Cultural Diversity, Conflict and Team Facilitation in Global Virtual Teams - a research model

Virtual teams are work groups linked together via computer and communication technologies. Since virtual teams are often spread over geographic and organizational boundaries, team diversity makes them susceptible to greater levels of conflict than face-to-face teams. This paper proposes a research model to understand the influence of cultural diversity on conflict in virtual teams, which in turn impacts team performance. While diversity of the team may augment the task-related conflict in virtual teams, anonymous interaction and low level of social presence inherent to group support systems (GSS) based meetings, may help reduce levels of affective conflict. Besides the low richness of the communication medium, other factors that affect intra-group conflict and/or group performance are temporal separation of the team members and the process and content facilitation mechanisms employed in the teamwork. We propose moderating effects of these factors and present a detailed theoretical model of intragroup conflict in GSS based virtual teams. Implications of the study, for team managers in particular and organizations in general are indicated. The limitations and possible extensions of the model are also discussed.