Multicultural Management in the Virtual Project Setting

MULTICULTURAL MANAGEMENT IN THE VIRTUAL PROJECT SETTING Carlos Galamba, University of Liverpool Introduction The Virtual Project Setting In today’s globalisation era, effective cross-cultural management of virtual teams is an emerging subject in international business literature and practice. Virtual teaming has a number of potential benefits; not only in terms of human resources flexibility but it can also reduce the operating costs of one organisation. On the other hand, the challenges of such environment should not be undermined. Many scholars have attempted to analyse the impact of virtual work in a number of factors such as communication, leadership, trust, decision-making and productivity (Symons and Stenzel, 2007),†¦show more content†¦| | |CULTURE | |ISSUE |Individualism-collectivism is one of the biggest dimensions of cultural variability. The findings by Gudykunst (1997) | | |and Hofstede (1980) suggest that team members from collectivist cultures are less ready to trust others than those | | |from individualistic cultures. | | |Chow et al. (2000) established that individualistic and collectivist cultures make a sharp differentiation between | | |in-group and out-group members, with regards to knowledge sharing. For example, Chinese managers are found to be more | | |reluctant in sharing knowledge with an out-group member when compared to Americans. | |SOLUTION |With regards to culture, many scholars agree that cultural awareness is the most effective solution to minimize the | | |negative effects of cross-cultural differences (Mead and Andrews, 2009). Ardichvili et al. (2006)Show MoreRelatedCross Cultural Virtual Teams Essay1523 Words   |  7 Pagesthe amount of cross cultural, virtual teams in existence in today’s business world. 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