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Conflict and resistance on the part of employees assigned to teams have accompanied the recent increase in the use of work teams in organizations. Previous empirical research identified several sources of employee resistance including violations of fairness, increased work‐load concerns, uncertain manager support, unclear role definitions, and lack of team member social support. From a literature review, we identified additional sources of employee resistance including trust, cultural values, and low tolerance for change. Empirically, we conducted a content analysis of 1,060 open‐ended comments of employees in two Fortune 50 organizations who were newly assigned to self‐managing work teams (SMWTs). The results suggest that employees' concerns did reflect issues of trust and low tolerance for change, but not cultural values. We discuss the implications of our findings for conflict management scholars as well as managers who are charged with handling increased conflict due to employee resistance to teams.

Although cross-cultural research tends to compare deeply held values across nations, different cultures can exist within nations, as evidenced by clashes of cultures in Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. We refer to multicultural teams (MCTs) to reflect our interest in team dynamics involving people from varying cultures (which may or may not include people of different nationalities). MCTs are likely to be characterized by “cultural value diversity,” or varying cultural values among members, and we present data in support of the hypothesis that MCT performance is influenced more significantly by cultural value diversity than by the aggregated level of any particular cultural value or demographic diversity within the teams.

This paper reports the findings of a study regarding the reactions of 492 line‐level employees from two Fortune 500 organizations in response to the organizations’ recent implementation of self‐managing work teams (SMWTs). As predicted, we found that anticipatory injustice was significantly positively related to change‐resistance and turnover intentions; and significantly negatively related to employees’ commitment; and that procedural justice can mitigate the latter relationships. Implications for managing change are discussed.

With globalisation and the opening of China’s borders, there has been increasing business and government interaction between China and the US. Given US interest in China’s market and the cultural distance between these two countries, it is imperative for US business persons not only to understand Chinese values, but also to examine how Chinese relate to US values. To this end, this study examines the attitudes of a sample of Chinese with regard to 10 US core values and compares their attitudes to those of a sample of US Americans. Despite some significant differences, the results of this study point out that the Chinese and US respondents exhibited many similarities in their attitudes.

Bindu Aryais currently a doctoral student in International Business and Strategy at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her dissertation will empirically investigate how collaborative efforts between for-profit, not-for-profit and governmental agencies facilitate outcomes and can function to enhance sustainable development. Her research on how social networks facilitate organizational and group decision-making processes and outcomes has appeared in Journal of Management (forthcoming).

This study aims to offer a bibliometric analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on global virtual teams (GVTs).

Using a systematic literature review approach, it identifies all articles in the Web of Science from 1999 to 2021 that include the term GVTs (in the title, the abstract or keywords) and finds 175 articles. The VOSviewer software was applied to analyze the bibliometric data.

The analysis revealed three dialogizing research clusters in the GVTs literature: a pioneering management information systems and organizational cluster, a general management cluster and a growing international management and behavioural studies cluster. Furthermore, it highlights the most cited articles, authors, journals and nations, and the network of strong and weak links regarding co-authorships and co-citations. Additionally, this study shows a change in research patterns regarding topics, journals and disciplinary approaches from 1999 to 2021. Finally, the analysis illustrates the position and centrality in the network of the most relevant actors.

The findings can guide management practitioners, educators and researchers to the most meaningful clusters of publications on GVTs, and help navigate and make sense of the vast body of the available literature. The importance of GVTs has been growing in the past two decades, and Covid-19 has accelerated the trend.

This study provides an updated and comprehensive systematic literature review on GVTs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is also the first systematic literature review and bibliometry on GVTs. It concludes by suggesting future research paths.

In this chapter I argue that the distance research in international business studies is at a turning point, not in terms of its popularity, nor the quantity of articles published, but rather, in terms of the types of issues that are explored. Past distance research has largely been conducted at the level of the firm and/or the market – that is, linking national-level measures of distance with specific firm behaviors and outcomes. However, the seminal paper by Shenkar (2001) represents a shift in focus that is only just beginning to gain traction. This shift involves stepping back and beginning to unpack the black box we call ‘distance’ by exploring the micro-level mechanisms involved. In essence, it is about digging deeper in multiple aspects, to understand when, why and how distance matters in the international business (IB) context. These are issues that until now have typically been neglected. A metaphor borrowed from the social psychology literature, known as Coleman’s Boat, is used as a vehicle to explain the key issues involved in this shift and the opportunities for future research.