Although interaction hypotheses are increasingly common in our field, many recent articles point out that authors often have difficulty justifying them. The purpose of this article is to describe a particular type of interaction: the restricted variance (RV) interaction. The essence of the RV interaction is that, as the value of one variable in a system changes, certain values of another variable in the system become less plausible, thus restricting its variance. This, in turn, influences relationships between that variable and other variables. These types of interactions are quite common, even if they are not recognized as RV interactions, and they exist at every level of analysis. The advantage of the RV interaction is that, as compared with other interaction types, it is relatively simple to justify. The different forms of RV interaction do, however, contain complexities of which a researcher must be aware. This article explains and illustrates the forms that RV interactions can take and their often counterintuitive implications. It also describes how one should go about testing them. Our intention is to help researchers strengthen and focus their interaction arguments.

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Internationally distributed teams (IDTs) face challenges related to the team members’ diversity and geographic dispersion. However, research on IDTs has yet to explore the joint effects of diversity and dispersion on team processes and performance, as well as the role that cultural norms play in IDT effectiveness. Reporting findings from an 11-week e-mail exchange between American and Finnish business students, the current chapter focuses on how and why cultural communication and coordination norms affect IDT team processes and performance. The data shows that differences in cultural norms were amplified by differences in the local context of IDT members and that successful IDTs also created group norms that helped them manage their cultural diversity and geographic dispersion. Given the teachers’ discovery of how they had unintentionally reinforced cultural communication and coordination norms, the authors make explicit how cultural norms unexpectedly influence leadership strategies and learning experiences in positive and negative ways.