Intercultural Communication: Understanding And Overcoming Cultural Differences In Virtual Teams

A literature review is a critical analysis of the published literature in the field of study. It describes,summarises, analyses, compares and contrasts, synthesises and evaluates concepts from theliterature on a particular topic. The purpose of a literature review is to show what is known in aparticular field and identify knowledge gaps and areas of uncertainty and controversy. Often theknowledge gaps and uncertainties will form the basis of further research.

National culture

The globalised world of today has been dominated by the multinational organizations. This has been done in the intercultural communication world. People from various countries of the world have been working together on similar projects at the same time. These global and virtual teams of projects have allowed the small size business to compete also in the global market. This has been done by utilizing electronic technologies (Klitmøller and Lauring 2013).

 The purpose of the review lies in the reason that the global teams have not often created the value expected. The major reason behind this has been the mishandling of technologies, poor skills of management and cultural differences.

The goal of the review has been to analyze the cultural differences like Switzerland versus Australia using the six dimensional model of Hofstede. The report has also tried to show the limits of that kind of stereotype approaches. It has also given the outline of the organizational culture and the organization’s internal communications. Finally it has given recommendations regarding the rise in efficiency and work quality of the project in terms of the virtual and intercultural project.

Misunderstanding of culture has been one of the vital causes for issues in project management. The word “culture” has been defined by Gilson et al. (2015), as the complicated set of various know-how, practices, knowledge valuation, beliefs and attitudes. This has been summarized by Santillan and Horwitz (2017) and describes the term as a collective programming of mind. This has been distinguished the member of a human group from the. This has been done in order to identify the differences in value systems at national level and the national culture.

Table 1: “The six dimensions of culture”

(Source: Carter et al. 2015, pp-225-252)

The commonalities in the power distance factors, uncertainly avoidance, indulgence, masculinity and the indulgence between Australia and Switzerland has been different. Despite that the distinctiveness of individuality and long term orientation between those countries has been significant. This might lead to the misunderstandings like the in time management (Gibbs, Sivunen and Boyraz 2017).

As reviewed by Lockwood (2015), these studies and more specifically the four dimensions at first are influential for various researches in social sciences. The scientists have not realized before that they the aspects that have been considered universal for them have been true only for the individualistic culture of west. Despite there have been criticism on this method that states that the characterization of those dimensions have been restricted. Further the data has been old and gathered over a long time. Hence it has not been comparable.

Barmeyer and Haupt (2016) stated that the influence of the corporate culture has been high. This has been a vital problem as every data gas been gathered in one organization that has a specific and strong culture. Moreover, it has been significant to make sense that the dimension has just been describing the norm attitude in the social life of any particular culture (Forbes.com, 2017). However it has not explained the immense and variety complicacy of any society. They have been enabling prediction regarding the reactions but would not be able to forecast them.

Hofstede's Cultural dimensions

Hofstede’s Cultural dimensions has helped in understanding and be aware of various culture immense. However it has not been sufficient for forecasting any behavior of any person. The various national culture of Hofstede has lead to 3 principle sections of styles of decision making in the project teams (Erez et al. 2013). The first one has been describing the general differences in cultures such as degree of team-organization, steepness of the organizational hierarchies and open-mindedness. The second has been concentrating over the styles of decision making. The crucial factors for this have been the decision speed, quality of roles for people and eagerness for accepting unpopular changes or decisions. The final category has discussed the various processes of decision-making (Bloomington et al., 2017). This also included the transparency and formality. This has also included the significance of experts versus the style of group-decision making. The approach has been an effective application of models of cultural dimensions and has demonstrated the issues of stereotyping at national level (Krawczyk-Bry?ka, 2017).

Any proper corporate culture possesses positive effects over the commitments of the employees and their performances. This has lead to the conclusion that the proper corporate culture could generate any promising environment for the projects. Gibson et al. (2014) stated that the significant parts of the project during the beginning of the steps are the creativity and innovation. They have been demanding particular situations in planning supporting mechanisms and the organizational structure. This has appeared to be plausible as the creative processes of such kinds has been needing good leadership and team environment.

The above figure has shown the relation between the business process and innovation. Other important factor of organizational culture for the big organizations has been the intercultural training.  The national culture possesses important impacts on the behavior and values of the people in particular cases (AXELOS, 2017). The training of intercultural has been of large significance for any organization. Despite that the classical briefing of culture has been leading to various problems. First of all, they have been forgetting that the teams have been consisting of people with various motivation and behaviors in certain situations. Next, they have not been considering the targeted culture as the duration, nature and intensity. Lastly, those models have not been able to consider the team member’s experiences.

It has been discussing the various communication styles and in general understanding of the interaction process. There has been a common thing where most of the researchers have agreed. The low-context has been generally abstractive, clear, rationally argument, using explicit, directs, individualistic, western oriented and abstractive (Forbes.com, 2017). The high context cultures have been lying on the basis of relationships of long-term and have been indirect, needing harmony for interaction, associative, ambiguous and Asiatic and collective.

Zaugg et al. (2015) argues that the situation has been largely relevant in the project management. This has been improper in large context culture as finger pointing along with explicit and direct language has been largely embarrassing for those countries. Other popular mistake made by people from the lower context cultures has been ignoring the significance of relationships in the context of high cultures.

Organizational culture

As stated earlier the virtual teams have been the teams for project that have been working on the similar project but on various places across the globe. They have been facing the similar issues like the inter-cultural teams. However, Scott and Wildman (2015) researched that they have been bothered with extra challenges of limitation to the online communication tools. This has often leaded to missing of the deadlines, team cohesiveness, trust issues and problems with intercultural communications. The routines that helped to enhance the quantitative and qualitative outcomes of their work of virtual project team is done by setting particular objectives, goals and expectations, opting the proper team members, defining clear-cut guidelines for team, setting the tome limits and accountability, rising cultural understandings and generating the face time between the team members of the projects (Harvard Business Review, 2017).

Conclusion: 

The intercultural and virtual project teams have been required to overcome more challenges and problems than the reams of national projects. This is because that has been lying on the basis of misunderstandings and wrong expectations. There has been a consensus present in the review that the national stereotyping could support the understanding of behavior of people of separate cultures. However, this cannot be utilized for forecasting their behavior. Despite there has been disagreement with this point from various scholars. For one sect the primary element for successful completion of inter-cultural work of project has been the leadership structure based on role-model and various communications. The other sections have been promoting a largely structures, on measurable and result-driven goals on the basis of the manner of work.  The future sections to perform research have been keeping the definition of various cultures nationally upgraded and raise the accuracy. This is because different generations have been possessing different behaviors and values. Moreover, researchers have been focusing on the questions as any open highly regulated and communicative structure of project has been more advantageous for the project teams. Despite all these, various problems and misunderstandings could get resolved or eradicated completely if the parties involved ask the way to act in particular situations. This must be done as soon as they are not sure completely. Lastly it could be concluded by stating that the communication has been always the key to success.

References:

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Bloomington, I., Bloomington, I., Bloomington, I. and University, I. (2017). Cultural Diversity Challenges in Global Virtual Teams. [online] Soic.indiana.edu. Available at: https://www.soic.indiana.edu/news/story.html?ils_id=1691 [Accessed 20 Jun. 2017].

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