People are increasingly being asked to work as part of a global team, working in different time zones with teammates from different cultures.
Designing and developing a product as part of a transnational team project, Ivey student Reynaldo Glombowski lets his egg drop protector fall from the atrium of the business school.
To address the need for employees and business leaders to communicate across national borders, HBA students from the Richard Ivey School of Business participated in a transnational virtual team project last month.
Students in the cross-cultural management course participated on a virtual team that included students from Johannes Kepler University in Austria and ESADE in Barcelona, Spain.
“The project allows students to discover on their own the benefits and challenges of international and virtual co-operation,” says Chetan Joshi, Ivey lecturer in Cross-cultural Management and doctoral candidate, who co-ordinates the project.
The transnational virtual team project was funded by a $10,000 Fellowship in Teaching Innovation Grant provided by the Teaching Support Centre at The University of Western Ontario. Ivey professor Joerg Dietz was the recipient of the teaching innovation grant for 2008 and he was instrumental in the project’s original design.
It is taught with a case study of a virtual team project at the Chicago-based advertising firm, Leo Burnett, a bestselling Ivey case study of which Dietz was the lead author.
Students use different modes of virtual communication, including videoconferencing, email, MSN messenger, Google Talk and Skype to work with teammates.
The project involves two activities: designing an egg drop protector and renegotiating a joint venture outlined in a case study.
The students met virtually to discuss the project, similar to having a face-to-face business meeting. They had to deal with time zone difference and geographic separation as they scheduled meeting times to collaborate on the projects.
When they were designing the protector, students learned talking wasn’t always the clearest form of communication. To share images or designs, they used methods such as Facebook and posted comments.
Virtual teamwork requires a set of skills that differs greatly from face-to-face teamwork, says Dietz. In addition to team management skills, they must master technological and cross-cultural skills, which do not come naturally to all students.
“A virtual team project is an exciting endeavour. It requires very high up-front investments, a willingness to take risks and to trust, and the ability to adjust on the spot as the conditions for one team member or in one participating location may abruptly and surprisingly change,” he says.
Using the same technology used by the students, Western News communicated with participants in Austria and Spain.
Johannes Kepler University professor Iris Fischlmayr says the Austrian students have also benefited from the project and learned about the benefits and limitations of virtual communication.
“They like the basic idea of collaborating on a multicultural and virtual basis under time pressure and with different types of tasks. Additionally, they see the chance to get familiar with new media such as videoconferences,” says Fischlmayr.
“It shows the main issues and challenges related to virtual collaboration, such as difficulties in communication, organizing virtual meetings, and time zone differences, etc. that are both occurring in this university project and also in the business world.”
Similarly, ESADE professor Roger Bell says the project taught students about the pressures of cross-cultural business collaborations.
“They recognized that the task itself is symbolic but the learning’s real. They were under some pressure from other study commitments and a business project – just like in real life. They found it fun too,” says Bell.