OFFSHORING ATTITUDES, RELATIONAL BEHAVIOURS, AND DEPARTMENTAL CULTURE

The success of IT offshoring depends to some extent on the working relationships between onshore and offshore colleagues. However, as part of an organisational department‟s culture, employees can hold different attitudes towards offshoring and towards their own offshore collaboration. Previous research suggests that such „offshoring attitudes‟ can influence subgroup divides and thereby affect employees‟ motivation to build and maintain effective working relationships. Through a qualitative field study, this paper demonstrates how offshoring attitudes affected the relational behaviours of German IT developers towards their Indian offshore colleagues. Two prototypical, contrasting departmental cultures are identified with regard to German members‟ offshoring attitudes and associated relational behaviours. In particular, offshoring attitudes had an impact on Germans treating their Indian colleagues as team members versus suppliers, their intercultural communication, knowledge transfer, task transfer, and pinpointing of mistakes. The findings are interpreted with regard to Martin and Siehl‟s (1983) notion of „enhancing‟ and „countercultural‟ organisational subcultures. Implications for theory, practitioners and future research are outlined

Interpersonal relationships in transnational, virtual teams – towards a configurational perspective

Previous research has observed that strong interpersonal relationships are especially important for the functioning of transnational, virtual teams (TNTs), but are at the same time particularly hard to achieve in these teams. This article reviews and integrates the transnational and virtual team literature to provide an overview of examined cognitive, behavioural and affective relationship aspects. By demonstrating the interrelations between these relationship aspects, the article deviates from the prevalent, linear input–process–output models of team functioning and makes a first step towards a configurational perspective on relationships in TNTs. It further reviews how several characteristics of the team structure, organizational context and socio-political environment may facilitate or inhibit relationship aspects. Through a synthesis of previous research, the article develops two examples of likely relationship configurations and their driving factors. The review concludes by recommending methods for future empirical research on relationship configurations in TNTs

Offshoring attitudes and relational behaviours in German-Indian offshoring collaborations. Reflections from a field study

Offshoring arrangements have become a common setting for intercultural collaborations. There is ample evidence that the success of these offshoring arrangements is influenced on the relational behaviours between offshore and onshore colleagues. However, it has not been questioned whether and how the attitudes that onshore colleagues hold towards offshoring affect their relational behaviours towards offshore colleagues. This paper draws together the literatures on offshoring and transnational teams, to argue for the importance of offshoring attitudes. It presents a qualitative case study examining the offshoring attitudes of German IT developers working with Indian colleagues in an Indian subsidiary of the firm. The inquiry revealed that respondent's offshoring attitudes were associated with their relational behaviours towards Indian offshore colleagues, namely whether Germans treated their Indian colleagues as fellow team members or as mere suppliers, how much effort they spent in communicating and transferring knowledge, and whether they supported or avoided the transfer of tasks to India. Importantly, these relational behaviours also had a reverse effect on the German's offshoring attitudes, creating vicious and virtuous circles of offshoring attitudes and relational behaviours. Certain departmental context factors were identified to explain the differences in offshoring attitudes and resulting vicious and virtuous circles. The findings demonstrate that researchers and practitioners have to pay more attention to offshoring attitudes in order to better understand relational behaviours between onshore and offshore members, and thereby achieve more successful offshoring collaborations

Managing virtual talent

Today’s multinational enterprises (MNEs) tend to rely on high performers who are dispersed across the globe, creating the need to manage ‘virtual talent’. Virtual talent here refers to high-potential or high-performing employees in strategic roles who are part of a virtual collaboration, namely a collaboration that spans geographic boundaries and relies to a significant extent on electronic communication media. This chapter will highlight the specific challenges and levers of managing talent involved in global virtual collaborations in general, with a special attention to distances, boundaries, and perceived proximity. It will further elaborate on particular, important issues of managing global virtual talent within MNEs. Lessons will here be drawn from case study evidence on onshore-offshore collaborations. Finally, the chapter will provide a brief outline of the emerging practices of managing ‘virtual contractors’

Interpersonal relationships in transnational, virtual teams

This article uses a literature review to develop a configurational analysis of interpersonal relationships in transnational teams (TNTs). The configurational approach posits that organisational reality cannot be explained by uni-directional, causal relationships between isolated variables, but only in terms of variable configurations, i.e. ‘multidimensional constellations of conceptually distinct characteristics that commonly occur together’ (Meyer et al. 1993, p. 1175). The effect of single variables is seen to depend on their interaction with the multitude of other variables in a configuration. TNTs are defined as groups composed of members of different nationalities, who work on a common task. Previous research on TNTs has observed that strong interpersonal relationships are especially important for the functioning of these teams, but are at the same time particularly hard to achieve. Moreover, many studies have singled out particular processes that will here be termed ‘aspects’ of relationships. This article firstly integrates the transnational and virtual team literature to provide an overview of examined relationship aspects. The article identifies cognitive relationship aspects, which encompass team identity, subgroup formation, shared understanding, and trust. Communication, knowledge creation, and conflicts are described as behavioural aspects, and interpersonal affect is identified as an affective relationship aspect. These relationship aspects are regarded as elements of complex relationship configurations. The paper therefore describes the influence of each of these aspects on other relationship aspects, thereby demonstrating complex interconnections between relationship aspects. This provides a first step towards a configurational analysis. The paper further reviews how several characteristics of the team structure, organisational context, and socio-political environment may facilitate or inhibit several relationship aspects. Special emphasis is placed on the influence of cultural diversity and virtuality as the two factors that are characteristic of TNTs, and which have also been discussed most frequently in the literature. Through a synthesis of previous research, the article then provides an overview of suggested mutual influences between relationship aspects. This leads to a suggestion of two examples of relationship configurations and their driving factors. These configurations are characterised by the orchestrating themes of ‘commitment and tight coupling’ and ‘commitment and loose coupling’, respectively. The paper concludes by recommending methods for future empirical research on relationship configurations in TNTs. It argues that a broad range of relationship aspects needs to be included in such research, to examine relationships across a number of different team structures and organisational contexts, and in different socio-political environments. In-depth, qualitative case research is the most suitable for exploring this complex social phenomenon

Interpersonal relationships in transnational, virtual teams - towards a configurational perspective

This article uses a literature review to develop a configurational analysis of interpersonal relationships in transnational teams (TNTs). The configurational approach posits that organisational reality cannot be explained by uni-directional, causal relationships between isolated variables, but only in terms of variable configurations, i.e. „multidimensional constellations of conceptually distinct characteristics that commonly occur together‟ (Meyer et al. 1993, p. 1175). The effect of single variables is seen to depend on their interaction with the multitude of other variables in a configuration. TNTs are defined as groups composed of members of different nationalities, who work on a common task. Previous research on TNTs has observed that strong interpersonal relationships are especially important for the functioning of these teams, but are at the same time particularly hard to achieve. Moreover, many studies have singled out particular processes that will here be termed „aspects‟ of relationships. This article firstly integrates the transnational and virtual team literature to provide an overview of examined relationship aspects. The article identifies cognitive relationship aspects, which encompass team identity, subgroup formation, shared understanding, and trust. Communication, knowledge creation, and conflicts are described as behavioural aspects, and interpersonal affect is identified as an affective relationship aspect. These relationship aspects are regarded as elements of complex relationship configurations. The paper therefore describes the influence of each of these aspects on other relationship aspects, thereby demonstrating complex interconnections between relationship aspects. This provides a first step towards a configurational analysis. The paper further reviews how several characteristics of the team structure, organisational context, and socio-political environment may facilitate or inhibit several relationship aspects. Special emphasis is placed on the influence of cultural diversity and virtuality as the two factors that are characteristic of TNTs, and which have also been discussed most frequently in the literature. Through a synthesis of previous research, the article then provides an overview of suggested mutual influences between relationship aspects. This leads to a suggestion of two examples of relationship configurations and their driving factors. These configurations are characterised by the orchestrating themes of „commitment and tight coupling‟ and „commitment and loose coupling‟, respectively. The paper concludes by recommending methods for future empirical research on relationship configurations in TNTs. It argues that a broad range of relationship aspects needs to be included in such research, to examine relationships across a number of different team structures and organisational contexts, and in different socio-political environments. In-depth, qualitative case research is the most suitable for exploring this complex social phenomenon

Offshoring attitudes and their consequences for relationships in transnational teams. Reflections from a field study of German information technology developers

With reference to the literature on offshoring and on transnational teams (TNTs), we present a qualitative study of 30 German IT developers’ attitudes towards the transfer of tasks to an Indian subsidiary. Respondents reported contrasting attitudes concerning offshoring consequences for the organization, TNT performance, as well as German employees’ workload, tasks, jobs, and intercultural learning. These offshoring attitudes affected some Germans’ relational behaviors towards their Indian colleagues, in terms of forming subgroups, pinpointing mistakes, communicating, transferring knowledge, and avoiding task transfer. The findings are interpreted from a configurational perspective, leading to recommendations for managers and suggestions for future research

Understanding Opportunities in Social Entrepreneurship: A Critical Realist Abstraction

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This paper extends social entrepreneurship (SE) research by drawing upon a critical realist perspective to analyse dynamic structure/agency relations in SE opportunity emergence, illustrated by empirical evidence. Our findings demonstrate an agential aspect (opportunity actualisation following a path-dependent seeding-growing-shaping process) and a structural aspect (institutional, cognitive and embedded structures necessary for SE opportunity emergence) related to SE opportunities. These structures provide three boundary conditions for SE agency: institutional discrimination, an SE belief system and social feasibility. Within this paper, we develop a novel theoretical framework to analyse SE opportunities plus, an applicable tool to advance related empirical research

Framing the change and changing frames:Tensions in participative strategy development

Participative strategy development serves to integrate the interests and perspectives of multiple stakeholders involved in today's complex environmental challenges, aiming at a better-informed strategy for tackling these challenges, increased stakeholder ownership, and more democratic decision making. Prior research has observed inherent tensions between the need for participative strategy to be open to stakeholders' input and the need for closure and guidance. We extend this reasoning using a framing perspective. Our evidence from the development of the England Peat Action Plan suggests that tensions can emerge between the necessary ambiguous initial framing of intended change and the persistence of stakeholders' different framings of this change as well as perceptions of lacking knowledge, guidance, and control. We argue that strategy openness can thereby impede stakeholders' willingness and ability to change and counteract the strategy's aim for major transformation. Interactive spaces help mitigate the tensions and facilitate stakeholders' willingness and ability for change. </p