What is False Friends

Internationally distributed teams (IDTs) face challenges related to the team members’ diversity and geographic dispersion. However, research on IDTs has yet to explore the joint effects of diversity and dispersion on team processes and performance, as well as the role that cultural norms play in IDT effectiveness. Reporting findings from an 11-week e-mail exchange between American and Finnish business students, the current chapter focuses on how and why cultural communication and coordination norms affect IDT team processes and performance. The data shows that differences in cultural norms were amplified by differences in the local context of IDT members and that successful IDTs also created group norms that helped them manage their cultural diversity and geographic dispersion. Given the teachers’ discovery of how they had unintentionally reinforced cultural communication and coordination norms, the authors make explicit how cultural norms unexpectedly influence leadership strategies and learning experiences in positive and negative ways.