Culture

Culture represents a pattern of beliefs, values, assumptions, and behaviors that both develops and persists over time within a social unit. Cultural patterns might be observed at multiple levels including beliefs or assumptions (Schein, 2004), multiple layers including corporate or global (Marquardt & Engel, 1993), multiple factors including religion and family (Marquardt & Engel, 1993), and multiple dimensions including power-distance and uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede, 2001). The multiple locations and individual cultures represented by distributed team members suggests that creation and enhancement of culture by distributed team leaders is more complex than in face-to-face teams. Culture-building tools available to leaders include primary embedding mechanisms such as what leaders pay attention to and who leaders recruit, along with secondary embedding mechanisms including philosophies and creeds (Schein, 2004).