Do you consider managing diversity a key success factor in the performance of virtual teams?
First of all it is important to clarify what are Virtual Teams. VTs are groups of people working together in different locations, communicating themselves by using technology. There can be cases in which the groups are relating with different firms in the same country, the same firm in different countries (i.e. subsidiaries), or different firms in different countries. Due to the difference of locations (even if they are in the same country they are in different locations) there are always different cultures interacting, in higher or lower degree. We must take into account that there may be incompatibility between the cultures working together and that’s why it is important to develop a good diversity management strategy in order to avoid prob
lems and find successful results.Dr. Higgins emphasized the importance of the trust between the teams as a key element for the good performance and development of the process. I think that diversity management plays a fundamental role in order to achieve this trust. Taking advantage of the cultural diversity existing between the teams could be a very important tool instead of being an obstacle if it is well managed (and we have seen for example in IBM how a good diversity management led to many benefits). Expertise variety for example has as consequence the complementation between the different capabilities and finally resulting in more creative outputs.
Nevertheless there is a negative factor that may pose some difficulties when taking management decisions. Normally, virtual teams are conformed for a short period of time, and we have seen that it is very important to implement diversity management strategies in long periods of time in order to see good results. In this case the main actions could be done in order to create a tolerant image of the other cultures which the work will be done with so problems such as stereotyping could be avoided.
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