Blog #2

Grosse, C. U. (2002). Managing communication within virtual intercultural teams. Business Communication Quarterly 65(4), 22-38.

While creating effective virtual teams in online writing courses is a challenge in itself, the fact that in today’s US college classes there are many students with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds further complicates the issue. Instructors have to take into account not only the differences in personality of team members, but also different communication styles and expectations that stem from team members’ varied cultures. Grosse’s article discusses what kinds of complications arise in intercultural teams and how these can be overcome by using different strategies.

In her study, Grosse surveyed 90 graduate business students after they participated in a virtual e-commerce project in teams where at least two team members came from a different culture. To augment these results, Grosse also interviewed international business executives about their practices in intercultural communication. According to the results of her study, Grosse stresses that participants can make the most of these intercultural teams by understanding how diversity can strengthen a team and by showing intercultural sensitivity.

In addition to looking at intercultural issues, Grosse also reviews different methods of communication within the virtual groups. Her findings indicate email to be a very effective way of communication in both groups of respondents, students and executives. In addition, she highlights that initial face-to-face encounters also help in building the personal relationships that aid teamwork and promote appreciation of the rich cultural backgrounds of team members.

While the results in Grosse’s article clearly indicate that building personal relationships are essential in an academic environment for a successful group project, Larbi and Springfield (2004) suggest a different method for virtual teams of technical writers to ensure that remote project teams are effective. Larbi and Springfield propose a four step approach to successful virtual team projects: 1. learning special behaviors, 2 using media appropriately, 3. following a best practice, and 4. being prepared. The best practice they suggest that technical writers follow is being result oriented, because focusing on personalities rather than on the project will take away from the effectiveness of the team, or as Scotto (2001) puts it, team members need to stay focused on the project, not each other.

Larbi and Springfield advocate the establishment of communities of practice that are held together by common purpose and the need for shared knowledge. While this common purpose may be enough to create a community in even multicultural work teams, the question is would the same approach work in educational settings? I believe that communities of inquiry in educational settings have different motivations from work teams and thus being strictly result-oriented as a practice that works in a corporate environment cannot be seamlessly transferred into education. Thus, creating personal relationships in group projects of online classes is even more important with intercultural teams so that team members are able to bring in an appreciation of the diversity represented in their team as a cohesive force.

References
Larbi, N. and Springfield, S. (2004) When no one’s home: Being a writer on remote project teams. Technical Communication 51(1), 102-108.
Scotto, M. (2001). Basic Project Management for Information Systems Professionals. New York: The Scotto Group Inc.