Effect of Cultural Diversity
on Faultline Propagation in
Virtual Teams
Prepared by –
Ved Gawande (201972169)
Table of Contents
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 2
Keywords................................................................................................................................................. 2
Understanding Culture............................................................................................................................ 3
What are Global Teams? ......................................................................................................................... 4
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 4
Advantages of Cultural Diversity in Global Teams .............................................................................. 4
Disadvantages of Cultural Diversity in Global Teams ......................................................................... 5
Importance of Global New Product Development Teams .................................................................. 5
Examples of Global New Product Development Team Working .................................................... 6
Challenges Faced by Global Teams ......................................................................................................... 7
Collaboration and Knowledge Transfer in Global Teams.................................................................... 7
Depth of Relationships .................................................................................................................... 7
Trust ................................................................................................................................................ 8
Shared Understanding and/or Shared Context .............................................................................. 9
Faultline Theory .................................................................................................................................... 10
Faultline Intensification .................................................................................................................... 10
Effects of Faultline Intensification ................................................................................................ 10
Propositions for Faultline Mitigation ................................................................................................ 12
Issues Arising while Implementation of Proposed Solutions ........................................................ 12
Conclusion & Further Research ............................................................................................................ 14
References ............................................................................................................................................ 15
1
Abstract
In this report we take a look at problems arising due to presence of cultural diversity in globally
distributed or virtual teams*. Firstly, we try and understand what culture and the Iceberg theory of
culture is. Then this report takes a brief overview of what are globally distributed teams and their
characteristics and what are the pros and cons of having a culturally varied team. Then we understand
the importance of collaboration and knowledge transfer for efficient working and favourable
outcomes of virtual teams.
Following that we look at the factors which influence the degree of virtual collaborations, namely
trust, depth of relationships and lack of shared understanding and/or context. Subsequently we look
at how faultline are developed in the cross-cultural teams and what are the causes for propagation of
those faultlines. The effect of propagation of faultlines also has been discussed in the succeeding
sections.
Lastly some solutions are suggested for faultline mitigation such as self-disclosure and deployment of
proper communication practices. The consequences of excessive self-disclosure are also discussed in
the last section. A gap has been identified in the existing knowledge of management of global teams
in terms of optimum amount of self-disclosure. This has been suggested as the topic for further
research.
This report draws comparisons in parallel with a global design team comprising of students from 3
different universities across Europe of which the author was a part of. The team was supposed to
develop a new fish feeder for a market and target audience of choice which could resolve the
shortcoming of current products in the market. For easy differentiation, the practical experiences of
the author have been written in italics style.
Keywords
Culture, Cultural Diversity, Faultline, Self-Disclosure, Virtual Teams
The Turnitin score for this report is very high although no literature was copied by the author. All the
research was conducted by himself and sufficient evidence can be provided to validate the claims.
The plagiarism report is saying that the content is copied from a student paper, but the only copy of
the paper is with the author. It would be appreciated if the author is asked to prove that the
contribution is his own and not of someone else.
*It should be noted that in this report terms such as virtual teams, globally distributed teams, global
teams and distributed teams are used interchangeably and mean the same thing.
2
Understanding Culture
Understanding the culture of people who we work with is an important part of our professional
development process. The journey towards achieving cultural competency with our colleagues not
only requires the ability to understand and respect their culture but also willingness to learn from the
experiences and act accordingly (Hanley, 1999). But it is difficult to understand a different culture in a
first go. Edward T. Hall in his 1976 book Beyond Culture proposed the Culture Iceberg Theory and
Model. This is one of the first and most widely referred to model while approaching cultural
competencies (Dupuis, 2007). This model highlights the fact that just as in an iceberg only 30% of the
iceberg is visible to the naked eye and the 70% which is under water is not visible to the eye, there are
only a limited number of factors which combine to form the primarily in awareness about a particular
culture which is known and visible to the other people. But underlying those factors is a web of
primarily out of awareness factors which constitute of different societal practices and parameters,
interpersonal relationships and notions about different fundamental things like time, space, etc. which
acts as a foundation and influences the portrayals of primarily in awareness factors (Dupuis, 2007)
(Hall, 1977). The primarily in awareness factors can be further broken down into two sections namely
surface culture and folk culture. These comprise of language, art, dance, literature, sports, etc. The
primarily out of awareness factors are the invisible and not so obvious thing about a particular culture
such as historical implications, conventional practices in child raising, education, communication, etc,
preferences to individualism, collaboration and cooperation with strangers, roles in relation to status
by age, gender, class, display of emotions and concept of faith, etc (Hanley, 1999). As we can see that
the invisible part is quite complex and directly influences the visible part of the culture.
Graph 1 - Hofstede's cultural dimensions for the team
As it has been mentioned earlier this paper will be taking real life practical experiences from a global
team working experience of designing a fish feeder. This group comprised of people from different
cultures backgrounds such as Indian, Canadian, French, Finnish, Maltese and British. As mentioned in
the iceberg theory, only visible traits were language and accent. Rest other factors influencing the
visible traits such as conventional preferences to group behaviours or educational implications and
communication were much harder to understand especially for Indians who were the only nonCaucasian people in the group. Rest all were at least having some common grounds such as
individualist tendency rather than collectivist and ease of working in a fairly flat structure as opposed
to Indians who were used to working in moderately hierarchical structure. These same results were
3
elaborated by the comparison of Hofstede's cultural dimensions that outlined different factors
affecting cross cultural communication. It can be seen that the individualism index of Indians is the
lowest where as strength of social hierarchy is the highest in the group.
This enabled the group to gain a deeper insight into some preferences of different cultures and use
these preferences to their advantage such as assigning a team having strong collectivist tendency for
knowledge transfer intensive tasks such as Computer Aided Drawing (CAD) and then the team will
delegate the tasks to people who prefer individualism as and when required. This allowed the team to
take advantage of individualistic as well collectivistic traits of the group members.
What are Global Teams?
Introduction
It is a widely accepted notion that companies which have got smooth co functioning teams have a
sustainable competitive advantage in today’s market (Smith, 2007). The rise of information
technologies in the last decade of the 20th century gave rise to fierce competition amongst consumer
electronics manufacturers to sell the best products at the lowest prices. Also, the unrecognised skilled
work force in emerging countries was not being utilised by them (Kirkman, Gibson and Shapiro, 2001).
To counter this problem a lot of tech firms started meeting the talent at its origin and forming teams
with members distributed around the globe. This allowed them to drive the changes in the market in
a more efficient manner and meet the customer demands (Ebrahim, Ahmed and Taha, 2009). The
swift developments in the field of virtual communication platforms led to more and more MNC’s
shifting towards virtual teams and make the maximum use of the talent pool available around the
world (Killingsworth, Xue and Liu, 2016). A few similar features which are common across almost all
virtual teams are as follows –
•
•
•
•
•
•
Team members having different working timings and working across geographical boundaries.
The team is collectively trying to achieve a single goal.
Team working is facilitated by communication and data sharing platforms and technology
mediation is a major influencer on outcomes.
Mostly, teams are project based and across borders and cultures collaboration is involved.
The team comprises of few members yet all of them are particular field experts.
Team members may collaborate across organizational borders (Bal and Teo, 2000).
Virtual teams can be defined as “small temporary groups of geographically, organizationally and/or
time dispersed knowledge workers who coordinate their work predominantly with electronic
information and communication technologies in order to accomplish on e or more organization tasks
(Ebrahim, Ahmed and Taha, 2009).”
Advantages of Cultural Diversity in Global Teams
Some of the major advantages of virtual teams are as follows –
•
•
The team can benefit from different perspectives, attitudes and educational outcomes
embedded in different cultures (Ebrahim, 2015) (Bergiel, Bergiel and Balsmeier, 2008).
Expertise in local markers can help global new product development teams make a product
apt for the new market. (Ebrahim, Ahmed and Taha, 2009).
4
Figure 1 - Characteristics of globally distributed teams
•
Ability to unite experts from different cultures on various aspects which comprise the project
with ease (Ebrahim, Ahmed and Taha, 2009).
Disadvantages of Cultural Diversity in Global Teams
Some of the disadvantages of virtual teams are as follows –
•
•
•
Collaboration and knowledge transfer based on trust is an essential factor for the global teams
to work effectively. And development of trust on basis of virtual cross cultural meetings is a
tough task (Bergiel, Bergiel and Balsmeier, 2008).
The teams are very vulnerable to inability to trust a team member, constant struggles to
assume the leadership role within the team, communication breakdowns and conflicts
(Ebrahim, Ahmed and Taha, 2009).
Conflicts arising due to perceived faultlines can lead to sub groups within the team. Now
having subgroups is a good thing for achieving a short goal but it will affect the cohesive
working environment expected in the team to achieve the final goal. It is difficult to resolve
conflicts amongst the team members without human intervention and just with technology
mediation (Chiu and Staples, 2013).
Importance of Global New Product Development Teams
For an organization to stay viable in a market, it is of supreme importance that the organization gauges
the shifts in customer demands and develops new products accordingly and gets them into the market
before their competitors can do it. This is the reason New Product Development (NPD) teams have
come into existence and have been a crucial factor in a company’s success (Owens, 2004). Companies
such as IBM, Toshiba, Siemens, Intel, AT&T, Kodak, etc realised that products cannot be globally same,
and they need to design products keeping the regional markets in mind. Hence they started forming
Global New Product Development Teams (GNPT) across the world in order to cater the regional
markets in a better and an efficient manner (Sivakumar and Nakata, 2003). Formation of globally
distributed NPD teams is necessary because the companies need to expand their market perspective,
fill in the skill gaps which that are lacking and enter new markets. The use of virtual teams in new
product development activities is increasing at an alarming rate because it will help organizations gain
substantial competitive advantage in the present times as well as in the future (Ebrahim, Ahmed and
5
Taha, 2009). It is not that virtual teams are limited only to big MNC’s who have got sophisticated
technology and the financial capital to spend on management of globally distributed teams. Small and
Medium Enterprises (SME) also can greatly benefit from the inexpensive transfer of knowledge due
to advancement in technology and potential for rapid knowledge growth in virtual teams (Ale Ebrahim,
Mohammed Shahadat and Taha, 2009).
Examples of Global New Product Development Team Working
In a case study done by Andrew May and Chris Carter on Virtual Teams in European Automobile
Industry has shown that efficient communication and collaboration practices amongst the team
engineers in their GNPT’s and their on-site suppliers resulted in better quality products with lower
costs of production and lesser times to market as compared to their conventional team working
approaches (May and Carter, 2001). The flagship mouse developed by Logitech is one more example
of successful working of virtual teams. The idea was conceived in the Fremont, California headquarters
of the company, the mechanical and product design was done by the team based in Ireland, the
electrical component layout design was made by the ream in Switzerland, software integration was
done in USA, tooling and manufacturing was done by third party suppliers based in Taiwan and China
and eventually the quality assurance, marketing and product launch was done by the team based in
the headquarters (Bergiel, Bergiel and Balsmeier, 2008).
Designing a new fish feeder is similar to a new product development activity although the team was
not supposed to design something which does not exist in the present market but designing a
completely revamped version of a current fish feeder with more efficient food delivery mechanism,
manual override over electrical controls and with a visually pleasing appearance. Also, a special
challenge before the team was inexperience of working in globally distributed design teams. No
member had a prior experience of working in such a setting and navigating through the initial weeks
was a tough task because all the factors affecting collaboration and knowledge transfer were going to
shape in the first few weeks of interactions.
But the group members identified importance knowledge transfer early on and despite lack of
standardized knowledge sharing platforms such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software,
efforts were taken to share the information on cloud-based systems and make the best use of resources
available.
6
Challenges Faced by Global Teams
Globally distributed teams are facing numerous challenges and cultural diversity and cross-cultural
management is one of the major challenges. It is natural that in globally distributed teams there is
going to be national and professional cultural diversity. Many studies have revealed that cultural
diversity bring innovative thinking and creative approaches into problem solving but at the same time
proper management of divergent perspectives and ensuring that efficient collaboration and
knowledge sharing practices are being employed in the team is equally important for successful
achievement of the team goals (Huang and Trauth, 2007).
Collaboration and Knowledge Transfer in Global Teams
A purposeful process which arises due to a need or a desire to solve an existing problem, discover
something missing or create something new involving between different inter-related parties is known
as collaboration. It involves owning up the jointly made interparty decisions and taking collective
responsibility of the outcomes (Liedtka, Bragg and Hegarty, 1996). It has widely been accepted that
the team collaborating effectively are the ones which perform better in terms of innovative solutions,
improved productivity and work satisfaction (Peters and Manz, 2007). One of the most important
aspects of efficient collaboration is ensuring there is a robust and efficient mechanism to enable
knowledge transfer form one or set of individuals to other individual or set of individuals (Sarker et
al., 2005). New product development teams are often seen as the most knowledge transfer intensive
virtual teams because in NPD’s it is important to know the direction in which the overall functioning
of the team is proceeding. In a cross functional NPD project where the experts and skilled workers
may be disintegrated, complete knowledge sharing is important for the success of the team (Lawson
et al., 2009). Hence in this report we will be looking at the effect which cultural diversity has on
efficient collaboration and knowledge transfer in globally distributed design teams. Linda M. Peters
and Charles C. Manz identified 3 key points which were interrelated and had a direct relationship with
the degree of effective virtual collaboration as –
•
•
•
Depth of Relationships
Trust
Shared Understanding and/or Shared Context (Peters and Manz, 2007).
Depth of Relationships
Depth of relationships refers to the feeling of familiarity amongst the team members. The lack of face
to face relationships in virtual teams give the team members a feeling of isolation. Technology
mediated virtual meetings replace the traditional approach of face to face meetings as a primary way
of getting to know each other (Peters and Manz, 2007) (Hinds and Bailey, 2003). But studies have
shown that face to face communication is a better way to build relationships and gain ones trust as
compared to computer mediated communication (Maznevski and Chudoba, 2000).Team members
with social connections amongst themselves are known to have positive impact on the team. It has
been observed that people from similar cultures bonded very easily irrespective of the distance
between them (Ashforth and Mael, 1989). Although it has been accepted across the corporations that
social connections are a vital part of knowledge sharing process, very less research has been done in
this field (Cummings, 2001) (Kauppila, Rajala and Jyrämä, 2011).
The team bonded really well due to a fact that all were educated beforehand by their professors on
what to expect in a globally distributed team and how to make the most of such an opportunity. Also,
a factor which influenced good relationships amongst team members was the absence of
competitiveness amongst them. In professional settings, there is a certain level of competitiveness
amongst team members which inhibits the ability of their relationships to have a firm foundation.
7
But in this case the students knew that all of them were going to get equal marks and the group mark
was going to be the maximum mark that they could get. Hence despite lack of face to face interactions,
the group bonded pretty well and had cordial relationships with everyone.
It was observed that in the team barring 2 Indians who bonded well, the French and Canadian students
bonded well too. This could be due to the fact that Canada has got French culture deeply rooted in
their culture and French influence the Canadians in a lot of ways. This was also evident from the fact
that when tasks were being distributed amongst team members, they preferred related tasks and
always ended up with favourable outcomes.
Figure 2 - Factors affecting virtual collaboration
Trust
The most widely accepted definition of trust is “Trust is a psychological state comprising the intention
to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviours of another
(Rousseau et al., 1998)”. Trust has been portrayed as a key aspect underlying efficient distributed
team working (Rutkowski et al., 2002). It is important that the information being relayed is consumed
in an appropriate manner as well. For this to happen, it is imperative that the team members trust
each other and view others as a credible source of information (Killingsworth, Xue and Liu, 2016).
Misuse of information can be a result of lack of trust as well. There are claims that when the team
members have no trust in the source of information, there is a possibility that it will be confronted
and counterattacked limiting the degree of knowledge transfer (Sarker et al., 2005). Evolvement of
trusted feeling is tough for virtual team members give limited working time and difficulty in taking
body language cues due to virtual nature of communication. But displaying willingness to part with
their knowledge, group members show the fact that they are ready to work as a part of a bigger team
and display that they can be relied upon as a team player (Alsharo, Gregg and Ramirez, 2017). Thus,
we can say that knowledge sharing, and trust are two sides of a same coin and one act of either can
increase the other.
Due to good understanding and cordial relationships between the team members building initial trust
was easy. The first meeting where everyone was present except one, introduced themselves and told
about a thing which they felt that captured the essence of their nationalities and culture. This enabled
everyone to get to know what the particular group member likes and how he perceives ideas and
concepts from different parts of the world. Also, the person who joined the group meetings only in the
8
4th week quickly established himself as a team player by staying aligned with the team activities
through meeting minutes showing intent to do all work bestowed upon him by the team and sharing
information quickly and efficiently. This created a synergy in the team and gave confidence to the
members that they can rely on each other to get the things done.
Shared Understanding and/or Shared Context
Shared understanding refers to not only understanding the common goal the team is trying to achieve
but also be aligned with the strategy the team is trying to utilize the common goal (Peters and Manz,
2007). It also involves understanding the expertise each team member posses and its utilization in
order to achieve the common goal (Liedtka, Bragg and Hegarty, 1996). Shared context refers to the
ability of the team to consume and recall the information relayed in the same way. But there can be
cases of lack of shared context due to differences in social settings, cultures, geographical locations,
environments and technologies (Hinds and Bailey, 2003). The lack of shared context can be attributed
to time difference between action by one team member and response from team leader is termed as
temporal decoupling (Friesl and Silberzahn, 2012). This struggle in creating a shared temporal rhythm
makes co-ordination in distributed design teams tough as the members of the team have a feeling of
being let down by their colleagues on a consistent basis and leaves the team out of sync with their
goal (Hinds and Bailey, 2003).
Lack of shared context was rarely encountered in the team because the distribution of assignments
was done in such a way that information transfer intensive tasks were assigned to co-located team
members such as the Computer Aided Drawing (CAD) was done by students from University of
Strathclyde, whereas material selection and costing analysis was done by University of Malta students.
And the independent part of electrical component’s selection and costing was done by University of
Turku student. This enabled fast and efficient communication amongst concerned team members
which negated the lack of experience amongst team members. This should not be confused with the
team taking an easy way out of the technological mediation challenges because this can be attributed
to good engineering management skills and resorting to simple yet efficient solutions in order to
achieve the common goals. Also, the habit of team members to elaborate their findings and
suggestions to a great extent made it easier for others consuming the information to understand the
thought process of the author. This enabled the team member using the information in succeeding
tasks to accurately analyse it and make sure it is being used in the right place and in right manner.
9
Faultline Theory
Lau and Murnighan proposed a theory which shed light on the complex relationship of presence of
cultural diversity and its effects on overall team performance. This is known as the faultline theory. It
states that numerous small struggles can accumulate to form a larger issue which divides the team
into smaller groups around that hypothetical line and this increases the favouritism in the group.
Group faultlines are “hypothetical dividing lines that may split a group into subgroups based on one
or more attributes” (Lau and Murnighan, 1998). For example, let us consider 2 teams with 4 members
each. First team has 2 Latin accountants and 2 British doctors, and the second team has one Latin
accountant and doctor each and one British accountant and doctor each. Then the first group will have
more dominant faultlines than the second group due to presence of unvaried sub groups rather than
composite subgroups, either on the basis of ethnicities or professions.
Faultline Intensification
In a paper by Yehuda Baruch and Merce Mach, it has been observed that there are high chances of
divergent approaches due to differences in values, attitudes and beliefs. This can result in favourable
attitude towards certain people and an unfamiliar behaviour with others. This will result in
development of faultlines in the group and decreasing the levels of trust to limit the knowledge
transfer activities (Mach and Baruch, 2015).
One more aspect which drives faultlines amongst the team members is use of vernacular languages
by people belonging to same cultures instead of language which can be understood by the whole
group. This can result in the other group members feeling left out of the conversation and this will
reduce their ability to trust those team members. This will also result in lack of shared context for
team members as they will feel that they are missing out on some important information. This will
mitigate the faultlines further and harm the synergy developed in the group (Brad Crisp and Jarvenpaa,
2013).
In the team, Indian students sometimes conversed in their mother tongue due to limited knowledge
grasping capacity of one particular Indian student. This resulted in that person asking for explanation
to their Indian counterpart in mother tongue. Although they clarified with the other team members
what they were talking about, there was some amount of dissent in the team member’s voices. This
was quickly gauged by the Indians and from further on they avoided talks in their native language
during meetings and group working sessions.
Effects of Faultline Intensification
It has been observed that collective levels of team trust have a significant impact on the levels of
individual contribution in the team (Killingsworth, Xue and Liu, 2016). The effect of faultlines on team
trust has widely been studied. In a study carried out by Yehuda Baruch and Merce Mach, they have
hypothesized that presence of strong faultlines in the group results in lower team trust levels and this
will not promote efficient knowledge transfer. This is because the presence of sub groups in the team
will influence each team member to choose his or her close acquaintances and harbour a general
dissent towards others. This is going to stop them form having good relationships with those team
members and be less familiar with them as compared to others (Mach and Baruch, 2015). Due to this
reason they will not be able to build a baseline level of trust required for initial knowledge transfer
activities. Hence it is safe to assume that knowledge transfer and trust go hand in hand and a little bit
of either can go a long way in enhancing the other.
10
Figure 3 - Faultline intensification and its effects on virtual collaboration
11
Propositions for Faultline Mitigation
An efficient method to build swift trust is self-disclosure. It has been observed that members who
indulge in self-disclosure activity gain trust and leave a positive image in the listeners mind. During
preliminary stages of the project self-disclosure sessions can result in increased depth of relationships
and promotion of informal interactions which can help the team members create a trustful
environment in the team (Chiu and Staples, 2013). A study has concluded that initial self-disclosure
sessions have helped in gaining trust of team members and establish good communication practices
within the groups (Coppola, Hiltz and Rotter, 2004). Recently a paper has summarized that
establishment of initial trust can drive the performance of teams by elevating their confidence in their
team members and strengthening the ability to put trust in their team members (Brad Crisp and
Jarvenpaa, 2013). Norm of reciprocity is a social norm where if someone does something for you then
you feel obligated to return the favour. This is also known as the rule of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960).
This is what drives the process of self-disclosure amongst the team members. Once someone opens
about themselves to you, you feel obligated to disclose some of your experiences with them as well.
Issues Arising while Implementation of Proposed Solutions
It is a fact worth noting that due to surplus self-disclosing amongst team members previously dormant
issues or faultlines might develop into dominant faultlines(Chiu and Staples, 2013) (Lau and
Murnighan, 1998). This means that when someone reveals an extra intimate detail which is not
required at that point of time, might cause the other person to form a strong judgment about the
discloser. If such a thing happens in team bonding sessions, then the whole team is privy to the views
and this might lead to division of team along the lines of an issue. Topics which lead to such divisions
are generally socially or internationally relevant topics such as international politics, foreign policies
or sports.
While self-disclosing, some people who tend to share things easily tend to disclose things which are
too personal for that stage of relationship. According to norm of reciprocity, if someone shares
something deeply personal then the other person feels obligated to share an equally intimate or
personal experience which may be against their wishes at that point of time. This tends to make things
awkward between the two involved members or sometimes the whole team partaking the session
and it could make them uncomfortable while self-disclosure sessions. This will have a conflicting effect
on generation of trust between them and will deter them from engaging in self-disclosure in future.
12
Figure 4 - Solutions to prevent faultline intensification and issues arising during deployment of those solutions
13
Conclusion & Further Research
In this report we have seen the influence which cultural diversity has on degree of virtual collaboration
by stimulating the 3 key driving factors namely trust, depth of relationships and lack of shared
understanding/context by the means of faultline generation, intensification and variances in
communication practices.
Firstly, we see the importance of GNPT’s and the importance of knowledge transfer and collaboration
in them. Then we summarise the importance of the three factors on the degree of virtual
collaboration. Then report proceeds to explain how the faultlines are intensified by excessive selfdisclosure during initial team meetings and what detrimental effects it has on initial phase of trust
generation and building and absence of proper communication practices leading to lack of shared
context amongst team members.
Managerial intervention is an important thing when people are self-disclosing in team meeting. Those
sessions should be regulated by team leaders who are able to gauge the discomfort or uneasiness
amongst the team members regarding a particular topic. Good knowledge of socio-political current
affairs will go a long way in helping the managers in this aspect. Also, some baseline rules must be set
by the team leader on communication practices such as very limited or no use of any other language
than the group language. Use of region-specific languages can be permitted in a sub group meeting if
all the participants of the meeting are comfortable with it. Otherwise there have to be strict
communication regulations which all the team members need to follow.
Although a lot of research has been done on effects of self-disclosure and benefits of self-disclosure
in development of early trust amongst team members very less research has been done on what is
the optimum amount of self-disclosure which would neither mitigate the existing faultlines or create
new ones nor make people hearing the personal details feel indebted with the disclose. This is the gap
which has been identified by this paper in the current knowledge on management of cultural diversity
in virtual teams and can be a topic for further research.
14
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