Managing Cultural Differences Across Virtual Teams in Projects
MANAGING CULTURAL DIFFERENCES ACROSS VIRTUAL TEAMS IN PROJECTS --- (Narotham sen tripuraneni)
ABSTRACT
I have taken this topic 'MANAGING CULTURAL DIFFERENCES ACROSS VIRTUAL TEAMS IN PROJECTS ' since i felt there was a growing need in project management to address this issue. Thanks to growing global competition, today 's businesses are no longer restricted by geographic boundaries. Globalization drives many businesses into emerging markets and low wage countries in order to take advantage of their intellectual capital, and lower cost of operation.(Globalization and national economic development: Analyzing benefits and costs, Anwar, Sajid,Journal of Business and Management,2002) 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. A recent study by the Garner Group, states that by the year 2008, 41 million corporate employees will work in a virtual workplace at least one day per week [WikiPedia, www.wikipedia.com, "Virtual Teams"]. Teams geographically separated not only must work in separate time zones, but also overcome cultural norms and differences, which have been described as one of the major issues of project management when dealing with virtual teams [B. Egginton, Cultural Complexity and improvement performance of large international projects, in Proc. Engineering Management Conf. IEEE Int., India 1993, pp. 53 58]. In this literature review we will look at the challenges of the virtual team communication across different cultures. Initially we will explore the communication problems associated with time differences and language barriers often magnified by the lack of face-to-face experience and cultural differences. Then we will move further to investigate cultural value differences between
ABSTRACT
I have taken this topic 'MANAGING CULTURAL DIFFERENCES ACROSS VIRTUAL TEAMS IN PROJECTS ' since i felt there was a growing need in project management to address this issue. Thanks to growing global competition, today 's businesses are no longer restricted by geographic boundaries. Globalization drives many businesses into emerging markets and low wage countries in order to take advantage of their intellectual capital, and lower cost of operation.(Globalization and national economic development: Analyzing benefits and costs, Anwar, Sajid,Journal of Business and Management,2002) 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. A recent study by the Garner Group, states that by the year 2008, 41 million corporate employees will work in a virtual workplace at least one day per week [WikiPedia, www.wikipedia.com, "Virtual Teams"]. Teams geographically separated not only must work in separate time zones, but also overcome cultural norms and differences, which have been described as one of the major issues of project management when dealing with virtual teams [B. Egginton, Cultural Complexity and improvement performance of large international projects, in Proc. Engineering Management Conf. IEEE Int., India 1993, pp. 53 58]. In this literature review we will look at the challenges of the virtual team communication across different cultures. Initially we will explore the communication problems associated with time differences and language barriers often magnified by the lack of face-to-face experience and cultural differences. Then we will move further to investigate cultural value differences between
References: [3] L. Dub and G. Par , Global Virtual Teams, Communication ACM, vol. 44 no.12, pp.71-73, 2001 [4] WikiPedia, www.wikipedia.com, "Virtual Teams". [5] Trust and the virtual organization. Harvard Business Review 73 pp. 40-49, Handy, C., 1995 [6] Malcolm Higgs, Towers Perrin, Overcoming the problems of cultural differences to establish success for international management teams [8] Rohit Arya: Why is the cow sacred? http://www.beliefnet.com/story/82/story_8229_1.html [10] Leigh L Thompson, The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator., Pearson Education Inc., 2005 [11] Globalization and national economic development: Analyzing benefits and costs, Anwar, Sajid, Journal of Business and Management, 2002 [12] Gray & Larson, 2006, 489 [13] Chapman, 2008 [14] Virtual team communication, Tom Gilb, 2007 [15] Avolio, Kahai, and Dodge, 2001 [16] Sirkka L