Minitack Introduction: Cross-cultural Issues in Collaboration Technology

As globalization increases, firms that rely on intellectual assets have realized that their competitive advantage depends on the development and effective use of collaboration technologies. Today, teams within or across organizations often consist of individuals with diverse cultural backgrounds and skills, creating a pressing need to better understand how the interplay of culture and collaboration technology can influence group processes and outcomes. At its most basic level, culture is conceptualized as shared symbols, norms, and values in a social collectivity. Culture plays an important role in group interaction and collaboration because it has direct impact on individual behavior and cultural manifestations. Culture directly affects interpersonal communication, influencing situational factors of communication, self-conception, verbal and nonverbal communication, and interpersonal relationships, as well as affects how people use products and information technologies. Prior studies on culture and technology have shown that the beliefs and values shared by group members affect their behavior in a variety of ways that can either accelerate or retard the implementation and adoption of technology.