approach in teaching and in the development of virtual collaboration skills.

A Process-Based Explanation of the Psychic Distance Paradox: Evidence from Global Virtual Teams

Previous research has found evidence of a counter-intuitive positive relationship between psychic distance and performance, which has been labeled the “psychic distance paradox”. However, there is a dearth of literature explaining the causal mechanisms that elucidates such a positive relationship. Studying the effect of team-level psychic distance on the performance of global virtual teams, we build on the input-process-outcome framework of team research, which allows the integration of process variables to provide new insights into the underlying coherences of the psychic distance paradox. These variables include the team members’ expectation of challenges as well as the level of team effort toward the task. The team members’ motivational cultural intelligence is introduced to the model as a moderating factor. The data support the hypothesized causal path. The findings start unveiling the psychic distance paradox through the integration of the literatures on psychic distance and global virtual teams.

Intercultural Communication and Management Factors and Their Impact to the Process of Global Software Development for Virtual and Non-Virtual Teams

Abstract This position paper presents the factors involved in the successful software development and what is the impact of some methodologies like Agile in this process. Global software development projects may be a total success or an anticipated disaster for simple reasons that usually have nothing to do with the technology involved, with the time differences, or the product being built, but because of subtle intercultural factors. How do the language, the race, the gender, the religion, and the location affects the software development process from analysis and design to implementation, testing and maintenance? Do all these factors impact in the same way if we are working with a local team, and offshore development team or even a global virtual team? Is any specific software development methodology better suited for your particular case? How could you decide what’s the better approach? What will be the results and what our goals? The issues at stake are not superficial matters of the ways how people dress, or how clear do they speak in our local language, or what they like to eat, or their small daily behaviors, but are based in the fundamental differences in the systems of values that govern our lives. So institutions, corporations and global companies have to raise the level of awareness of their employees worldwide on the cultural differences, through various programs for intercultural or diversity training. But this poor model of cultural awareness is not enough to overcome some of the obstacles that intercultural differences bring to the table. So this paper will list and describe this important intercultural factors that directly impact in the software development process and how certain software development methodologies could be used in order to have a more systematic look or set of guidelines that would allow the team managers to evaluate and to decide how theuse of each one of these software development methodologies for local teams, non local teams and virtual teams will affect positively or negatively the outcomes of software development practices.

Leading Effective Global Virtual Teams: The Consequences of Methods of Communication

This paper explores the relationship between communication and team effectiveness within the context of global virtual teams, arguing that a range of communication methods may impact upon the team’s effectiveness. To explore this relationship empirically, we present a key informant insights based on the activities deployed by a participant in a global team. The paper reports on the team’s effectiveness, their communication strategies and the team’s psychological traits: trust, shared understanding and co-operation. Findings from the pattern matching analysis indicate that the limited range of communication methods available to a global virtual team was not a major contributing factor to a team’s effectiveness. The paper offers communication/management techniques that could be beneficial to the global virtual team leader in facilitating team effectiveness, highlighting some issues surrounding the level of dispersion within teams that could be further explored in future research.

Understanding Diverse Cultures is Imperative for Building Global Virtual Teams

A global virtual team is a sophisticated system of people who routinely confront cultural differences in a digital environment that is constantly changing. This study argues that understanding cultural differences is imperative for the success of a group of individuals within a team communicating virtually from different locations throughout the world. It is vital that cultural differences are clearly comprehended as they pertain to defining and understanding the role of management, the use of communication technology, expectations about profit and performance goals, the concept of time when planning and scheduling, the assessment of risk, and the definition of reward. This paper defines these critical dimensions for cultural diversity and their impact on the relationships between global virtual team members. The basis for the arguments are dependent upon existing scholarly literature solidified by practical examples of real world individuals experienced within the multi-cultural global business environments.

Selecting Communication Media in Multilingual Virtual Teams

This study investigates the impact of language barriers on the selection of communication media in the work process of global virtual teams (GVTs). Based on semi-structured interviews with 30 leade...

Leadership and Teamwork in the Global-Virtual Workplace

As organizations endeavor to leverage human capital expertise across locations, global-virtual teams have increased in frequency. After much theoretical development regarding dimensions and typologies of virtual teams, questions remain regarding their process functions in leadership and teamwork. This symposium focuses on essential qualities of global-virtual teams (GVTs) in the workplace: their characteristics and composition, their processes of communication and development of team identity and how shared leadership is established. Shared leadership, recognized as an optimal leadership style for distributed teams, and team identities that enhance or reduce a team’s processes of shared knowledge, communication and inter-team relationships, are examined using lab and field designs. These factors are examined in how they develop, and how they influence intra-team processes that improve GVT effectiveness.

Performance Evaluation for Global Virtual Teams (GVTs): Application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)

This paper builds all the discussions on an exhaustive literature review through critically investigating differentaspects of managing GVTs concerning imposing control on virtual teams and measuring their performance. Theforegoing features of managing GVTs have been regarded as problematic due to the idiosyncrasies of virtualteam working. Besides, there are disagreementsin the literature regarding the necessity of implementing controland auditing for GVTs’ context. To address the mentioned challenges, the crucial role of control and evaluatingthe performance of GVTs will be established based on the evidences from the litearture. Afterwards, the keyrequirements of performance evaluation for GVTs will be ascertained. Subsequently, the paper will brieflyintroduce Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as an available method for comparing and evaluating theperformances of GVTs. The study will conclude by presenting guidelines to facilitate harnessing the abilities ofDEA to measure the performance of GVTs and presenting directions for future studies in the area.

“Communicate Through the Roof”: A Case Study Analysis of the Communicative Rules and Resources of an Effective Global Virtual Team

Challenges to effective collaboration are magnified when work teams are composed of geographically distributed members. Team members separated by time, distance, and culture often struggle with issues of trust, conflict, and potentially divisive subgroups. With global virtual teams becoming increasingly common in organizations, it is important to understand how to minimize such interactional difficulties. This study examines rules and resources that members of a corporate global team draw on to structure their interactions. In this case study, team members draw on highly ritualized actions prescribed by their software development process and their enacted values to mitigate their communication challenges.

Leading global virtual teams to success

Leading global virtual teams to success

Using Communication Choices as a Boundary-Management Strategy

This study examines how members of a global virtual team chose communication media while managing multiple boundaries. The study is unique in that it considers the perspectives of U.S. managers who teleworked from domestic workplaces and virtual team members located in offices in India. It describes the complex dynamics of the decision-making processes that team members used in attempting to allocate their individual resources in order to meet the demands of a high-performance organizational culture. The findings suggest that managers chose media that met task requirements and maintained the boundaries between their work and personal lives rather than media that would provide the most satisfactory experience.

Leadership Constraints

This research focused on the question: What leadership constraints contribute to the complexity of the working environment faced by global virtual team leaders and how do those leadership constraints impact the behavior of leaders when they are trying to meet team member expectations? This qualitative study of a high performing team within a multinational corporation (MNC) identified four constraints facing leaders: virtuality, globalization, the domestic workplace, and the matrix organizational structure. These constraints and their interactions contributed to the complexity that leaders faced when attempting to influence followers. While work/life roles have changed dramatically for leaders, team member expectations remain rooted in the past.

Transferring Western Management Knowledge to China: Perceptions of Graduates from an American Executive MBA Program

As is well-known, China’s rapid economic growth over the past decades has been impressive and this growth has driven the demand of qualified managers and professionals by both foreign and Chinese enterprises. This paper examines perceptions of the graduates of an American Executive MBA program, who experienced the transfer of Western management knowledge through team teaching and virtual student teams. The findings show that graduates are generally satisfied with their overall educational experience and its impact on their career in terms of promotions and compensation. Furthermore, the team teaching and global virtual student teams are viewed as valuable experiences.