This would certainly be the case for any organization creating a virtual development team of engineers from Japan for example, which has a MAS score of 95, reporting to women in the U.S. Conversely the countries of Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, with some of the lowest MAS scores, would find these working arrangements in a virtual team amendable and easily adapted to. Two additional measures included in the Cultural Dimensions Index, are the Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) and Long-Term Orientation (LTO). UAI is a measure of risk aversion in a culture and LTO is one that defines the perspective of time itself in a culture. Not surprisingly China leads all nations included in the index in LTO as their culture greatly values the ordering of relations and the defining of status over time. Taken together all of these factors provide insight into how a lack of awareness or perception of cultural differences can lead to ethnocentrism relatively quickly (Hammond, Axelrod, 2006). When these factors are taken into account from the Cultural Dimensions Model it is also apparent how critically important it is for dialogue to be frequent, genuine, and deliberately seek to create shared trust between individuals, groups and organizations involved.

While the speed of globalization is only going to increase, the use of frameworks such as the Cultural Dimensions Model are critically important for creating more of a foundation for understanding. The basic determinants of culture emanating from material objects, ideas, values and attitudes and most important expectations and perceptions of patterns of behavior, must be taken in context and not assumed to be in a familiar context. For any member of a virtual team for example, the need to create the proper context of their role in an organization is predicated on having insights into these cultural dimensions. For the manager of a virtual team to have the cultural sensitivity to gain the greatest level of cooperation from each team member, and most importantly, to give them the best possible support to ensure their success, an appreciation and sensitivity of cultural dimensions is critical.

Dialogue and Trust

From the more strategic or macro-view of intercultural and international communication to the interpersonal one where dialogue (Yankelovich, 1999) is critical, this paper...

Second, for any team or even two individuals working across cultural boundaries clearly the need for face-to-face communication is important to nurture trust over the long-term and have each appreciate the cultural differences of the other. Globalization may force rapid consolidation of working relationships, but it is up to managers to create the synergies from a cultural perspective to ensure coordination occurs at the cultural level.
Conclusion

Nurturing this trust over time takes repeated and frequent use of dialogues (Yankelovich, 1999) that serve to compensate for the perceptual differences between cultures as shown through the Hofstede Cultural Dimensions Model. The need for creating strategies of communication and perception validation across working groups is critically important to overcome ethnocentrism and fuel trust.

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Zhang, M., & Tansuhaj, P. (2007). Organizational Culture, Information Technology Capability, and Performance: The Case of…