Where Did We Turn Wrong? Unpacking the Effects of Culture and Technology on Attributions of Team Performance

Computer-mediated collaboration is becoming an increasingly prevalent form of work ([22]). At the same time, organizations are relying more and more on culturally diverse teams to staff knowledge-intensive projects (e.g., software development, customer service, corporate training,). We conducted a laboratory study examining the role of collaborative technologies and culture on 2-person team members’ attributions of causes for their collaborative performance. Pairs of American, Chinese, and intercultural American-Chinese students collaborated on two map navigation tasks using one of three technologies: video, audio, or IM. As predicted, culture and technology interacted to affect the extent to which members attributed performance to dispositional factors (e.g., personality or mood) vs. situational factors (e.g., the technology or task difficulty). We discuss the implications of our results for cross-cultural collaborative work. Author