IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ugitxx/v8y2005i2p46-60.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bridging Cultural Diversity through E-mail

Author

Listed:
  • Pnina Shachaf

Abstract

The implementation of global virtual teams presents modern organizations with significant challenges, such as a multicultural workforce and the use of information and communication technology. Cultural diversity increases teamwork complexity and may weaken a team's effectiveness and jeopardize its viability. Selection and implementation of appropriate information technology may facilitate group processes and overcome potential barriers created by team heterogeneity. This study illustrates how e-mail mitigates intercultural miscommunication. Interviews with 41 global virtual team members in nine countries, who were employed by a multinational corporation, were transcribed and analyzed. The use of e-mail improves language accuracy, mitigates intercultural miscommunication resulting from verbal differences among team members, and eliminates nonverbal differences. Only future studies can determine the extent of this mitigation.

Suggested Citation

  • Pnina Shachaf, 2005. "Bridging Cultural Diversity through E-mail," Journal of Global Information Technology Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 46-60, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ugitxx:v:8:y:2005:i:2:p:46-60
    DOI: 10.1080/1097198X.2005.10856396
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1097198X.2005.10856396
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/1097198X.2005.10856396?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nader Ale Ebrahim & Shamsuddin Ahmed & Zahari Taha, 2010. "SMEs; Virtual Research and Development (R&D) Teams and New Product Development: A Literature Review," Post-Print hal-00593362, HAL.
    2. Nader Ale Ebrahim & Shamsuddin Ahmed & Zahari Taha, 2009. "Virtual R & D teams in small and medium enterprises: A literature review," Post-Print hal-00593358, HAL.
    3. Ale Ebrahim, Nader & Ahmed, Shamsuddin & Taha, Zahari, 2009. "Virtual Teams for New Product Development – An Innovative Experience for R&D Engineers," MPRA Paper 27034, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jul 2009.
    4. Shafia, Mohammad Ali & Ale Ebrahim, Nader & Ahmed, Shamsuddin & Taha, Zahari, 2009. "Consideration of the virtual team work and disabled citizens, as promising opportunity providers for the e government infrastructure's formation," MPRA Paper 27265, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 Apr 2009.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ugitxx:v:8:y:2005:i:2:p:46-60. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ugit .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.