Irfan Ahmed, PhD

Organizational culture and team development have become more and crucial with the development of globalization and virtual organizations (Wang, 2006). In the recent years, teams and interpersonal relationship are becoming more and more important HR factors for organizational effectiveness of technological innovations (Wang and Mobley, 1999).   There is a challenge of balancing the culture of openness and knowledge-sharing with the need to appropriate knowledge as intellectual property (Mason & Pauleen 2003). For advanced global companies, employee development is a pillar of the enterprise-value framework, equal in importance to shareholder support or customer loyalty. Retaining talent is identified as a key business priority for all the companies surveyed by World Economic Forum (Manardo, 2008). Global firms are increasingly using Internet – IT related technologies to enable and necessitate the use of virtual teams around the world to solve complex global problems and foster bo...

Modern organizations face many significant challenges because of turbulent environments and a competitive global economy (Shachaf, 2008). Every country has its own culture and managers from that particular region must have the essence of their cultures. For example, the passive and polite Chinese communication practices are in direct contrast to the Western tendency to be direct and articulate with co-workers regarding business issues; the proactive, risk-taking behavior of the foreigners to identify and resolve problems early enters into conflict with the Chinese preference to maintain harmony and peace by avoiding initiative taking; and Chinese respect for authority and seniority conflicts with the Western preference for competency-based business practices (Keefe and Keefe, 1997).   Managers doing business in emerging Asian markets need to go beyond traditional national culture stereotypes to capture cultural diversities and paradoxes in terms of, for example, ethnic culture, reg...