Cultural Diversity in Global Virtual Teams along NPD Processes

Abstract

Globalization, fast-paced environments and the rise of Information Communication Technology (ICT) have led to the apogee of asynchronous and long-distance teamwork. Global Virtual Teams - culturally diverse groups, involving two or more nations and working across temporal and physical distance - have thus become the new mantra for many companies. GVT enable to combine expertise, to access to local resources and to be more creative. But they are not a panacea, GVT face specific challenges, and especially cultural challenges due to their multiculturalism. What if teams' challenges could be reduced by considering their combination of nationalities?

The study was conducted in the context of New Product Development because of the hecticness and cultural aspects of such an environment. ME310, a Global Design Innovation Course led by Stanford University in collaboration with global leading universities, was chosen as a research field for its international multidisciplinary teams that reflect present corporate Global NPD teams. The aim of the study was to identify the challenges faced by that type of teams and to discern a potential cultural specificity among them. The last objective was then to propose a tool to help the teams to reduce their challenges given their nationalities combination.

The results reveal that a slight cultural pattern can be distinguished, meaning that GVT would face a degree of challenges proper to their nationalities combination. The study aimed at explaining this repartition via the cultural dimensions model developed by Hofstede in the early nineties, which have been used widely in management literature. Their interest in a NPD context has been only mentioned but never investigated. The results convey that Hofstede's dimensions do not justify multicultural team dynamics and that nationalities combinations need therefore to be considered individually.

The study suggests a tool to "make teams work", combining the findings regarding project - time - and team - communication and challenges - management. Because of a strong exploratory aspect, the study gives also directions for further research about cultural dimensions for a possible clustering of nationalities combinations.