Abstract
Based on an ethnographic study comprising interviews with and observations of 96 globally distributed members of six software development teams, we propose a model that captures how asymmetries in language fluency contribute to an us vs them dynamic common in global teams. Faultlines, formed along the dimensions of asymmetries in lingua franca fluency, location, and nationality of team members, were associated with subgrouping in some but not all of the teams. Our findings suggest that divisive subgroup dynamics occurred only in teams that also suffered from power contests, suggesting that power contests activate otherwise dormant faultlines. Our findings extend theory on subgroup dynamics in global teams by adding language as a potential faultline dimension, showing how power struggles activated faultlines and were, in turn, reinforced by them and documenting the emotion-regulation processes triggered by subgrouping and enacted through language-related choices and behaviors.
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Notes
Although functional area or discipline has also been shown to be an important faultline dimension, the teams in our study were fairly homogeneous in functional/disciplinary area, so functional area did not constitute a faultline dimension.
Ideally, we would have employed a quantitative measure of faultlines, but were unable to, because most existing measures were not robust to groups as large as those in our study (e.g., Bezrukova et al., 2009), and those that were tended to generate too many subgroups to be meaningful.
This is a pseudonym, as are all other informant names reported in this paper.
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Acknowledgements
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-0220098 and Grant No. IIS-0219754 to the first and third authors, respectively. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We thank Aditya Johri and Tine Koehler for their help with data collection, and Steven Shafer and Heather Altman for their assistance with data analysis. We appreciate the generous assistance of the informants and the organization that participated in the study. We also would like to thank Steve Barley and members of the Harvard Business School Organizational Behavior workshop, especially Patricia Satterstrom, Robin Ely, David Thomas, and Lakshmi Ramarajan, for their insightful comments on earlier drafts.
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Accepted by Mary Yoko Brannen, Deputy Editor, 16 October 2013. This paper has been with the authors for two revisions.
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Hinds, P., Neeley, T. & Cramton, C. Language as a lightning rod: Power contests, emotion regulation, and subgroup dynamics in global teams. J Int Bus Stud 45, 536–561 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2013.62
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2013.62