For the TLC you have chosen, provide a one paragraph overview of the challenge, and then address each question in a separate paragraph. Either list your questions, followed by the answers, or utilize the question as a declarative statement and topic sentence for each paragraph. Either way, there the question/answer should be obvious to the reader. All questions should be addressed in a comprehensive manner, and each answer should contain an explicit connection to research/theory (citation/reference to our primary/secondary text).

Team Leadership Challenge 15 You are the leader of a virtual team that is coordinating research projects among your corporation's five research centers, distributed around the world. Although you had a coordinators' meeting several years ago, cost and time constraints make it impossible to regularly meet in person. The research centers have videoconferencing equipment, but time differences among the sites make the use of videoconferencing services difficult. Consequently, most of your team's communication is done via e-mail.

The virtual team has worked well at exchanging information and keeping everyone up to date on the progress of research. However, there is a growing conflict between one of the U.S. research centers and the Asian center; they seem to be unable to coordinate activities and negotiate project roles. Their e-mails are getting more critical and disrespectful, and the rest of the team is tired of reading their back-and-forth bickering.

How can you (the team leader) deal with this communication problem?

What kind of communication technology should you use to resolve the issue? Why?

What role might intercultural dynamics contribute to this issue?

Could establishing new technology communication norms be used to prevent such problems in the future?