Culture Matters

Chapter 2

What Is a Global Virtual Team?

Introduction

In the management field, a team is defined as a small collection of people at work who engage in interpersonal interactions to achieve established goals (Piccoli et al. 2004). According to Johnson and Johnson (1997), they define a team as two or more individuals with the following elements and characteristics: (a) members are interdependent and strive to achieve mutual goals; (b) they need to communicate in order to achieve the stated and agreed goals; (c) members are cognizant of the members’ contributions—who is contributing and who is not; (d) members are assigned with specific tasks, roles, and responsibilities; (e) and the life span of membership is limited because members are usually ...