Multicultural management in virtual projects

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie 

Published: 13/12/2013

Issues faced by managers in multi-cultural management within virtual project settings

It is very important to understand that while multi-cultural issues are not always visible in virtual firms, they actually exist. Numerous studies have laid down the suggestion that global virtual teams face different kinds of significant challenges, but these challenges fall within four main areas as: communication, culture, technology, and project management (Kayworth, Timothy and Leidner 2000). Present research have also extended these issues by stating that virtual teams fail as a result of difficulties within building trust and positive relationship across the three boundaries of geographical distance, time zone, and differences in culture (Kimble et.al. 2001). Another issue that is facing virtual team is time difference as members of the team can come from any part of the world. These issues can be summarized as:

1.      Communication – differences in language

2.      Culture – differences in attitude towards work, norms that can influence working hours such as prayer times.

3.      Technology – technological gap that can mean lack of needed communication technologies and advanced software in some part of the world such as underdeveloped countries.

4.      Project management – lack of clear project purpose and competent manger to tackle project design

5.      Time zone – differences in time that means morning in a given country is night in another country

6.      Lack of trust – due to cultural differences, lack of face-to-face communications, team members might not be willing to disclose some information to others.

  

Solutions and best practices

Basically, success is only assured in virtual teams if these issues can be handled. The management of virtual teams is a task on its own. This is because team leaders and supervisors need to be aware of the issues associated with mixed culture in order to avoid the problems that might result from lack of awareness (Cascio 2000). In the process of managing virtual firms, managers need to be able to understand the diversity that exist in international culture as such will help them to understand the traits that will emerge from these diversities with respect to organizational success (O’Hara 2001). Once trust is created within a team, communication is made a lot simpler (Lipnack and Stamps, 1997; Jarvenpaa et al. 1998; Dash 2001; Alexander 2000). Thus, creating trust between members is one of the major issues that managers face when it comes to managing virtual firms.

Another issue is members’ participation and interaction. There is the need for managers to make sure that all the parties involved in the virtual firm engage in beneficial participation and interactions. This is because differences in culture mean that some individuals need guidance and directions while other don’t. As an example, Japanese believe in working together as a team and as such they don’t mind being directed and pushed, while the USA are more individualistic and as such don’t expect much directions and monitoring. Understanding these problems is very important for manager in the virtual team (Atkins and Cogburn 2001, Kumar and Van Fenam 2001).

Lipnack and Stamps (1997) made known that technology is very important in the management of virtual teams. Thus, the manger needs to source for the needed technologies and ensure that all team members have them at their disposal. The issue of time differences can be handled by working within a central time or division of labour in which some members of the team work at a specific time while other work another time – depending on the working hours in their respect locations.

Sample of company

A good example to demonstrate the possible limitations that firms can have as a result of virtual team is a firm named BakBone Software which is located in San Diego U.S.A. The firm has U.S and Israel team members that have both seven hours in time difference and faces cultural issues. As a result of religion, Israel team members don’t work on Friday, and this puts them out of synch with the U.S team members. The company is overcoming these obstacles with e-mail, shared Web server, conference calling and videoconferencing and this is bridging the cultural differences.

Ethical considerations

From the above BakBone software company, it can be seen that while Israel team members are not working on Fridays, they still have to maintain communication with the U.S team members in order to make the production process a success. Thus, this is clearly against the “Keeping Sabbath Day Holy” Jewish belief as working is clearly prohibited but these team members still have to work indirectly. Thus, it raises the ethical issue of change in social and religious values because these team members have no objective can to work in order to keep their jobs. 

Research methodology

This will be purely secondary research and information will be sourced from primary sources such as the company website and past research related to the research topic. All gathered information that will be used in the research will be backed up with necessary citations as a proof of their credibility.

References

Alexander, Steve, “Virtual Teams Going Global,” InfoWorld, 22(46): 55-56. 200, Nov 13, 2000.

Atkins, Daniel and Derrick Cogburn, Crafting Virtual Collaborations: Cross-National (U.S. and South Africa) Learning Teams.

Cascio, Wayne F., “Managing a virtual workplace,” Academy of Management Executive, 14 (3), Aug. 2000, pp. 81-90.

Dash, Julekha, "Think of people when planning virtual teams," Computerworld, 35(6): 34, Feb.5 2001.

Jarvenpaa, S., Knoll, K., and Leidner, D., "Is Anybody Out There?: The Development and Implications of Trust in Global Virtual Teams," Journal of Management Information Systems, 14, 29-64, 1998.

Kayworth, Timothy and Leidner, Dorthy. “The Global Virtual Manager: A Perspective for Success,” European Management Journal, 18 (2): 183-194. 2000 Aug.

Kimble,Chris, Li,Feng, and Barlow,Alexis, "Effective Virtual Teams through Communities of Practice," Management Science Research Paper No.2000/09.

Kumar, Kuldeep and Van Fenam, Paul C. Virtual Teams in Multinational Organizations.

Lipnack, J. and J. Stamps. Virtual Teams: Reaching Across Space, Time, and Organizations with Technology, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1997.

O'Hara-Devereaux, Mary, and Robert Johansen, GlobalWork: Bridging Distance, Culture, and Time, Jossey Bass, 1994.