The Management of Cross-Cultural Virtual Teams

Abstract

The accelerated development of information and communication technology, the transformation of business activity, which has become more global and competitive, and the prevalence of services based on knowledge and information led to the appearance of new models of virtual teamwork, more flexible and adaptive, which go beyond the classical functional departmental barriers and require the collaboration of employees with diverse skills, judgments and expertise. The COVID-19 pandemic event accelerated the adoption of these new work models worldwide at a scale never seen before. Cross-cultural virtual teams can be found in several fields, such as research and product development, quality circles, affinity groups, outsourcing teams, customer services, helpdesk services, academic and research groups. Under the framework of crossvergence theory, this conceptual article explores the contingencies of cross-cultural virtual teams, discussing its main challenges and explores a set of practices for multicultural team management in the virtual environment.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0394/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Exploring Cultural Influences on Project Management Approaches in Global Business Development

“…Formation of such teams enable organizations to use a large pool of highly skilled and talented professionals with varied knowledge, and perspectives (Eisenberg et al, 2021). Some scientific works are devoted to the analysis of characteristics of multinational virtual teams such as global distribution and time zone challenges (Baptista, 2022), presence of diverse skills and integrated competencies among team members including ability to navigate cultural differences (Eisenberg et al, 2021), distributed decision-making (Stahl & Maznevski, 2021), and global leadership and management that is usually realized from a distance (Schweimler et al, 2022).…”

“…Taking this into consideration, we found that there are 11 project management approaches in global business development that are applied in the context of cultural diversity and are oriented towards maximize cultural differences within the team. They are the following: cultural awareness assessment (Jones et al, 2020;Shepherd et al, 2019;Tian, 2020), customized communication (Baptista, 2022;Cizmaș et al, 2020;Mwamba & Malik, 2022), cultural liaison (Cripe & Burleigh, 2022;Tian, 2020), adaptive leadership styles (Anwer et al, 2022;Burkiewicz & Knap-Stefaniuk, 2022), inclusive decision-making (Stahl & Maznevski, 2021), cross-cultural training (Baptista, 2022;Jones et al, 2020;Tian, 2020), team building (Gabelica & Popov, 2020), use of feedback (Baptista, 2022;Ponomareva et al, 2022), conflict resolution (Mwamba & Malik, 2022;Nawaz et al, 2022), recognizing cultural differences (Anwer et al, 2022;Tian, 2020), implementation of diverse projects (Baptista, 2022;Tian, 2020). Table 2 analyzes the project management approaches for global business development in the context of cultural diversity.…”

“…tailoring the content or communication styles to the specific needs and preferences of the audience (Baptista, 2022;Cizmaș et al, 2020) Cultural liaison Facilitation of cross-cultural communication, promotion of understanding among team members in the context of cultural diversity (Cripe & Burleigh, 2022;Tian, 2020).…”

“…Organization of training for team members aimed at formation communication skills and enhancement cultural awareness (Baptista, 2022;Jones et al, 2020;Tian, 2020).…”

“…Establishment of feedback algorithms to understand team members' cultural differences (Baptista, 2022;Ponomareva et al, 2022).…”