ABSTRACT

A key challenge facing global teams lies in overcoming status differences in order to elicit participation and input from all members. This study extends prior research – which has focused largely on individual-level factors such as language, culture, and location that create status differences that fracture teams and reduce participation – by examining members’ underlying orientations to participation, team practices that encourage these, and their impacts on global team effectiveness. We draw on a rich multilevel, mixed-method data set consisting of 45 in-depth interviews and a comprehensive analysis of conference calls from 9 global teams in a multinational integrated mining, minerals processing, and manufacturing organization. We identified three orientations to participation (Help, Learn, and Engage). Team-level analysis revealed team practices that encouraged certain orientations to participation to emerge, in particular relationships across sites and input solicitation. Only the Engage orientation was positively associated with overall global team effectiveness. Implications of these findings are discussed.

摘要

全球团队面临的主要挑战在于克服身份差异，以吸引所有成员的参与和投入。这项研究通过检查成员对参与的基本取向，鼓励这些参与的团队实践以及它们对全球团队效力的影响。我们利用丰富的多层次，混合方法的数据集，该数据集由45个深度访谈和跨国综合采矿，矿物加工和制造组织中9个全球团队的电话会议进行了全面分析。我们确定了参与的三个方向（帮助，学习和参与）。团队级别的分析揭示了团队实践，这些实践鼓励出现某些参与取向，特别是跨站点的关系和输入请求。只有敬业度与整体团队整体效能成正比。讨论了这些发现的含义。