Abstract
This article discusses culture influence on virtual teamwork collaboration efficiency. We can understand culture as a framework of meanings, which gives a certain group of people the same linguistic framework, collective interpretation of the environment, its ways of self understanding, its customs, traditions, and values. Culture also involves the human spirit, personal expression, principles, and moral commitments. Culture shapes the way people interpret and send messages and the way they think about issues like contractual obligations, work procedures or professional ethics (Lavoire, 2001).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Business Process: A set of interrelated activities performed in an organization with a goal of generating value in a connection with a product or service.
Knowledge Management: The set of processes developed in an organization to create, gather, store, maintain, and apply the firm’s knowledge.
Virtual Team: Geographically dispersed teams.
Alternative Workplaces (AW): The combination of nontraditional work practices, settings, and locations that is beginning to supplement traditional offices.
Virtual Work: A mode of work in which employees perform all or significant part of their roles from a base physically separated of their employers, and where Information technology plays an important role in virtual teamwork by supporting all business practices to create, share and communication among team members.
Collaborative Technologies: Technologies enabling individuals and groups to communicate, collaborate, and interact to share knowledge and information, focusing on those to facilitate dispersed interaction across time and space. Includes telephones, audio- and video-conferencing facilities, electronic discussions, online chat environments, application sharing, desktop conferencing, and shared document repositories.