Lecture 7: Leadership & cross-cultural virtual teams Flashcards
What are the tasks of a (good) team leader?
- Leader connects to tasks of team:
- Information processing: Work information, helicopter view
- Process structuring: Managing deadlines, goals, planning
- Communication support: Social and inspiration function
- But also:
- Tactical: Communication to other stakeholders
- Strategical: Setting goals, long-term planning
What are the basic distinctions in leadership style?
- Transactional leadership (Selling)
- Transformational Leadership (telling)
What are the characteristics of ‘transactional leadership’?
- Managerial
- Top-down
- Setting goals
- Rewards and punishments
What are the characteristics of ‘Transformational Leadership’?
- Intellectual stimulation (bottom-up approach)
- Individual consideration (mentoring)
- Inspirational motivation (vision)
- Idealized influencer (role models)
4 i’s
What are the other types of leadership besides transactional vs transformational?
- Empowering leadership
- Emergent leadership
- Shared leadership
What are the characteristics of ‘Empowering leadership’?
- Stimulating autonomy
- Coaching
- Fostering participation
- Leading by example
What are the characteristics of ‘Emergent leadership’?
- Leaders emerge ‘naturally’ in a group
- Depends on situational awareness (i.e., if the group can get along and a shared mental model already exists)
What are the characteristics of ‘shared leadership’?
- Shared responsibility
- Keeping each other to each others promises
What are some of the challenges of leading a virtual team?
Leadership threatened by affordances
- Information issues: misunderstanding Task-related information
- Process issues: Delays, planning unclear, inefficiency
- Communication & social issues: Social loafing, reduced cohesion & trust
How can virtual team leaders use affordances to prevent ‘information processing issues’ in virtual teams?
- Visibility + persistence → make shared docs available
- Controllability/ chronemics + editability → enable collaborative work on shared docs
How can virtual team leaders use affordances to prevent ‘Process structuring issues’ in virtual teams?
- Visibility + persistence → digital traces of work done, monitoring
- Associations → connect multiple people to tasks
How can virtual team leaders use affordances to prevent ‘Communication & social issues’ in virtual teams?
- Communication support + social presence → increase trust
- Visibility + associations → increase accountability
What did the study of Morrison-Smith & Ruiz (2020) found about leadership in virtual teams?
- Transactional leadership
▪ Works best in teams with clear tasks or goals or constraints
▪ May work in virtual teams when tasks are clear - Transformational leadership
▪ Not a good management style in virtual teams unless
▪ Clear attention is paid to common bond or identity - Empowering, emergent, and shared leadership
▪ Seem to be the best approaches for virtual teams
▪ But is very dependent on common ground as well
What is the definition of culture?
- Elusive construct
- A way of life of a group of people, with shared:
o Values (beliefs or ideals)
o Norms (action-guiding rules, codes of conduct)
o Artefacts (e.g., tools, works of art) - Not the same as nationality or ethnicity!
What are the 5 dimensions of culture typology (Hofstede, 1984)
- Individualism – collectivism
- Power distance (high – low)
- Masculine – feminine
- Uncertainty avoidance (high – low)
- Short vs. long-term orientation
Which cultural dimensions are also relevant for virtual team?
- High vs. low context
- Tight vs. loose
Name all culture dimension that affect virtual team behavior…
- Individualism – collectivism
- Power distance (high – low)
- Masculine – feminine
- Uncertainty avoidance (high – low)
- Short vs. long-term orientation
- High vs. low context
- Tight vs. loose
What are the disadvantages of cultural diversity?
▪ Most important is that there are cultural differences than exactly which cultural differences
▪ The larger the socio-cultural distance in a team, the more difficult it is to manage a team, because of…
o Language
o Distance
o Misunderstandings (e.g., social, task)
o Different expectations based on Hofstede
▪ Effects are contingent upon contextual factors (task type, organization, new vs. existing team)
What is the challenge to establish a common ground? (cultural diversity)
- Problems mostly related to lacking common ground/ shared understanding/ shared awareness
▪ About what we are doing and who is doing what
▪ Needed for effective communication and building trust - Which is already more difficult online due to limited cues leading to misunderstanding
- Differences in culture (norms and values) might exacerbate this
What are the advantages of cultural diversity?
- Diversity
- In perspectives
- Networks
- Expertise
- Round the clock work
- Interesting & Fun
How to create a common ground across cultures?
▪ Training
▪ Awareness
▪ Create common identity
What is social identity?
- Social identification & self-categorization theories
- People have a need to belong:
- Besides, personal identities (“I’s”),
- people have several social identities (“we’s”)
o That can be layered
o That become activated depending on context
o That affect people’s self-concept and behavior
How does social identity work in new virtual teams?
- Top-down / deductive
- Surface level characteristics → identification based on crude stereotypes
How does social identity work in virtual teams after a while (through interactions)?
- Bottom-up / inductive
- Common identity (attachment to the group as a whole)
- Common bond (attachment between group members)
What did the study of Staples & Zhao (2006) found?
Invisible diversity might promote common identity
What is subjective distance?
perceived distance
What is objective distance?
Physical distance
What did the study about physical vs. perceived distance find? (Siebdrat et al., 2009)
- Subjective distance affects group collaboration
By which factors is perceived proximity mediated? (O’Leary et al., 2014)
- Communication
- Shared identification
