Examining ICT-Mediated Cultural Factors for Subgroup Impact on Virtual Team Dynamics

As virtual teams are inherently heterogeneous and distributed in nature they have a greater tendency to fracture into subgroups. Proper management of these subgroups is critical as they are often more detrimental than beneficial. Research that systematically examines subgroup formation is limited in identifying factors that influence the negative or positive impact of subgroups. To address this gap, we propose a new model based on Social Categorization Theory, Faultline Theory and the diversity literature. Our model takes into account the temporal impact of different cultural factors, namely surface and deep level culture diversity, with the alignment of other attributes on subgroup saliency. It also captures the interaction of varying levels of culture (national, organizational, functional) and their impact on subgroup dynamics. Additionally, the model represents the norms of technology use as a mediator for the impact of subgroup saliency on team performance.