Shaping a research framework to deal with internationally distributed teams

Abstract

Globalization and communication technology allow businesses to literally set up around the clock work on large projects, saving time and money. One prominent model is international virtual project teams. Internationally distributed project teams are often comprised of people from related disciplines, working on the same project, yet living in different national cultures, and physically located in different organizational contexts. As this model becomes more common in practice, we need to find a way of understanding the interaction of organizational, occupational and national culture systems in order to help prepare people on these teams to work together more effectively. We look at recent studies involving intercultural virtual teams at both the national and occupational levels, present some background theory on cultural dimensions and variables, and propose a preliminary research framework that brings together some computer mediated communication and intercultural communication theories to help us identify and understand heuristics for working in international virtual project teams.