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)
