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Culture and Social Theory: Virtual Teams

Culture and Social Theory: Virtual Teams

Culture and social aspects are essential in any business. Good social relation with customers and other stakeholders in a business are critical to its productivity. The aspect of culture affects any business both intrinsically and extrinsically. With the development of technology, new platforms for corporate activities have resulted such as virtual teams. This paper explores the issue of culture that affects virtual teams. In examining the issues of cultural differences that affect the performance and operations of virtual teams, this paper uses the theory of social and culture by Kendra Knudtzon.

Knudtzon’s theory seeks to explain how people relate to others and their environment. The theory acknowledges that technology primarily affects the interaction of people by influencing sociability. Knudtzon (2002) reveals that face to face interaction is different from computer sociability. Technology development highly influences communication among people. Communication is an essential aspect of culture and determines the sociability among people. Therefore, with the advent of technology, the human-computer interaction becomes an essential aspect of culture. The advent of the global economy has resulted in the rise of virtual teams as a way of improving business operations. Virtual teams refer to team members who interact primarily through the use of information technology such as emails and VOIP. Virtual team members rarely meet. According to Knudtzon (2002), virtual teams can be classified as an online community. Knudtzon argues that online community is faced with the challenge of destruction of personal social relationship.

Knudtzon  (2002) states that virtual teams result to the destruction of personal social relationship. This destruction occurs primarily due to interference with communication. In inferring the influence of this aspect of culture on virtual teams, Knudtzon states that there is a dispute between social theories and computer sociability. This dispute occurs due to interference with communication. Communication affects virtual team performance in two various aspects. First, cultural differences affect message interpretation (Huls, Piggott & Zwiers, 2014). Diverse cultures have differences in interpretation of message making it difficult for members of the virtual teams to understand each other compromising their productivity. The difficulty in understanding each other results from differences in cognition in a team as compared to that at an individual level. Communication misinterpretations are critical aspects of cultural differences, and it can affect the performance of virtual teams.

The second aspect of communication that affects virtual teams is the technological platform used. Differences in cultural preferences of various technological platforms offer a challenge to the satisfaction of virtual teams members. As stated earlier, virtual team members do not meet physically but use technology to converse with each other. Consequently, the sociability of people is affected.

Often, members of virtual teams are from different cultures and subcultures. Spatial differences in culture prevent the establishment of trust within virtual teams. Huls, Piggott and Zwiers (2014) expound on this issue and claim that it ‘s hard to establish trust within virtual teams due to the deviation from the normal way of sociability in the use of technology. Language is also an essential aspect of virtual teams. Often, virtual teams comprise multilingual members. Such cases result in communication barrier that may halt operations of virtual teams.

Culture is an essential aspect of business and can affect its operations and productivity. It determines how the corporate community interact. Cultural differences highly influence the functionality of virtual teams. The above discussion reveals that trust, communication and language, which are intertwined, as the aspects of culture that affect virtual teams.

 

References

Huls, C., Piggott, J., & Zwiers, T (2014). Influence of cultural factors on establishing trust within Global Virtual Teams.

Knudtzon, K. (2002). Social and Cultural Theories.

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