Another interesting paper at HICSS:

“Cultural Diversity, Perception of Work Atmosphere, and Task Conflict in Collaboration Technology
Supported Global Virtual Teams: Findings from a Laboratory Experiment”
by Souren Paul and Sumati Ray

The main findings:

  • perceived work atmosphere is positively related to participation in work groups
  • participation increases task conflict which is required for high quality decisions (see pre-existing literature on the value of conflict in teams!)
  • the findings highlight the importance of developing favorable perception of work atmosphere inculturally diverse virtual teams.

Conclusion: perceived work atmosphere is critical in shaping the performance of virtual teams

Here is the paper’s official abstract:

In this paper, we focus on work atmosphere and
conflict in global virtual teams and report the
findings of a laboratory experiment that involved
twenty-seven cross-cultural virtual teams. The
members of the teams used IBM’s Lotus Sametime to
work on decision-making tasks. The findings of the
study reveal that in collaboration technology
supported virtual teams, the cultural heterogeneity of
the team members influences their perceptions of the
work atmosphere, which in its turn influences
members’ participation in group work. We also find
that the number of occurrences of task conflict
related discussion among the group members is
positively related to their participation in group
work. The findings of the study are interesting and
provide motivation for future research on work
atmosphere and conflict in virtual teams.