Possible Suggestions for Further Research

One of the limitations of this study was the limitation of the definition of effectiveness. This research was only concerned with internal measures of effectiveness: member satisfaction and team sustainability (Schweitzer, 2005). Future research is required to investigate objective outputs of team effectiveness in VSDT, i.e. team work evaluation by companies, customers, etc.

In this research, two factors have drawn special attention due to the amount of attention the interviewees paid to them. These factors are emotions in virtual multicultural work, and the role of agile methodologies in team management. Suggestions for future research would be:

- Evaluate the role of emotions in virtual multicultural teams

- Investigate the applicability and success factor of agile methodologies in VSDT.

In the research, there was a noticeable disagreement between the number of females in the teams, and the positive attitude towards female participation in such teams from the existing members. It is suggested that further research is required to find the factors influencing women’s decisions to participate in VSDTs, and whether there is value to be added to businesses to encourage this participation.

Further research is also required to find qualitative confirmation of the applicability of the cultural factors proposed in this research.

6.6.

Summary

In this research, data has been collected on real-world functioning virtual teams. This data is based on the personal experiences of the team members. It provides an interpretive view

102 on this type of work. A range of factors influencing virtual multicultural work was defined, which may be used in future research for the development of a theory of virtual multicultural work. Though this research is an indication of the potential of productive virtual multicultural collaboration, it still leaves some important measures of effectiveness to future research.

103

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Appendix A

This appendix gives the details of the interview plans. In order to relate the interview questions to the research questions, the interview plans are presented in a table, where the 1st column contains the interview questions and the 2nd column is related to research question numbers. Where the interview question is not directly linked to the research question, this is also explained in the 2nd column. The 3rd column provides links to the conceptual model (Figure 1) factors that the question is expected to probe.

For convenience, the research questions are repeated below.