Impact of Culture on Virtual Teams' Performance

문화적 다양성이 가상조직의 성과에 미치는 영향

  • 박기우 (성균관대학교 경영학부) ;
  • Published : 2009.04.30

Abstract

Since 'virtual teams' are not bounded by geographical dimensions, culture becomes an important determinant of their success. Though cultural diversity provides unique opportunities to build up new ideas, it can also create problems in the midst of individual interactions and eventually result in poor performance. With little research on this topic, this study examines the relationship between culture and virtual teams' performance. An experiment was conducted followed by the survey based on subjects' perceptions on the experiment. The results show that cultural diversity has significant impact on virtual teams' performance through confusion and conflict in virtual teams. This study empirically proves the fact that conflict is one of the most critical antecedents of a virtual team's performance with high R-square values in both experimental and control groups. In addition, this research introduces and empirically tests a new construct, 'confusion' which turns out to be also important in the virtual team's performance research, and the relationships among confusion, conflict and the virtual team's performance. Next, the findings confirm the importance of studying virtual teams' performance research from the cultural perspective.

국경을 넘어선 가상조직이 증가함에 따라 가상조직의 성과향상에 문화적 다양성이 미치는 영향도 점점 중요해지고 있다. 문화적 다양성은 조직 내 창의성을 향상시키기도 하지만, 조직원간의 상호간에 문제를 발생시켜 성과에 부정적 영향을 주기도 한다. 따라서 본 연구는 문화적 다양성이 가상조직의 성과에 미치는 영향을 실증적으로 분석하고자 했다. 실험과 설문을 통해 검증한 본 연구의 결과에 따르면, 문화적 다양성은 조직 내 갈등과 혼돈을 초래해 결과적으로 조직의 성과에 부정적인 영향을 끼치는 것으로 나타났다. 본 연구는 문화적 다양성과 갈등, 혼돈, 그리고 성과간의 관계를 실증적으로 분석한 최초의 연구라는 점에서 그 의의를 찾을 수 있겠다.

Keywords

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