Cultural Diversity, Perception of Work Atmosphere, and Task Conflict in Collaboration Technology Supported Global Virtual Teams: Findings from a Laboratory Experiment

In this paper, we focus on work atmosphere and conflict in global virtual teams and report the findings of a laboratory experiment that involved twenty-seven cross-cultural virtual teams. The members of the teams used IBM´s Lotus Sametime to work on decision-making tasks. The findings of the study reveal that in collaboration technology supported virtual teams, the cultural heterogeneity of the team members influences their perceptions of the work atmosphere, which in its turn influences members´ participation in group work. We also find that the number of occurrences of task conflict related discussion among the group members is positively related to their participation in group work. The findings of the study are interesting and provide motivation for future research on work atmosphere and conflict in virtual teams.