How urgent is urgent? The impact of culturally-based temporal perceptions on virtual teams

Richard Egan, Suling Zhang, Marilyn Tremaine, Allen E. Milewski, Jerry Fjermestad, Patrick O'Sullivan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

In this poster, we present the results from a survey and interviews conducted on global software teams working in Ireland, the US, China and India. Our survey and semistructured interviews investigated the effect of culturallybased time differences between non-collocated team members. An analysis of the survey data found that differences in temporal urgency, that is, the general sense a person has that time is running short and one has to hurry, significantly lowered the communication quality of teams which, in turn, negatively affected both the trust and satisfaction of the team members. The follow-up interviews corroborated these results and provided a picture of cultures with a high sense of urgency working more effectively with each other. Overall, our work suggests that although virtual team members belong to a single corporate culture, there is an overriding influence of their nation's sense of time which affects cross-cultural interactions

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2009 4th IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering, ICGSE 2009
Pages291-292
Number of pages2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009
Event2009 4th IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering, ICGSE 2009 - Limerick, Ireland
Duration: Jul 13 2009Jul 16 2009

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2009 4th IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering, ICGSE 2009

Other

Other2009 4th IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering, ICGSE 2009
Country/TerritoryIreland
CityLimerick
Period7/13/097/16/09

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software

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