Audra I. Mockaitis

The power of individual cultural values in global virtual teams

This paper investigates the perceptions of members of 43 culturally diverse global virtual teams, with respect to team processes and outcomes. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the challenges presented by cultural differences in the context of global teams, little is known about the effect of these differences on team dynamics in the absence of face-to-face interaction. Using a student-based sample, we study the relationship between global virtual team members’ individualistic and collectivistic orientations and their evaluations of trust, interdependence, communication and information sharing, and conflict during the team task. Our results suggest that a collectivist orientation is associated with more favorable impressions regarding global virtual team processes and that cultural differences are not concealed by virtual means of communication.

You're from where? The influence of distance factors on New Zealand expatriates’ cross-cultural adjustment

This study empirically tests the influence of various distance factors on expatriate cross-cultural adjustment. Expatriate perceptions of home and host country differences, objective measures of distance and the accuracy of expatriate evaluations of host country distance were compared as predictors of expatriate adjustment difficulty in the host country. The results revealed that perceived distance, objective cultural distance and the expatriates perceptual inaccuracy had a significant effect on expatriate adjustment difficulty for ones first assignment. However, on subsequent assignments all measures of distance were significant. Adjustment became more difficult as perceptual accuracy improved. The implications of these findings are discussed.

On What Do Consumer Product Preferences Depend? Determining Domestic versus Foreign Product Preferences in an Emerging Economy Market

ABSTRACT This study investigates consumer preferences for domestic products in an emerging economy market. We argue that consumer preferences are contingent on the level of consumer ethnocentrism, preferences for different product categories from specific country clusters and those of importers, and consumers’ previous experience with products. The findings suggest that there are significant variations in consumer evaluations of products across specific product categories, country-of-origin, and other multicues. We also find a significant influence of consumer ethnocentrism on preferences for different product categories from specific country clusters when controlling for background variables. Implications for theory and practice and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Examining media effectiveness across cultures and national borders: A review and multilevel framework

We explore the ways that perceptions of media effectiveness are affected by the societal culture, organizational culture, occupational (professional) culture, individual characteristics, and technology acceptance. This is an important subject to explore, as communication is essential to organizational functioning. The continuous drive for communication to individuals in different national and organizational situations around the world, due in part to globalization, leads us to ask: which medium is perceived as the most effective for each of the tasks a manager may be called upon to perform, particularly in different cultures? In other words, is the receiver getting the message that we intend, when the receiver is not in the same situation (societal, organizational, professional, etc.) as the sender? There are contexts of shared values, rules, and experiences that affect communication; words do not have the same meaning and value across languages and cultures (Macnamara, 2004). This means that the message sent from one context may not be the message received in another. If we are not communicating the messages we intend, then our method of communicating may be efficient, but it is certainly not effective. However, there is little research on the effectiveness of media types. We develop a framework highlighting the intersection of variables salient to effectiveness: societal, organizational, and occupational culture, individual characteristics, and technology the sender? In the conclusion, we suggest future work that might be appropriate, given the increasing interest in global communication.

Team-based global organizations: The future of global organizing

This chapter draws on a panel discussion of the future of global organizing as a team-based organization at EIBA 2014 in Uppsala, Sweden. We began by discussing contemporary developments of hybrid ...

International Business Traveler, Is Work Always on Your Mind? An Investigation of the Relationship Between Sources of Social Support and Satisfaction with Work-Related International Travel: The Moderating Role of Over-Commitment

The present study examines how supervisor support and family support are related to satisfaction with work-related international travel and what is the role of over-commitment, referring to individual’s inability to withdraw from work, in those relationships. The study was conducted among 200 Finnish employees in jobs requiring international business travel. A moderated hierarchical regression analysis shows that over-commitment and the support of one’s family were directly linked to satisfaction with work-related international travel. People who were over-committed at work experienced more satisfaction with work-related international travel if they received high levels of family support; however, no moderator effect was found for supervisor support. Our findings indicate that interventions aimed at reducing over-commitment and policies and practices that improve the work–life balance of international business travelers would help them to maintain important resources related to their satisfaction with work-related international travel.

Special issue of International Journal of Human Resource Management: The benefits of global teams for international organizations: HR implications

Special issue of International Journal of Human Resource Management : The benefits of global teams for international organizations: HR implications

The benefits of global teams for international organizations: HR implications

Abstract In this special issue we aim to advance the theoretical, conceptual and empirical knowledge about the relationship between global teams and human resource management in international organizations. We argue that although the prevalence of global teams in international organizations is rapidly rising, simultaneously affecting the management of firms on global, regional and local levels, the response of firms and scholars alike to such changes has been slower, especially in the area of IHRM. The HR function in organizations could play a vital role in understanding, managing and leveraging the benefits of global teams to ensure that they contribute positively to the performance of firms, organizational units, and people. We demonstrate that there is still a disconnect in this respect and we highlight several areas in which the increasing use of global teams may challenge our conventional understanding of IHRM issues, and at the same time offer solutions for improvement in international organizations. The selected articles in this special issue provide both theoretical and practitioner implications by highlighting the need to explore the relationship between global teams and IHRM more generally and fully, as well as the need for HR practitioners and IHRM scholars to focus more on the ‘human’ and less on the ‘resources’ aspect. We trust that readers of this issue will agree that the articles all offer novel insights into key issues that open new avenues for further research in this nascent yet promising area.

Special issue of International Journal of Human Resource Management: The benefits of global teams for international organizations: HR implications: Extended submission deadline: 12 February 2016

The world is more interconnected than ever before. Traditional organizational forms, traditional leadership roles and traditional ways of managing people need to adapt to changing times. Interconnectedness is linked to rapid response, greater global reach and flexibility. In turn, organizations need to be more flexible in order to keep up with change, finding and bringing together the best, most capable leaders and employees from different locations, in order to stay interconnected and responsive. It has been suggested that the organization of the twenty-first century will be smaller, flatter, more flexible, technology-, learningand innovation-oriented, and that this will be achieved through the increased use of global teams (e.g. De Vries, 1996; Hitt, Keats, & Demarie, 1998). Yet, organizations have been slow to adapt to these changes. However, global teams, already present in most organizations, are a powerful vehicle for overcoming these challenges, transcending organizational, national and cultural boundaries, providing flexibility, integration of globally dispersed skills and capabilities, and in the case of global virtual teams – connectivity across geographical and temporal boundaries, to name but a few advantages (Gibbs & Boyraz, 2015). Global teams, whether collocated, virtual or a combination of both, can be seen as catalysts for new forms for organizing, or as organizational forms in themselves, changing our conceptions about organizational boundaries. With this comes the need to change our conceptions about traditional organizations, and develop new ideas about the role of international human resource management in order to reap the benefits of new team-based structures. Team-based structures in organizations are receiving increasing attention of late, for example, the implications of project-based work (cf. Kaplan & Levinthal, 2015), and an emphasis on managing national, cultural and linguistic complexities in leading teams as a mode of global organizing (Zander, Mockaitis, & Butler, 2014). Yet, global teams must be effective in order to surmount the challenges of coordination, interaction across multiple borders and boundaries and managing multiple stakeholder demands (Mäkelä et al., in press). This special issue addresses the important role of global teams in (re)shaping international organizations.

Students as Global Virtual Team Leaders: A Model for Enquiry-Based Experiential Learning

Deb Gilbertson,1 a visionary educator in New Zealand, has a mission to use the classroom and beyond to create a better world. With this in mind, the Global Enterprise Experience competition has been organized for 11 consecutive years with the goal of enabling students to learn through experiencing what it means to be part of a global team. The basic idea is simple. If students work together across cultures, time zones, worldviews and levels of wealth and poverty, they will develop management skills and a mindset for making a difference in the future. Over the years, the Global Enterprise Experience competition has achieved this by bringing together more than 5,000 students from 360 universities in 72 countries. Participants are grouped into globally dispersed teams and during three weeks they together develop a business proposal on a topic chosen by Deb Gilbertson. This topic varies from year to year, but it always addresses a social concern or need, for example ‘The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid’ or ‘proposal for a profitable product or service to foster women’s social and/or economic development’. The team members are encouraged to contribute by drawing on their own capabilities and cultural contexts (for more info, see http://geebiz.org/). For many of the students worldwide, participating in the Global Enterprise Experience competition is a part of a course in international management, cross-cultural management and global leadership or similar. For the students in New Zealand, the competition is part of the course ‘Managing across Cultures’, where we as teachers worked at developing an enquiry-based experiential learning model for the course to enrich and deepen students’ learning.