Offshore Outsourcing in Global Design Networks

Boundary object efficacy: The mediating role of boundary objects on task conflict in global virtual project networks

“…The difficulty in decision-making underscores the importance of our second set of findings, namely that strategic use of boundary objects can help global networks in particular to identify conflicts more quickly compared to domestic networks, given that global virtual networks typically experience higher incidents of conflict (Liljegren and Zander, 2011;Mahalingam and Levitt, 2007;Nayak and Taylor, 2009;Orr and Scott, 2008). Although we did not find that there were statistically significant differences in conflict duration for the two network types, it is not clear whether the previous research was conducted in settings where boundary objects were available to support the conflict management processes of the global virtual networks or whether the effective interactional patterns with boundary objects described above were accounted for in their assessments of conflict.…”

“…Given the findings from previous research (Liljegren and Zander, 2011;Mahalingam and Levitt, 2007;Nayak and Taylor, 2009;Orr and Scott, 2008), we expect conflict to be higher in global networks because of the added challenges associated with creating shared meaning for networkers from different cultural and linguistic traditions.…”

“…Conflict is more common in global virtual networks because it is more likely to occur in culturally diverse (Liljegren and Zander, 2011;Mahalingam and Levitt, 2007;Nayak and Taylor, 2009;Orr and Scott, 2008) and geographically distributed settings (Hinds and Mortensen, 2005). Global virtual networks "seem to perform poorly in maintaining effective cross-functional communication and leveraging the benefits offered by a diverse group of nationalities" (Daim et al, 2012, p. 207), which suggests that the conflict in these networks is, in part, based on ineffective communication strategies.…”

Enriched Cyberspace Through Adaptive Multimedia Utilization for Dependable Remote Collaboration

“…As to remote collaboration, virtual teams or virtual engineering teams mentioned previously [2] are composed of members located at a distance from each other who collaborate to accomplish organizational tasks [6], [7]. In fact, Gibson and Gibbs characterized virtual teams as varying along four dimensions: geographic dispersion, electronic dependence (dependence on electronic communication), dynamic structure, and national diversity [8].…”

Messy Talk in Virtual Teams: Achieving Knowledge Synthesis through Shared Visualizations

“…Virtual teams of geographically distributed members who collaborate to accomplish organizational tasks are more prevalent in global engineering projects (Gibson and Gibbs 2006;Kirkman et al 2002;Nayak and Taylor 2009). Virtual teams require increased management emphasis, social and cultural understanding, and emphasis on common goals as well as technical elements such as compatibility of systems, security, and the selection of appropriate technologies (Chinowsky and Rojas 2003).…”