Examining ICT-Mediated Cultural Factors for Subgroup Impact on Virtual Team Dynamics

As virtual teams are inherently heterogeneous and distributed in nature they have a greater tendency to fracture intosubgroups. Proper management of these subgroups is critical as they are often more detrimental than beneficial. Research thatsystematically examines subgroup formation is limited in identifying factors that influence the negative or positive impact ofsubgroups. To address this gap, we propose a new model based on Social Categorization Theory, Faultline Theory and thediversity literature. Our model takes into account the temporal impact of different cultural factors, namely surface and deeplevel culture diversity, with the alignment of other attributes on subgroup saliency. It also captures the interaction of varyinglevels of culture (national, organizational, functional) and their impact on subgroup dynamics. Additionally, the modelrepresents the norms of technology use as a mediator for the impact of subgroup saliency on team performance

ICT Study implications for human interaction and culture: Intro to a special issue

culture, human, interaction

The Role of Leadership in Facilitating the Performance of Dispersed Teamwork

A mature body of research on leadership has investigated the impact of a variety of leadership behaviors and styles on team performance. This corpus of work is built on an assumption that team leaders can motivate, direct, and monitor teams by way of sustained, personal contact with team members. However, this assumption is being challenged by recent advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs). Use of ICTs has altered traditional team-based structures, enabling organizations to employ teams composed of members who are dispersed across geographic boundaries, while severing the direct, personal ties leaders have to team members. Recent reviews of the literature on dispersed teamwork point to the unique challenges faced by dispersed teams, including difficulties with communication, knowledge transfer, coordination, and Social exchange. No less than five of these reviews call for research on leadership as a means to alleviate these challenges. This dissertation proposal, organized as three essays, seeks to respond to this call by examining leadership issues with respect to task structure, team development, and team structure. Essay 1 explores the role of empowering leadership in helping dispersed teams, and individuals within these teams, cope with information systems development (ISD) risk factors. Essay 2 investigates how technology capabilities can be leveraged to support coaching behaviors directed at facilitating interpersonal processes. Essay 3 draws on the theory of behavioral complexity in leadership to examine how leaders can help dispersed teams respond to the challenges incurred by differing forms of geographic dispersion. The models are tested with data collected from members and leaders of dispersed teams in a large, multinational organization. Results show that leaders have significant and varied influences on dispersed team functioning and can be both beneficial and detrimental for dispersed teams under different conditions. This dissertation makes importance contributions to both research and practice by deepening our understanding of the impacts of leadership in the dispersed team context and providing insight into leadership interventions designed to support dispersed teams in coping with the challenges they face

In-group / out-group dynamics and effectiveness in partially distributed teams

When organizations collaborate they often do so using partially distributed teams (PDTs). In a Partially Distributed Team there exist at least two distinct sub-groups. In addition, at least one of the sub-groups has two or more members that are geographically co-located. Co-located members can meet face to face; chat in the hallway; have lunch together; and otherwise socialize with one another. On the other hand, remote members must rely on technology to communicate and work together. This distinct characteristic of partially distributed teams makes them especially susceptible to the In-Group / Out Group dynamic (Huang and Ocker, 2006). This dynamic manifests itself when members of a co-located sub-group treat each other with preference or exhibit a more favorable attitude towards each other than they do towards their remote colleagues. We refer to such behaviors as \u27Us-vs.-Them\u27 and categorize their occurrences. After examining why and how Us-vs.-Them occurs in Partially Distributed Teams, we attempt to understand under which conditions it exists and persists, as well as its relationship to effectiveness. We examine conditions of technology, team configuration, employee motivation, and organizational policies that may reduce Us-vs.-Them, and formulate a model for reduction of Us-vs.-Them and increase of effectiveness. We test our model using a survey instrument distributed to 238 industry professionals. We found support among participant comments confirming the existence of Us-vs.-Them in partially distributed teams and its importance. We also found a strong relationship between Us-vs.-Them and effectiveness. High Us-vs.-Them showed a very high correlation to reduced effectiveness. We found support for the value of technology uniformity between sub-groups as well as technology reliability, for decreasing Us-vs.-Them. And we showed that just as in traditional teams, regular meetings are helpful in partially distributed teams. Although we discuss informally implemented policies that proved to be valuable in partially distributed teams, we discovered that the more formal policies are the more effective type. Other important findings include: Us-vs.-Them is more prevalent in international teams as well as in teams that are composed of two sub-groups only; and when motivated by flexible schedule, work creativity, and challenging work, participants had higher perceived effectiveness ratings. Most prior PDT research was conducted using student teams or case studies of one or two industry teams. A contribution of this dissertation research is collection and analysis of a large sample of industry data. Another important contribution is the isolation of Us-vs.-Them as a dependent variable. Understanding under which conditions it exists is important so that managers can identify it and prevent it from escalating

Managerial interventions in multicultural virtual teams: A review and synthesis of the literature

Teams distributed across cultural, geographic and temporal boundaries, also known as multi-cultural virtual teams (MVTs), have been prevalent in international organizations. To provide guidance for MVT managers and support accumulation of prior experience, we establish a management model based on the extended adaptive structuration theory (EAST) and verify the model with 55 empirical studies from leading publications in related fields. The findings contribute a comprehensive set of empirically verified managerial intervention in MVTs and suggest that managers can improve MVT outcomes through manipulating five sets of struc-tural characteristics (i.e., organization, team, individual, technology and task) before and dur-ing the task process. Based on the findings, we generate a holistic view of managerial inter-vention, which explains the mechanisms of managerial intervention in MVTs

Distances in Geographically Distributed Team: A Review

Distributed team is a group of people collaborating together virtually from different locations, different time zones and are culturally diverse from each other. Such team have the characteristics of both virtual team and culturally diverse team and is termed as Geographically Distributed Team (GDT). Members of geographically distributed team (GDT) experiences different forms of distances while working together as team both in terms of objective distance based on physical location and subjective distance based on perception. Since the members are located in different continents and working at different time zones they heavily rely on computer mediated communication tools to collaborate.Being distant from each other members experiences a unique set of challenges compared to traditional collocated team which hinders collaboration. The most commonly highlighted issues are related to absence of social ties, distorted flow of information, misunderstanding, misperception and miscommunication. The inability to observe each other work and lack of spontaneous communication due to physical distance builds in perceptual distances among members. The cultural differences among the members being from different nationality, values, beliefs, work style and languages adds to the complexity of working together as a team. Several research studies have looked into both positive and negative effect of distances on team effectiveness. This paper examines the various forms of distances experienced by individuals working in a distributed teams, how it has been measured and the challenges posed by it in GDT

Distributed team cohesion – not an oxymoron. The impact of information and communications technologies on teamness in globally distributed IT projects

Globally distributed IT projects are common practice in today’s globalized world. Typically, project team members’ work on interdependent tasks, with a common goal to be achieved as one team. However, being split between multiple locations impedes communication among team members and hampers the development of trust. Information and communications media enable communication between geographically distributed project team members and help to create and maintain trust within project units. Communication and trust are particularly significant for fostering a feeling of oneness among project team members. Oneness, also referred to as “teamness”, is repeatedly mentioned as one of the challenges facing global project teams. However, prior literature on teamness is very scarce and its importance is underrepresented. This research contributes to the field in two ways. First, the theoretical study based on a systematic literature review examines available evidence of teamness in globally distributed projects. Secondly, an empirical study based on interviews conducted with global project managers fills the current gap in literature on the link between use of ICT and establishing a sense of team unity. This paper draws practitioners’ attention to the importance of striving for teamness in spite of the geographical distance that exists between project team members

The Management of Distance in Remote-Work Environments: A Deleuzian Approach

The rising incidence of remote work practices over the last decades has introduced radical changes in organizational practices for managing people. Such environments indeed often lead to challenges that are difficult for both employees and managers to overcome. These difficulties are mostly linked to the management of distance, particularly prominent in remote work – physical, temporal, or cultural distances especially. Although several organizational theories have been used to suggest solutions to these specific issues, little attention has been paid so far to philosophical literature; in this research, we use the work of French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, to develop a meaningful framework to analyze the management of distance in remote work contexts. This allows us to reconsider and question traditional theories with regard to remote work and global distributed teams, by stressing out manifestations that are significant of the emergence of these specific environments such as the cultural deterritorialization or the formation of more subtle but powerful modalities of control