Becoming A Virtual Team At The Usa, Brazil, Japan, Germany, And China

This would minimize the crossing of time zones and the process can increase team effectiveness. The author, as a project manager can establish a common time to interact face-to-face through video conferencing.

The positive impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can contribute creativity to a high-performance team. Membership diversity offers a rich pool of information, talent, and varied perspectives that can help improve team problem solving and increase creativity (Hunt, J., Osborn, R., Schermerhorn, J., 2005). Cultural diversity contributes various group input and group dynamics to the team. These two factors are essential in the high performance of a team. Cultural diversity can develop a high-performance team by allowing the diverse potentials of a team to operate. The negative impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can develop numerous of conflicts between team members. Conflicting interaction can limit or decrease the effectiveness and efficiency of productivity. There should be an awareness of the diverse culture values in order to prevent these conflicts.

In today’s world teamwork is being utilized by companies across the globe. Employers are seeing the value of teamwork and what can be accomplished when people put the strengths together. These teams consist of people from different cultures with different personalities. Conflict is inevitable when it comes to group dynamics. Conflict resolution is necessary to keep the group functioning efficiently. This paper will analyze group dynamics and focus on conflict resolution by way of communication.

Virtual Team on the other hand is a group of people working across time, space, and organizational boundaries which communication links are strengthened by the internet. It should be noted that virtual teams can also mean individuals spread across different cultures and languages. (“Virtual Team - Origin, Definition and its Scope,” 2016). More so, this team of geographically dispersed professionals working together as a unit despite distance are committed to achieving a single objective, holding one another mutually accountable.

In multicultural teams, members represent three or more ethnic background. Today, an increasing number of corporate task forces are globally distanced teams, that is, teams composed of members from around the world who meet electronically. The economic and political power structure of the representative members moderates the team’s dynamics and therefore, its

Al-Ani, Ban, Agnes Horspool, and Michelle C. Bligh. 2011. “Collaborating with 'virtual strangers': Towards developing a framework for leadership in distributed teams.” Leadership 7 (3): 219-249. Doi: 10.1177/1742715011407382

Diversity in culture and demographic characteristics can be a negative impact or be one of the team's greatest strengths, depending on how the team as a whole functions and applies these different “routes to success”. A group can become a high performing team by understanding how cultural and demographic differences influence group behavior. The groups must realize that they can benefit from their diversity to their advantage and into a high performance team.

My team members are Sara, Wei, Rijuta, Rohit, and Craig. We are one of the more, if not most, culturally diverse groups in the class because we hail from China, India, New Zealand and the Philippines. When looking at our majors, there was not much diversity because five of us are in Marketing and only Rohit is in Global Business. Only four of us in Marketing have been classmates in the previous term and prior to this term, we never experienced working together as a team. Sara told us she wanted to be in a team where everyone would pull their own weight, and she said that it looked that each of us wanted the same thing. The six of us agreed to form a team because we all valued

Globalisation has led to many changes in the international marketing and global advertising industry. Many international companies have projects spanning a variety of nationalities, involving great geographical distances and a range of time zones. In this scenario, companies are forced to make virtual teams - which are comprised of members who are located in more than one physical location (Peters and Manz, 2007). This virtual team trait has fostered extensive use of a variety of forms of computer-mediated communication that enable geographically dispersed members to coordinate their individual effort and inputs (Attaran, 2002). In addition, commitment to a virtual team goal may be further complicated by the single or coherent line of

The first problem to be identified is the cross functional teams’ inability to communicate effectively. The purpose of a cross functional team is to put people with different

In many aspects of our life, it is pervasive to work in a team. No matter in company, school, or another type of team it is necessary to be a part of a team and to achieve a team goal by corporations. People join a team with different personalities, goals, values, beliefs and needs. On the one hand, these differences can be a valuable quality of teams. On the other hand, these same differences inevitably lead to different levels of conflicts as well.

The influence that management and leadership styles along with communication systems have on the development of leadership, trust, and accountability in a culturally diverse virtual team is unknown. The problem that this study will address is the lack of knowledge concerning management and leadership styles needed to effectively manage a virtual team with multiple cultural backgrounds and the lack of tools to develop each member’s leadership, trust, and accountability skills. A quantitative study will be used to understand the necessary management and leadership styles and communication systems to effectively manage a culturally diverse virtual team.

Hastings, R. (December 3, 2008). Set Ground Rules for Virtual Team Communications. SHRM Online. Retrieved August 8, 2011 from http://www.shrm.org .

The evolution of globalization and the advancement of communication technology have increased the amount of cross cultural, virtual teams in existence in today’s business world. Cross cultural, virtual teams can leverage on the diverse experiences of its members to achieve good results even without the members meeting face to face.

A team comprised of international components presents an interesting challenge in regards to management. Various problems can potentially arise in regards to organizing the team, developing rules that govern the team and assigning tasks. One method in which to mitigate all of the above mentioned rules is by setting performance standards for the entire team to adhere (Alexander, 2000). One such standard involves the use of a balanced scorecard. A balanced scorecard allows each individual irrespective of their position within the team to have a core set of standards in which to abide by. These standards will also include the job function and the roles of each member with the job function. The scorecard provides an ideal medium in which to judge performance as well. By viewing the scorecard management can easily pinpoint areas of opportunity and improvement (Blair 2010).