Abstract
The chapter highlights the social distance, i.e. lack of emotional connection, formed among individuals working remotely in a geographically distributed team. The virtuality and cultural diversity of such teams creates limited opportunities for dispersed members to build social ties with remote team members leading to formation of ‘us' versus ‘them' attitudes which corrode team effectiveness. Based on a survey of 482 Indian IT professionals working in distributed teams, we find that social distance negatively impacts team effectiveness. Further, the results of the study show that practices such as task interdependence, inclusive communication, contextual information and shared identity can moderate the negative relationship between social distance and team effectiveness at varying levels of perceived status equality among individuals working in geographically distributed teams. The chapter provides recommendations for the effective management of geographically distributed teams whereby managers act as a bridge between the team members to overcome social distance.
TopContext Of The Study
Indian IT Companies hire a large number of software or IT professionals who work at remote (offshore) locations away from a client location (onsite or onshore) situated outside of India (Basant, 2006). The onsite and offshore teams respectively may themselves be co-located in a workplace or be distributed, e.g. working at home, with the latter being the case for many since the onset of the global pandemic. The onsite team defines the project requirements, transfer knowledge and information, coordinate and monitor offshore work, implement software and solutions, train the staff and provide rapid-reaction maintenance services. The offshore team in India provide technical and database design, software programming, testing, documentation and long-term maintenance services. Computer mediated communication tools such as emails, video and audio conferencing, instant messaging, collaboration software, document sharing software, remote access systems etc. allow dispersed team members to collaborate and concurrently execute IT projects remotely. This study reflects on the experiences of members of GDTs in India prior to the global pandemic, offers an insight into the practices that can moderate the negative relationship between social distance and team effectiveness, and methods for successful management of GDTs.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Social Distance: Degree of ‘us’ vs ‘them’ attitude among the offshore member towards the onsite member.
Task Interdependence: Degree to which individual works closely and coordinate with the remote member to complete tasks.
Inclusive Communication: Degree to which the individual participates and is involved in the communication process with the remote colleague.
Shared Identity: Degree to which the individual experiences the extent of similarity and oneness with the remote member.
Perceived Status Equality: Degree of interest displayed by individuals in interacting, appreciating and understanding the remote member.
Geographically Distributed Team (GDT): Team which comprises of members dispersed across two or more geographic locations, collaborating through computer mediated communication tools.