Virtual Teams Case Study

“Addressing Cultural Differences Across Virtual Teams”

As a result of growing global competition, today 's businesses are no longer confined by geographic borders. Globalization drives many businesses into emerging markets and low wage countries to take advantage of their intellectual capital and lower cost of operation. These changes have given rise to the "virtual team"; a cross-cultural group of co-workers that span international borders and typically communicate by means of technology rather than face-to-face meetings. At least 41 million corporate employees work in a virtual workplace at least one day per week. Teams geographically separated not only must work in separate time zones, but also overcome cultural norms and differences, which

A virtual team spread out globally across differing time zones makes group collaboration difficult at best. Technology allows team members to communicate via email, text message, and voice; however, a time that may be convenient for one group may not be ideal for another. This becomes more of an issue when working to resolve emergency issues that arise when working on large projects. One possible solution to the time zone availability problem is to have all groups within the virtual team decide on a time when each group will be available in both normal and emergency circumstances. If at all possible, the team should strive to find at least an hour each day that all teams are available for video conference

It can be burdensome when teams need to brainstorm to find a solution to a problem. However, these novel and convenient forms of communication might create some other problems in the area of cultural differences, especially in the early life of the virtual team. For example, if the person on the call is at home or driving, the attendees at the conference can hear his young children in the background or some car noise. This may be considered annoying, unprofessional and eventually might lead to deterioration of the team cohesiveness and in turn, lower