Bridging Cultural Discontinuities in Global Virtual Teams: Role of Cultural Intelligence

Prior research on global virtual teams (GVTs) identifies ‘cultural discontinuity’ as a salient boundary that needs to be bridged for better performance. Grounding the study in organizational discontinuity theory (ODT), we propose cultural intelligence (CQ) as one of the modalities through which cultural discontinuities in GVTs could possibly be bridged. Situating the discussion, in transactional model of stress and coping (TMSC), we develop a CQ nomological network describing the inter-relationships and mechanisms through which different CQ dimensions influence GVT performance. Further, leveraging compensatory adaptation theory (CAT) we hypothesize the significant role of structural adaptation (role structure adaptation), in addition to behavioral adaptation (CQ behavior), in the proposed CQ framework for the GVT context. The theorized model is tested via data collected through a two-wave survey design comprising 128 GVT members in 32 teams. Study provides support to the extended CQ nomological network and makes several valuable theoretical and practical contributions.