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Helping Global Software-Development Teams to Overcome the Challenges of Temporal Dispersion and National Diversity: The Importance of Leadership Roles

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Innovation and IT in an International Context

Abstract

This chapter explores the challenges that temporal dispersion and cultural diversity create for global software-development teams and proposes that leaders have a critical role in mitigating those challenges by constantly coordinating and monitoring team activities. Data from 113 global software-development teams distributed across Europe and South America was collected to test these hypotheses. The results indicated that the negative effect of temporal dispersion on team performance was reduced when leaders constantly performed their monitoring and coordination roles. Interestingly national diversity was negatively related to performance in teams when leaders did not frequently engage in their monitor and coordinator roles. However, the relationship between national diversity and team performance turned out to be positive in teams where leaders strongly engage with their monitor and coordinator roles.

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Authors
  1. Iván Alfaro
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Nantes and SKEMA Business School, France

    Frantz Rowe

  2. Tel Aviv University, Israel

    Dov Te’eni

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© 2014 Iván Alfaro

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Alfaro, I. (2014). Helping Global Software-Development Teams to Overcome the Challenges of Temporal Dispersion and National Diversity: The Importance of Leadership Roles. In: Rowe, F., Te’eni, D. (eds) Innovation and IT in an International Context. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336132_9

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