hi,

I try to answer some of the questions regrading to the article. The first question is not clear to me but I will try to answer as I understand it. Hofstede developed a cultural model that helps to describe the cultural diversity among nations. I think a nation means the totally of indidividuals. What is true for the nation may apply for the individual group members. His model could taken as a starting point to understand the cross cultural reasearch teams.

Regarding to the second question, prior knowledge and experience is important for our future activities. I personally new to our project, except few readings on culture. I need to read more and practical engagement to decide my own role. Therefore I prefere more pre-determined with someone telling me what I am going to do in this phase of the project.

In my opinion, culture affects the work of distributed team performance. When you are working in a team, if you are from the same culture, you can easily understand with each other. Your previous experience help for quick and smooth flow of ideas. You can easily understand the meaning of the word without too much explanation. But in multicultural teams, there are many gaps to understand with each other. Sometime I may be relectant to express my feeling to some other person. Becuase I don't know how the other person interpretes it. In our society culture, what ever you say, people say you - that is nice, that is good but they will not tell you their real feelings becuase of the fear that thier word my spoil their future relationship.

In addition to culture, there are also other factors that affect the virtual team- what is the environment in which we are operating. That affects the individual team performance. The problem in Ethiopia may not be a problem in Finland. If I raise it as a problem, the others may not even understand how it is a problem because they may not heard it or experienced it before.

Temtim, Ethiopia