Take a look at these definitions of culture:
Culture is the “characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts.” (Zimmerman 2015).
Organizational Culture “is the culture of an innovative organization which ensures positive atmosphere in an organization regarding the generation of innovation and its full support” (Lukić, T., Džamić, V., Knežević, G., Alčaković, S., & Bošković, V 2015).
When working on a virtual team, each member of the group will have an individual cultural identity. Generally, they will identify as either: western, eastern, latin, asian, middle eastern, or african. Especially with the prevalence of international teams, your virtual team may be made up of more than one of these national cultures. In my opinion, this is external culture.
External Culture: characteristics and behaviors of a group of people that stem from nationalistic ties.
When multiple, external cultures come together to accomplish a goal, there is going to be an adjustment period. People from clashing cultures are going to have miscommunication, and they will try to deal with this as best as they can in order to get their work done. This may happen in seconds, or it may never happen at all. After all, not all virtual teams function effectively. In fact, most seem to be underperforming. This new set of behaviors that the group uses to virtually communicate is what I call internal culture.
Internal Culture: shared patterns of behaviors, interactions, cognitive constructs, and understanding that are learned from virtual socialization
It seems to me that a virtual team starts as a group of people who most likely come from different external cultures to accomplish a shared goal. Once the team starts moving through the phases of group development, they form an internal culture that is different from their external. There is a growth of group identity through shared social patterns unique to the group. If we can find out which social patterns foster the strongest group identity, we can tell managers to encourage them as much as possible. Even better, we could create VT software that encourages internal culture over external.
Having terms for both internal and external culture could be a stepping stone to problem solving in future VT research. While no one has done such a study, I am curious to know if the understanding that there are two types of culture could lead to increased productivity and cohesion on a virtual team. Perhaps if people understand that they have the opportunity to create a new culture, instead of fighting over old ones, they will be more open to suggestion and will be easier to work with.
There are businesses today that encourage a corporate culture. Chipotle, for example, has had great success investing in this type of culture. In this type of company, an employee is expected to behave and communicate in certain ways for the benefit of everyone. Why would a virtual workspace be any different?
REFERENCES
Lukić, T., Džamić, V., Knežević, G., Alčaković, S., & Bošković, V. (2014). The influence of organizational culture on business creativity, innovation and satisfaction. Management (1820-0222), (73), 49-57. doi:10.7595/management.fon.2014.0027
Zimmerman, K. A. (2015). What is Culture? Definition of Culture. Live Science. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1p8FUlK
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