Knowledge sharing in virtual teams; Challenges, cultural barriers and the importance of trust Georgios Pardalis
Maria Xygkogianni
Chalmers University of Technology International Project Management
[email protected]
Chalmers University of Technology International Project Management
[email protected]
Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine how the gained knowledge can be shared through virtual teams. The authors focus on analyzing the challenges, cultural barriers and the importance of trust as a main principle, providing a literature review, whereas an interpretive research methodology has been adopted. Authors rely on in-‐depth study of the literature, having a critical view. Discussion shows how virtual teams could overcome all the different barriers, be more effective and therefore implement knowledge sharing. Finally, conclusions indicate that when operating, virtual teams are much more complicated, not only because of cultural differences, but also because of the communication limitations which make the knowledge sharing more difficult to occur. It also suggests topics for future studies. Keywords: knowledge sharing, virtual teams, cultural differences, trust
INTRODUCTION In a globalized society where the competition is growing, organizations, which, operate internationally, are usually in need to transcend time, place and space. Hence, organizations choose virtual teams as an important structural component to enable such possibilities. The high level of IT services assist positively to that direction and virtual teams become particularly imperative, due to the fact that several tasks should be accomplished by the remote collaboration of different parties (Xue et. al, 2012). Communication is of vital importance regarding the performance of virtual teams and this, because enables knowledge sharing in an effective way among the members of the team (Xue et. al, 2012). Many factors influence the effective knowledge sharing though as it is a complex phenomenon.
The fact that the team members are not physically together, alone, complicates the knowledge sharing, as the communication is not direct. However, in many cases and for many reasons, people feel reluctant to share knowledge within their team. In addition, sometimes, individuals show a tendency to aggregate information without sharing. An explanation to that could be the fact that individuals are often being competitive instead of cooperative with their peers. In general, knowledge sharing is strongly influenced by an individual’s personal perceptions, experiences, and the characteristics of the team environment (Xue et. al, 2012). Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate what are the challenges of knowledge sharing within virtual teams and how cultural factors and values determine individuals’ knowledge sharing in the virtual team context. 1
This report is interesting for numerous reasons. Firstly, it attempts to expose the significance of virtual team’s existence. Secondly, it describes the challenges that virtual teams face in terms of knowledge sharing. Thirdly, it provides suggestions of more efficient knowledge sharing through the acceptance of cultural differences and the integration of trust in the team’s values.
METHOD This paper is initially based on literature review, in an effort to investigate the fundamental topic. Trustworthiness, content relevance, writers’ credibility, publisher and publish date were the main characteristics taken into consideration when selecting and ranking the references -‐ scientific journals, literature, websites and books-‐ used in this paper. Describing the theoretical framework, the authors provide the reader a literature review of the topic. In the analytical part, challenges in knowledge sharing due to cultural differences are identified and the role of values such as trust is discussed. The discussion is highly influenced from the different reflections of the authors on the topic, due to various personal experiences, values and backgrounds.
THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK Teams vs Virtual Teams Team can be defined as “A social system of three or more people, which is embedded in an organization, whose members perceive themselves as such and are perceived as members by others, and whose members collaborate on a common task” (Hoegl & Gemuenden, 2001). Typically a team consists of two to twenty people, though many managers suggest that effectiveness will decrease once the numbers go above ten. Larger teams are managed in the same way as large projects – by breaking down the big team into smaller, more manageable groups (Maylor, 2010). However, do the virtual teams have the same characteristics as ‘normal’ teams?
According to Godar & Ferris (2004) “A virtual team is defined as a group of geographically and organizationally dispersed workers, brought together across time and space through information and communication technologies”. Therefore, the term ‘virtual team’ is mostly used to refer to geographically dispersed team members who rely on technology to accomplish tasks. Virtual team members may also be dispersed on other dimensions such as culture and time, which poses additional challenges to effective communication in virtual teams (Arora, et. al., 2010) There are various reasons that lead organizations to adopt virtual teams. Some of these are presented below (Pangil & Chan, 2014): -‐ To be able to hire the best employees which may be located anywhere in the world; -‐ To increase global workday to 24 versus 8 hours; -‐ To provide flexibility to support the globalization of trade and corporate activity in order to be more competitive and responsive to the marketplace.
Cultural Differences “In my own experience, multicultural teams do a better job when performing projects and providing services to companies (or department) around the world”. -‐ Ruben Navarrette Jr (2007) It is unavoidable not to have cultural differences in virtual teams, where the members are spread all over the world. However, multicultural teams have many benefits over one-‐culture teams e.g. international teams can combine more diverse ideas on brainstorming or problem-‐solving sessions. Though, the different patterns of cross cultural business behaviors should be considered even in virtual teams in order to be effective. According to Gesteland (2002) some of these patterns are: -‐ Formal and informal cultures -‐ Deal focused and relationship focused cultures -‐ Fluid time and rigid time cultures -‐ Reserved and expressive cultures Respect between different cultures is very important and so is also understanding between 2
members of multi-‐cultural virtual teams. Lack of understanding might lead to dysfunctional communication and conflicts that might affect the outcome of the project and eventually the knowledge sharing. People have different political and religious views and different ethical codes, which should be respected. The ability to diagnose contexts successfully requires a natural inclination towards conflicts and a tendency to see the bigger picture even when dealing within a multi-‐cultural working environment.
Sharing knowledge According to Dube´ et al. (2005, p. 146) “[. . .] virtual communities of practice, while not excluding face-‐to-‐face meetings, rely primarily on new information and communication technologies (ICT) and internet capabilities, to allow their members to be creative and exchange what can sometimes be crucial pieces of information, in a virtual environment”. Trying to define ‘knowledge sharing’, it can be said that it constitutes the whole process of exchanging knowledge regarding information, skills or expertise through people, communities or organizations. The purpose of sharing knowledge through organizations is to help them to meet their business objectives (Bukowitz & Williams, 1999, Serban & Luan, 2002). Sharing knowledge is critical for organizations and virtual teams make the attempt even more complicated. The knowledge possessed by individuals can hardly be converted into organizational knowledge before it is shared with others (Jo & Joo, 2011). However, sometimes there is tendency of resistance from employees when it comes to sharing their knowledge with the rest of the organization, hence the sharing of knowledge constitutes a major challenge in the field of knowledge management. The identification of factors that facilitate or obstruct knowledge sharing constitutes the main subject of numerous studies. Such studies have been conducted in two main directions (Jo & Joo,
2011); 1. The suggestion of several primary critical factors to facilitate knowledge sharing connected to social sciences such as, individual motivation, beliefs, attitudes and culture, 2. The attempt to create a conceptual model, combining multiple factors in order to clarify the relationships among these factors from an integrative and comprehensive perspective. Knowledge sharing is too complex of a process to be explained by one single factor or a few factors (Jo & Joo, 2011). As in almost every organization, “the intellectual power of a virtual team is in its diffused expertise and ability to blend different experiences to create shared knowledge” (Pinjani & Palvia, 2013, p. 145). Knowledge is subject of utilization among people working in a virtual team, however this does not prevent them from develop their own as well. However, the benefits for the virtual team are even more when the knowledge sharing is effective. There are many ways of effective knowledge sharing such as joint training and by experience gained through problem solving among members (Pinjani & Palvia, 2013).
ALALYSIS Challenges in knowledge sharing due to cultural differences and experiences The most common challenges that virtual teams deal with include time difficulties due to different time zones, feedback delays, and lack of communication and responses, misunderstandings, and several cultural and language barriers (Alsharo, 2013). The collaboration of all the people working in virtual teams is based on individuals who are geographically dispersed. These people may live in different countries, with different time zones, speak different languages and have different habits. Although virtual teams are perceived as more flexible than the traditional ones, research shows that the communication management of these teams is harder. This happens mainly due to lean media such as e-‐mails, which can easily cause misunderstanding and misinterpretations (Klitmøller & Lauring, 2013). As nonverbal 3
communication constitutes a major element in peoples’ interaction and effective communication, the fact that is missing, is the reason of provoking such problems. This is the reason that some researchers argue that “richer” means of communication, such as videoconferences are more useful when sharing knowledge (Klitmøller & Lauring, 2013). Another aspect is that of cultural and language differences, which is considered to be one of the most important issues regarding sharing knowledge. Especially during telephone calls, many problems are arisen due to different languages. And even nonverbal cues seem to make the situation more confusing than to clarify it (Klitmøller & Lauring, 2013). Problematic knowledge sharing could also occur when shared knowledge is not complete, because members’ interaction often decreases. When there is not enough interaction among the members of a virtual team for several reasons, this leads to less possibilities of knowledge sharing and eventually less integration of knowledge by the organizations (Pinjani & Palvia, 2013). In terms of experiences, past experiences are responsible for human behavior. Hence, people tend to repeat rewarded behaviors and avoid the non-‐rewarded ones (Xue et. al, 2012). This explains why some employees tend to resist, when it comes to sharing their knowledge with their peers (Jo & Joo, 2011). In the context of knowledge sharing, if a person has received positive reactions when sharing knowledge with others, then it is very likely to be engaged in the same process again. In that way, organizations can predict the individuals’ positive or negative attitudes towards knowledge sharing (Xue et. al, 2012).
Adopting principles: Trust Trust is a debated subject, which can be hard to define since the context and meaning of trust may differ. According to Rousseau et al. (1998) and Nooteboom (2002), there are three different forms or bases of trust; Institutional trust where the trust
is more or less taken for granted and based upon e.g. culture, education level and reputation. This trust is considered to be weak trust since it is not depending upon any established relationship between the parties. The second form of trust is Rational/calculus-‐based trust also considered to be a weak trust, but with the aspect of likelihood that the other party will fulfill its duties based upon self-‐interest of the other party. Here, penalties and rewards should be taken into consideration. Hence, this is on the verge to the aspect of motivation. The third form of trust is relational trust, which is based upon personal interaction and mutual tacit understanding.
Figure1: Bases of trust (Nooteboom, 2002)
In terms of virtual teams, trust is a vital component for team’s effectiveness, as it primary shows the degree of confidence among the team members. There is an increased risk for potential misunderstandings and mistrusts within the virtual teams as the form of trust developed by virtual teams is very fragile and temporal; however group members can increase the degree of trust through social – informal communication, which complements task communication. Effective communication among members of the team influences, in a positive way, the team performance and trust. And consequently this has a positive impact towards knowledge sharing. (Palvia & Pinjani, 2013). However, a virtual team may have members that are both high and low trust based. Lewis (2006) summarized the findings from his work in order to provide some guidance in the subject. Below, figure 2 shows the different aspects as bases of trust for different groups of cultures.
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DISCUSSION
Figure 2: Cultures according to their bases of trust (Lewis, 2006)
Trust is also an essential component for knowledge sharing to occur among teams and this will eventually increase its performance. However, virtual teams face more difficulties in effective knowledge sharing comparing to traditional teams. At the early stages of virtual teams’ formation, more time is needed -‐comparing to the traditional teams-‐ before the members are able to fully recognize, trust, and coordinate their specialized knowledge and therefore effectively perform their tasks. Eventually, it takes even more time in order to feel ready to share that knowledge (Pangil & Chan, 2014). There are five distinct stages in a virtual team life cycle which is particularly short (Pangil & Chan, 2014): establishing the team, inception, organizing, transition, and accomplishing the task. It is a challenge for managers and team leaders to encourage the development of trust initially and to develop trust throughout these different stages of the virtual team life cycle (Pangil & Chan, 2014).
Multicultural virtual teams are a source of learning and innovation. Opinions and ideas can be discussed under the prism of different approaches to the same solution that can be argued between the team members. However, multicultural virtual teams have to face many challenges in terms of knowledge sharing that can be overcome through effective leadership. Cultural differences can be exaggerated within virtual teams as this kind of teams can take up to more time to become as effective as teams whose members are of the same culture and this is something that organizations should seriously consider when forming them. Understanding and respect between members of multicultural virtual teams is of great importance. Lack of understanding is possible to lead to dysfunctional communication and conflicts that will affect the successful outcome of the project. In order to reduce the possibilities of such thing to happen, team members is wise to attend a training program that will bring them together and it will develop effective communication and understanding between them. This will also boost their trust feeling and therefore the knowledge sharing will occur easier. In addition, communication practices are recommended to be adopted form organizations, in order to motivate the members of the virtual teams to socialize and therefore share knowledge intentionally or unconsciously. Such practices could include agreements on response times and establishing rules for the choice of means of communication, as well as initial agreements on the frequency of communications. The encouraging of sociability using more “spontaneous” and interactive means of communication can also accelerate the development of trust. The users of e-‐communication need more time to exchange the same number of messages than communicating face to face, since the non-‐verbal messages constitute a great extent of 5
interpersonal communication. This does not facilitate the knowledge sharing either. Confidence can also be fragile in virtual teams because of the lack of physical presence, when individuals are not able to observe and directly interact with each other. The lack of social contact and the "virtual silence" caused by people who do not respond to e-‐mails and voice messages can disrupt the workflow and move even suspicions that the team member avoids working.
CONCLUSIONS Working in virtual teams presents, by itself, high complexity, as it involves many challenges. Knowledge sharing is a process that in particular needs even more special handling from managers and leaders, in order to be effective. Communication difficulties, language and cultural barriers, unwillingness of virtual-‐team members to share knowledge are only some of the challenges that organizations face in terms of knowledge sharing. Trust is another component that composes the challenges of virtual teams’ effective collaboration and sharing of knowledge. Trying to overcome these barriers, organizations should adopt mechanisms in order to communicate the knowledge benefits to its employees. Organizations should support individuals working in distributed teams by defining clear roles, tasks and responsibilities and clarifying the way that the individuals are going to communicate and collaborate. These actions would eventually facilitate the knowledge sharing. Considering future studies, should examine whether the language barrier is very important regarding knowledge sharing. Skype recently announced that their employees after years of work, are finally in the position to cross language boundary making real-‐time speech to speech translation. In what way will this innovation facilitate virtual teams’ knowledge sharing?
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