Cultural Intelligence and Collective Efficacy in Virtual Team Effectiveness

This study explores the relationships between cultural intelligence, collective efficacy, and virtual team effectiveness. Data was collected from 110 students at a mid-western university. Participants were randomly selected to be in the same- or diverse-cultural dyad teams, and they are asked to work on a personnel selection task through a computer-mediated communication tool. It was hypothesized that cultural intelligence and collective efficacy would be positively correlated with virtual team performance and satisfaction. Another hypothesis was that collective efficacy would mediate the relationship between cultural intelligence and diverse virtual team performance and satisfaction. It was also hypothesized that the same results would be found for both diverse- and single-cultural teams. Foreign language skill and international traveling experience were expected to link to cultural intelligence. Results revealed that collective efficacy was weakly correlated with decision outcome satisfaction. Overall and meta-cognitive cultural intelligence were correlated with decision outcome satisfaction only in the diverse-cultural teams. Foreign language skill and traveling experience were found to weakly predict cultural intelligence. Implications and future directions are also discussed.