International Association for Development of the Information Society
Abstract
Multinational organisations are increasingly adopting geographically distributed cross-cultural virtual teams to accomplish projects. As organisations seek to exploit the benefits of such teams, they may confront a number of challenges. This research explored challenges to effective partnership in cross-cultural virtual teams through an in-depth case study of the Ghana subsidiary of a multinational organisation in the telecommunications industry. It is an interpretive study based on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews. The study finds that temporal, linguistic, and cultural issues present significant challenges to effective teamwork. The paper discusses implications of the findings for the effective management of cross-cultural virtual teams
