The paper combines insights from social identity theory and organizational network theory to specify the conditions under which social capital can induce negative attitudes in global virtual teams. The structural configuration of social capital has crucial implications for the sociocognitive processes causing individuals to adopt negative attitudes to out-group members. The paper evaluates both the negative implications of structural configurations on out-group perceptions, which are important precursors to successful intergroup interaction in global virtual teams. We collected data from 160 actors across 40 global virtual teams embedded within three separate organizations. 34 social identity groups were detected and ties between and within the groups were investigated. Our analyses provide insights on the roles of social identity groupings and social capital as well as in-group brokerage and interactions on (negative) perceptions of other group members in global virtual teams.
Article:Vahtera, P, Buckley, P orcid.org/0000-0002-0450-5589 and Aliyev, M orcid.org/0000-0002-1457-094X (2017) Affective conflict and identification of knowledge sources in MNE teams. International Business Review, 26 (5).
ABSTRACTHow does affective conflict influence identification of knowledge sources in MNE teams? We apply social exchange theory and consider the effect of two types of affective interpersonal conflict:relational tension and self-interest on identification of knowledge sources in MNE teams. We further analyse how these effects are related to geographic and nationality differences. We test our hypotheses with a field study of 1181 dyadic interactions between 160 members within 40 MNE teams engaged in product innovation, human resources, and operational improvement in three large diversified MNEs. We find that affective conflict has a direct negative relationship to identification of knowledge sources in MNE teams. This relationship is further negatively moderated by geographic differences and nationality differences. Our study contributes to theoretical and empirical micro-foundations of conflict and identification of knowledge sources in MNE teams.
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