Research Purpose And Questions

After a week of hanging around doing nothing in total frustration I gave birth to an awsome Research Purpose formulation (anybody who does not believe in its awsomness - is no longer my friend!!!):

Research Purpose (copywrite T. Loskutova 26 April 2010 - of course - all rights reserved!)
The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of cultures diversity on virtual team work and productivity. Previous research (Hall and Whyte 1960) (Hofstede 1984) (Trompenaars 1996) suggests that the issue of cultural diversity has a significant effect on workspace, negotiation, communication, output quality (Furumo 2005) and general life and work level of satisfaction of team members (Furumo 2005).
Though well-examined and measured for a collocated team the issue of cultural diversity remains under-researched for a virtual team (Chauvet 2009) , which can be due to the novelty and ambiguity of VT definitions and scope (Schultze and Orlikowski 2001).
This is an exploratory research, which will be focused on determining the cultural dimensions (Hofstede 1984) (Trompenaars 1996) and variables perceived as important by the team members. The research will also try to analyse how these factors influence VT work, members’ lifestyle and quality of the outputs. It would be interesting to determine the directions for the future research, but identifying cultural factors and dimensions applicable for a VT environment.
Research Questions
The research will be help using qualitative method and the following questions will establish the direction for the research:
1. What challenges do software professionals face when working in a culturally diverse virtual team?
2. What management behaviour do software professionals expect to help them mitigate the cultural diversity impact on their work?
3. What kinds of relationships are developed between members of a team with different cultural background?
4. What kind of cultural adjustments can be suggested for VT members?

Chauvet, M. (2009) Cultural diversity of distributed teams, Proceedings of the special interest group on management information system's 47th annual conference on Computer personnel research, pp. 221-224, ACM, Limerick, Ireland.
Furumo, K. A. (2005) The impact of personality, task and technology on perceived team interaction and performance in virtual teams. Unpublished Dissertation, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, United States -- Illinois.
Hall, E. T. and Whyte, W. F. (1960) Intercultural Communication: A Guide to Men of Action, International Executive, 2(4), pp. 14-15.
Hofstede, G. (1984) Culture's Consequences, ABRIDGED EDITION ed., SAGE PUBLICATIONS, Newbury Park London New Delhi.
Schultze, U. and Orlikowski, W. J. (2001) Metaphors of virtuality: shaping an emergent reality, Information and Organization, 11(1), pp. 45-77.
Trompenaars, F. (1996) Resolving International Conflict: Culture and Business Strategy, Business Strategy Review, 7(3), p. 51.