Abstract
More so than ever before, global virtual teams (GVTs) are endemic as an organisational work form within international business. Organisations, especially multinational enterprises seek to recruit, select, train and develop capable individuals for technology-enabled international roles. International business within higher education institutions (HEIs) seeks to contribute talented individuals to this pool of talent. Developing students’ intercultural and virtual competences with global virtual team (GVT) experiences ready for international workplaces makes educational sense. However, measuring development remains fraught, complicated by an abundance of models, partially tested measures, ever-evolving digital technology and an implicit assumption that all GVT experiences develop intercultural and virtual competences similarly.
This thesis comprises three papers sharing focus on the comparative examination of measurement intercultural and virtual competence development in the contexts of GVTs. Paper 1 presents a systematic review and thematic analysis of intercultural development in the measurement of culture-related GVT competences. Paper 2 reviews the research methods and design dimensions of GVT studies, in particular research using student samples. Paper 3 details an empirical examination of the comparative development of intercultural and virtual competence.
The significance of the contribution is to the interface of international business education and international management. The findings of the empirical study, paper 3, reconfigured the research trajectory of the thesis. This paper was designed to comparatively examine intercultural and virtual competences development in two similar classroom experiences; an experiential GVT group project and a GVT business simulation. Using two measures for each, students were surveyed pre and post-experience. The intercultural measures were drawn from the international business and international education literature, were the cultural intelligence scale (CQS) (Van Dyne, Ang & Koh 2009) and Arasaratnam’s (2009) intercultural communication competence instrument (ICCI) 10 item short version scale. The CQS has been widely deployed. In contrast, Arasaratnam’s (2009) ICCI has been identified as a measure (for example, Griffith et al. 2016; Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013; Matveev & Merz, 2014) with less usage. Furthermore, these approaches are yet to be compared. The virtual measures, drawn from the communication and information science literatures, focus on an individuals’ communication attitude and digital aptitude. Development is evidenced; however, the two similar experiences did not develop both forms of competence. While not surprising to confirm that different learning experiences are differential in their impact on individuals, it reiterates the need to understand development embedded within context where research design and measures are integral to this understanding. The findings of this study, which did not quite go as planned, are in turn the drivers of papers 1 and 2. These papers both address aspects of context. Together, they each offer insights as to how research might now more fully account for the dynamic of context. Finally, a future research agenda is advanced. It proffers the continued comparative exploration of context and development, questions if intercultural and virtual competences develop simultaneously, are a specific form of praxis, and if development is more complicated than a linear and stage-like process.