Cultural dimensions of knowledge-sharing in global virtualteams: an exploratory study
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Abstract
Information technology has inevitably become a facilitator of knowledge sharing among members of global virtual teams. Often members are separated not only geographically but also culturally. Earlier studies have posited that culture can significantly facilitate or hinder knowledge sharing in culturally diverse teams. Greater enlightenment on the cultural effect is a useful contribution to understanding the most effective way of managing knowledge sharing in global virtual teams. However, little effort have been put into dimensioning culture in such a way as to enable comparative and large scale study. This investigation tries to fill this gap by bringing together and examining the few attempts at dimensioning this concept. This review results in the proposing ofcultural dimensions which are grouped into organisational and societal classes. The proposal is in the form a theoretical model which requires further investigation as explained in the paper.
Keywords:global teams, knowledge sharing, virtualteams, culture.
Introduction
Global virtual teams are seen by both multinationals and small organizations as a new form of ‘working together apart’ at a cost effective and flexible way and yet with the ability to cope with the more rapidly changing global environment (cf Lipnack and Stamps, 1997). Biggs (2000) reported that Gartner Group survey estimated that 60% of Global 2000 companies’ professional and management tasks would be done through virtual teams by 2004.
Knowledge sharing in global teams require more than information and communications technology per se. Examples of other crucial elements are trust (Sharratt and Usoro, 2003; Zakaria et al, 2004) and shared understanding or “a collective way of organising relevant knowledge” (Hinds and Weisband, 2003, p 21). Theknowledgeis not sharedpassively but, according to Zakaria et al (2004) it “is filteredthrough cultural lenses, whether we are aware of such filters or not” (p16).
While current research recognizes the importance of culture in knowledge sharing, little has been done to dimension this variable in such as way as to enable large-scale comparative studies. This paper is an exploratory study that aims to fill this gap. The rest of the paper is organised into (a) organisational culture, (b) societal culture, and (c) a possible theoretical model.
Organisational culture
Studies have recognised organisational culture as a potential major barrier to success (Tuggle, 2000). Some, such as McDermott and O’Dell (2001, pp 76-85) have also recommended solutions. The problemwith these studies, however, is that it is difficult to determine from them the aspects of organisational culture which, in the first place, would create a barrier[1] to knowledge sharing, especially with global virtual teams. This problem can only be addressed by first developing a sound dimensioning of culture as it affects knowledge sharing in global virtual teams.
Dimensions of organisational culture can be broadly classified as (a) value-based and (b) work-practice based. Most studies, considered inadequate by Reigle and Westbrook (2000) in their measures for organizational culture, are value-based, multilevel[2], usually small scale and non-comparative (Van den Berg and Wilderom, 2004).
That several studies have demonstrated significant correlation between organisational culture and employee behaviour and attitudes (Kreittner and Kinicki, 2002, p 70) is of great research interest because it spares us the necessity to peel through the layers of culture to get embedded values which experts in culture, anyway, say lie beneath the threshold of our conscious awareness (Hall, 1976b). In agreement with this view, Hofstede (2003) viewed culture as a construct and therefore is “not directly accessible to observation but inferable from … behaviours and useful in predicting other … behaviour” (p 69). Though Park et al (2004, p 108) acknowledge the value-based approach to a deep study of culture, they also argue that if the goal of a study is to obtain a global perception of an organisation’s culture, a questionnaire using a practice-based approach would be adequate. Thus, for their study, theydimensioned organisational culture into (a) trust, (b) sharing information freely, and (c) working closely with others or developing friends at work. The four items they used were actually from 54 items developed by Block (1978) and later decreased to 44 items by Harper (2000).
The 44 attributes, though useful, are not only too many as a basic dimension of a researchable concept but apparently are also overlapping. For example “confront conflict directly” may overlap with “decisiveness”. One approach to using the list is to handpick some attributes as done by Park et al (2004). Perhaps a better approach is to use cluster and factor analysis to endeavour to group and trim these attributes so that we can distillthe core dimensions of organisational culture. Meanwhile, let us investigate how other recent researchers dimension organisational culture.
Based on Kostova’s (1999) definition, Van den Berg and Wilderom (2004) have defined organisational culture in terms of work practices (rather than values). They justify their adoption of work practices using Hofstede’s (2001, p 394) research which demonstrated that organisations showed more differences in work practices than in values. From analyzing earlier dimensions of organisational culture (Hofstede et al, 1990; O’Reilly et al, 1991; Gordon and DiTomaso, 1992; Denison and Mishra, 1995;Van Muijen et al, 1999), Van den Berg and Wilderom (2004) have derived four dimensions,viz: (a) autonomy, (b) external orientation, (c) inter-departmental coordination, (d) human resource orientation, and (e) improvement orientation.
The known most recent researchers who have worked on dimensioning organisational culture from work-practice approach are Park et al (2004) and Van den Berg and Wilderom (2004) whose studies have been presented. If we put their dimensions together, we have the eight dimensions shown in Table 1.
Table 1 – Dimensions of organisational culture
Inter-departmental coordination / Human resource orientationTrust / Autonomy
External orientation / Sharing information freely
Improvement orientation / Working closely with others
Societal culture
Edward Hall (1976a) proposed that the difference in communication among different societies lies in their context. ‘High context’ societies depend more on the external stimuli for behavioural cueswhereas those in ‘low context’ cultures are more direct and explicit in their communication.
Another academic who has contributed to the dimension of societal culture is Hofstede (1980) with his four classifications: (a) power distance; (b) uncertainty avoidance; (c) individualism versus collectivism; and (d) career success versus quality of life[3]. Hofstede’s dimension appears to be the most widely cited and used in research. In 1991 Hofstede added a 5th dimension – long-term orientation to short-term orientation (to life).
Trompenaars (1993) distributed questionnaires to over 15,000 managers from 28 countries over ten years. Using responses from 500 managers from 23 countries, he produced cultural dimensions, five of which Hoecklin (1995) has found relevant to business areas, viz:
a)Universalism versus particularism: general rules versus exceptions.
b)Individualism versus communitarianism: personal versus group goals.
c)Neutral versus affective relationships: emotional orientation in relationships.
d)Specificity versus diffuseness: degree of detail preferred.
e)Inner direction versus outer direction: location of goodness and therefore direction.
As far as our study context is concerned, the fifth dimension appears to be eclipsed by the second. If a member of a culture considers virtue to dwell outside herself, she would be prone to submit to group goals, and vice versa.
The sixth dimension from Trompenaars’ work is sequential timing versus synchronous timing: degree to which time overlaps (Hampden-Turner and Trampenaars, 2000). To be useful in the context of our study, this dimension needs to be reframed to the degree of time keeping. Already, the different time-zone locations of global team members argue against synchronizing of communication and tasks. Timeliness can be worsened if some team members exhibit a mayiana(till tomorrow) approach which is common in some cultures.
Individualism versus communitarianism coincides with Hofstede’s (1980) individualism versus collectivism.
Hampden-Turner and Trampenaars (2000) consider each dimension as a dilemma and argue that, except at the extremes, both parts of the dilemma are virtuous rather than vicious. It would be interesting to find out, from future studies, whether this is the case with knowledge sharing among global virtual teams.
An attempt to amalgamate the three major works on dimensioning societal culture, taking into consideration the arguments in this paper, is shown in Table 2.
Table 2 – Dimensions of societal culture
Uncertainty avoidance / Individualism versus collectivismPower distance / Universalism versus particularism
High context / Career success versus quality of life
Low context / Neutral versus affective relationship
Degree of time keeping / Specificity versus diffuseness
Summary and area for further studies
Researchers have dimensionedculture from both organisational and societal viewpoints. Research on organisational culture is little and non-comparable because most of them take a value perspective. While these research efforts and techniques are worthwhile, this paper has presented dimensions based on work-practice, with the argument that (a) this approach will enable wide-scale study, (b) research has established strong links between the value and the work-based perspectives, (c) it enables quantitative analysis, and (d) more recent studies are using this approach. This paper has endeavoured to identify these recent studies which have benefited from earlier studies which attempted to dimension culture. An attempt has been made to amalgamate the dimensions to form a set of organisational and a set of social dimensions (see Tables 2 and 3).
Taken from a top level, a theoretical model can be summarized as in Figure that expresses knowledge-sharing in global virtual teams to be a function of organisational and societal cultural factors. At this level, two major hypotheses could be formulated, viz:
H1:There is a high positive relationship between organisational culture and knowledge sharing in global virtual teams.
H2:There is a high positive relationship between societal culture and knowledge sharing in global virtual teams.
Each of the sub-dimensions in Tables 2 and 3 could be turned into a hypothesis that relates the sub-dimension with knowledge sharing in global virtual teams. For instance, we could hypothesize that high context is negatively related to knowledge sharing in global virtual teams. A supporting argument could be that most of the background information would be tacit which would call to question the success of persuading and enabling team members to express the information in their virtual communication. The formation of hypotheses with supportive arguments is left for future work.
Figure – Theoretical model
Future work would also operationalise the dimensions, conduct empirical study, and draw conclusions that establish the degree and direction of influence of these factors on knowledge sharing in global virtual teams. The investigation of the sub-dimensions will enable the determination of their relative impact. Attempt should also be made to analyse and group Harper’s basket of dimensions for possible inclusion into the theoretical model presented by this paper. This brief paper has not answered all the questions but has proposed a theoretical framework with pointers for future investigation.
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[1]It has to be acknowledged though that organisational culture has the potential of acting not only as a barrier but also as motivation to high performance and initiative (Blake and Mouton, 1969, 1985).
[2] History is one of the levels.
[3]Hofstede initially labelled this masculinity versus femininity.