Effects of cultural differences on the working of a virtual team: Indian and British members

2015 dissertation for MA in International Human Resource Management. Selected by academic staff as a good example of a masters level dissertation.

Organisations are now expanding their reach by employing people from different geographical locations in order to utilise the skills the world has to offer. Moreover, the advancement of technology has made it possible to establish links with the global workforce. This has resulted in increase of use of global virtual teams. Global virtual teams are effective as they are not bound by space, time and cost. One of the issues that is not explicitly visible is the issue of cultural differences that can create problems between the team members of a virtual team. Past studies have found conflicting results on the effects of cultural differences on a virtual team's effectiveness. This exploratory research is carried out to create an in depth understanding the effects of cultural differences between the Indian and British team members.

The efffects of culture were investigated on different aspects of a virtual team using Hofstede's and Hall's cultural dimensions. Diverse relevant literature has been studied in order to find out the variety of problems a virtual team can face. Qualitative research method was used in order to complete the data analysis. The data was collected through secondary collection method. The research illuminated the fact that the cultural factors do affect the attitudes of members in a virtual team. These attitudes of members towards conflict management, time perception, trust, leadership and communication affect how they work in a team. Therefore, it was recommended that there is a need to create a hybrid culture in order to establish a high performance virtual team.