The Impact of Cultural Intelligence on Collaborative Writing in Global Virtual Teams

Teams with dispersed members across temporal, functional and national boundaries and supported by information and communication technologies, also known as global virtual teams (GVT), have become common in organizations. Although the importance of cultural issues in GVT has been repeatedly stressed, little research has suggested what predicts effectiveness of overcoming the cultural barriers in GVT. In this study, we examine the impact of cultural intelligence (CQ), a type of capability to performance in culturally diverse settings, on GVT process and outcomes controlling for other relevant member characteristics (e.g. virtual team self-efficacy, language proficiency) . We conducted a laboratory experiment in two national contexts, China and Germany, with 36 virtual dyads (N=72). The results suggest that CQ can predict GVT members' mutual trust, satisfaction as well as team performance over and beyond other member characteristics. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our findings.