An interview with Ph.D. Vinita Seshadri on the Role of the Manager in Geographically Dispersed Teams

Transcription of interview with Ph.D. Vinita Seshadri, Assistant Professor - School of Business & Management, Christ University, India.

Research and Development Department

Victoria Gálvez, Senior Project Manager,

Flavia Cáceres, Project Coordinator,

Pablo López, Research Coordinator

(June 6th, 2022)

00:02 Pablo López: Hello, my name is Pablo. Before we start, we would like to

thank you for taking the time to join us here. So let's introduce everybody that is

here, please, Sebastian. First we have Victoria, who is the Senior Project Manager

here at AnnexBox.

00:27 Victoria Gálvez: Hello. It is a pleasure to meet you.

00:30 Pablo López: Next is me. Well, I am a Research and Development

Coordinator here in AnnexBox too. And we also have Sebastian Lezcano, who is also

a Research and Development Coordinator.

00:42 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Hi.

00:45 Pablo López: Next, please. First, I would like to also introduce Annexbox and

who we are. We are an IT startup company and our main goal is to provide global

virtual teams with support and solutions that will enhance their synergy and

productivity. I also would like to explain a little bit about the purpose of this

meeting. Today we would like to discuss some topics related to remote working

and global virtual teams and for that, as you know, we crafted some questions for

you to guide our conversation. So before we start, please be sure that your insight is

of great value for us. All the information obtained here is studied, is analyzed, and

is used to create further knowledge based on your experience and your expertise.

And these will help and support organizations to work better remotely. So, one last thing

before we continue with the interview, I would like to ask you if you're okay with the

interview being recorded and the later transcription of the interview for our use.

02:06 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Yes, sure. I'm fine with that, and provided you share

that with me as well.

02:12 Pablo López: Yeah.

02:12 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: The recording and the transcript will be shared with

me?

02:17 Pablo López: Yes, we can send you that through email if you like.

02:24 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Pablo, I was also thinking, would it be possible to get a

letter from your company saying that I was interviewed?

02:36 Pablo López: Sure.

02:36 Victoria Gálvez: Absolutely.

02:38 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: That actually adds group credential in my university,

because as a professor this is a kind of a research work where we are sharing our

research. So, it will add to my credential that my work was recognized and that I

had given a talk on my research area. So, will that be okay?

02:58 Victoria Gálvez: Yes, absolutely, we will make that happen.

03:01 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: In your company letterhead please state that we had

this interview, this was the topic, and what was the purpose of this interview.

03:10 Victoria Gálvez: Yes, excellent. So, we will follow up with you by email so we

can understand what requirements you would like us to include in that letter

would be, okay?

03:20 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Thank you.

03:21 Victoria Gálvez: All right.

03:24 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: And just to tell you in advance, it's the evening and

my daughter is out playing in the lawn, so she might come in and ring the doorbell.

So there might be some interruption, that is the only thing. Otherwise, I have fixed

everything at home.

03:38 Pablo López: That's completely fine, don't worry. So, having said that, let's

start now with the first question. So, as I mentioned, we are Annexbox and we are

also a remote team and a global team. And as such, we have experienced the

different challenges that working remotely usually brings firsthand. But we would

like to ask you, in your research, what have you identified to be the main or the

biggest challenges that teams experience while working remotely?

04:15 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Sure. I am going to talk about my experience and my

study, a research study, which I did on geographically distributed teams, which is

also a kind of remote team but in this we have to also consider what is the context

of remoteness. Now, post pandemic, a lot of industries have started working

remotely.

But there are also certain industries, especially in the knowledge or information

technology industry, which have been working remotely before the pandemic as

well. So, when we look at the literature or research in virtual teams, which is a kind

of a remote team, there is a lot of research already done. However, this has become

even more prominent after COVID-19, because it says that most of the

organizations are now adopting or have started working in remote teams. So,

managing these remote teams is the biggest challenge. And to manage these

remote teams, you have to understand their characteristics. Were these people

working earlier and now have become virtual remote workers? Is this remoteness

partial? That is, some of them are working together and some of them are working

remotely. Or, is everybody working remotely? That would mean that it is part

hybrid or a completely remote team. Then, what is the extent of remoteness? Now,

if it is in the same city, same time zone, the challenge is only the virtual

communication. But if this remoteness is high in terms of different time zones, they

are so physically distant that they all work in different time zones. For example, in

the United States itself, north, south, east, west, and central have a different time

zone. And, what if it is crossing national boundaries? Then we call these remote

teams a global virtual team. It is working remotely, but people are so physically

distant that they actually fall into different time zones, which creates even more

complex challenges for managers, because then they will have a shorter time

window for communication, there can be cultural differences, which can come into

the manager. The managers now will be having two kinds of challenges: one is the

challenge of working virtually and second is the challenge of culturally diverse

members, because they are all from different nationalities. So the manager has to

understand what is the extent or characteristics of this remote team in terms of

physical distance, time zone, and cultural diversity. All these will bring very different

kinds of challenges to managing. Were these teams working earlier together or is

this the first time? Have these members worked in a virtual team earlier or are they

all new members?

Because now we also see that onboarding is also done virtually, so, many of them

have not seen their managers and team members, but they started off virtually, so

it’s even more difficult. So, these are global virtual teams, which are also known as

geographically distributed teams. That means they are physically and time zone

away, and they're also culturally diverse. So, in my research study, I analyzed what

are the challenges of globally virtual teams, or also known as geographically

distributed teams, when your remoteness is so huge in terms of physical locations

that it brings challenges of virtuality and it also brings challenges of cultural

diversity. So that is the two important challenges that a diverse team would face.

So, in my research study, I look at the Indian IT sector here, and all of you are aware

that the Indian IT sector is one of the global delivery centers of a lot of IT services

around the world. And one of the countries where most of the IT services are

exported is the United States. Almost 70 to 75% of IT services are exported to

Northern America, including Canada. So, in my research study, I looked at this kind

of geographically distributed team, and the offshoring industry or global virtual

team is not a very new concept for the IT industry. Companies from the United

States, Canada, or the UK have looked for offshoring some of their IT services

because of the cost effectiveness, the level of expertise, to access talent or to

leverage the time zone differences so that they can have 24/7 production. So in my

research study, I looked at such geographically distributed teams, which were

prevailing before the pandemic and have been working in a similar kind of

remoteness. And I found that there is a lot more complexity when you are not only

remote, but you're also culturally different and you are in an entirely different time

zone. And most importantly, there is a difference in your status. Working remotely

in an Indian team with team members who are in the United States represents a

difference in status. And this difference in status can be that the other remote

team is a client company and they are vendors. It can also be that they are close to

the corporate office and they are subsidiaries. It can also be that they are close to

customers or they are remotely away from the customer.

So this data's difference in this global virtual team brings challenges of intergroup

conflicts. So that is one of the challenges I looked at, because when you look and

talk about these distances or dispersion in these virtual or remote teams, a lot of

study has been done on these dispersed teams dynamics: from the psychological

lens, from social lens, from management perspective, and from technology

perspective. So, there are a lot of perspectives and a lot of research has been done

on challenges of managing these teams. Do I take a pause, or should I continue?

Should I just go with what I have?

12:16 Pablo López: Yeah. I mean, we have another question to follow up on that one

that you just mentioned. So, continue please.

12:25 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: So, in my research study I did not look at the

technological aspect nor the psychological aspect. I looked at it from a sociological

lens.

12:36 Pablo López: Okay.

12:37 Vinita Seshadri: Now, in sociology, there is a term called social distance. We all

have heard about this term, it is quite prominent now. After the pandemic, it refers

to keeping a six feet distance between people, that's an objective distance. But in

sociology, social distance is subjective and it is more to do with your perception,

how you are looking at your distant member. Bogardus, who is a very well-known

sociologist, talks about social distance in terms of how you perceive the other

members and how much you feel they don't like you. And this social distance is

measured in my study in terms of “us versus them” attitude. That means, we are in

this location and in this time zone, we are all in a group as Indians, so there is us

and they are them. These distributed members can also form subgroups, because

they are from the same nationality, same age group, or they are in the same

location, especially in large teams. And these subgroups can develop into

intergroup bias. So, if you look at the Indian offshoring context, there is usually a

team which is here in India, which is called offshore team, and there is another

team which is there on the client location and is called onshore team, because they

are at the client location. So, though they are working on the same project, they

develop this kind of attitude or bias which is called intergroup bias: we are us and

they are them. There is a Harvard professor called Teasdale Neely, and in 2015 she

wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review titled “How do global virtual teams

work? Teasdale Neely, you could probably google her, she has a lot of YouTube

videos and she is an expert in global virtual teams as well. So she coined this “us

versus them” attitude, this perception of they are our competitors and we are not

allies. And this lack of emotional and social connection she called social distance.

And then when I look back on a lot of studies, this social distance, this intergroup

biases, does have a very negative impact on the team performance because it

reflects lack of trust, it impacts team processes negatively. Collaboration,

communication, cooperation or even cohesiveness is reduced because of this

attitude. Just a moment. There's a doorbell. One second.

16:49 Pablo López: Sure, no problem.

16:51 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: So, that is the biggest challenge: how do you build

social ties and how do you manage this virtuality along with cultural diversity? That

is one of the challenges of working remotely.

17:05 Pablo López: All right. So that is actually really interesting. I wanted to follow

up that with our next question, please. Regarding that social distance that you just

mentioned, these biases that are created between teams, what can we do to

improve that? I mean, what can a global team do to overcome that? What are the

main solutions? Maybe you have identified a solution to that in your research.

17:33 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Yes. The big role of the manager in this matter is

making sure the global virtual team works effectively. The manager on this end,

manager on that end, the manager acts as a bridge to close this distance. The

manager is the face, he is interacting at both ends and he represents his respective

team. The manager has a lot of roles: shares information, communicates, delegates

tasks, and also most of the time in these global virtual teams, managers do have

experience working remotely. So if you look at offshoring, a lot of people who

become managers are the ones who had experienced working in the US or at

Canada or at UK or an onsite, because then they understand the perspective of a

client or a corporate office, or a customer. So that is very important for managers.

So, in the study, when we looked at different articles, a lot of research studies say

that this intergroup bias does have a negative impact on virtual teams, that is

established. So, what is the solution? In my research study, I had surveyed 500

Indian offshore team members. And I measured the “us versus them attitude” they

have towards their distant team member, which is who is located outside India.

And the results of the study showed that there is this attitude in them, that they

have this “us versus them attitude”, and that is negatively impacting their

perception. So, what practices should the managers adopt? From my research

study, I looked at four practices. First is task interdependence. A lot of managers,

when they manage remote teams, usually may experience that when the tasks are

interrelated between remote teams it becomes very challenging and it takes a lot

more effort. So many times a manager tries to design a task that it doesn't involve a

lot of communication between the remote team members. But they don't

understand that creating task interdependence, only lead to a lot of opportunity for

communication and sharing of information, which is missing in the virtual team,

but that actually creates an opportunity to talk to each other, to understand each

other's context and to build that social ties, to build that interpersonal connection

between remote team members. So, having interdependent tasks helps in

reducing this “us versus them”, because if I know that my work and your work is shared and interdependent, which will lead and can have an impact on the team, they would learn to cooperate and will be forced to cooperate because that is how the task is designed. So that's first. Second, I would say that inclusive communication. They know that it's a culturally

diverse team, people are from different cultures. Language is one important thing:

if you look at a lot of study between German and Dutch, Dutch and Americans, and

Dutch and Indians, English is a very widely used language across the world. We also

see that this also becomes a huge problem because people who are fluent in

English or people comfortable with the language mostly dominate the

conversations in the meeting and people who are shy or are not very fluent stay

mute. And because they are shy and mute, they don't feel connected or they don't

identify with the team and they do not give their hundred percent, they don't share

their views, they are hesitant to open up about their ideas, even though their ideas

might be great, we missed out because they were not very confident in the

language. So, what is the role of a manager here? The role of a manager is to create

that inclusion in communication: sharing emails with everybody, allowing every

remote member to access the same kind of information, encouraging people who

are shy, quiet, or introverted to open up and share, and make sure that not a few

people dominate the conference calls. So create that inclusiveness in this virtual

team through communication, making sure everybody is involved and

participating. And third, sharing contextual information. Like I told you, this

manager would have worked in a client site or would have got some amount of

cultural training, but people who are back here may not understand what is

happening in an American work situation, or an American will not know what

happens in an Indian work context. What are the holidays? Which context are we

working in? What are the different time zones? Who is who? Whom to contact?

This kind of contextual information should be shared by the manager. That helps to

understand and to reduce the abstractness when working with a remote team that

I have never met personally. And for this fostering shared identity, managers should emphasize that we are all working on the same project, though we are distantly away. We are allies and not competitors, we should be open in our communication and share our

apprehension if we have a distant member, encourage people to connect

individually, not only in the conference meeting, but apart from conference

meeting also people can instant message each other, or send an email and share

information. Such kind of practices will bring in our team identification, and will

reduce this “us versus them” attitude among the distributed team members.

However, this kind of practices will only work in teams with a higher status. Like I

told you, if the Indian team feels that the American team has a higher status

because they are their client or they are closer to the customer, then these

practices will not work because they will still perceive that they are a level higher

than us, they have the authority. An Indian has a huge distance compared to an

American working culture. So, if you bring in that status, it will only widen the gap.

So, what should be done? People from higher status teams have to make sure that

they interact frequently, they take interest in understanding, they appreciate and

recognize the team which has a lower status. Maybe a vendor, a subsidiary, or

someone that is away from the business plan. If that status is there, these practices

will not work. So the team should feel that we are equals, we have clients and

vendors and we are equals. And how do you accentuate that equality? By frequent

interaction. Appreciating each other and recognizing each other's work, that your

work is also important and we appreciate your work. Also understanding each

other's context. Then these practices will help in reducing this social distance and

you will find that teams will become much more effective.

26:59 Pablo López: Great, thank you for sharing your thoughts on that. That will

also help us because we have experienced that. I mean, we are also a remote team.

We have team members from different parts of the world, so that is something that

we can all reflect. And just to continue with the interview, I would like to follow up what you just mentioned, that identity that teams built when working together and that is also called culture, right? And that is exactly what our next question is about. So, please Sebastian. Some virtual teams and geographically distributed teams have a bad time trying to build and maintain their culture working remotely. So, in that sense, we would like to ask you if you

have identified any aspects that can maintain or enhance the team's culture while

working in a remote environment.

28:00 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: So yeah, when we looked at shared identity, there was

also one research study named “How to Enhance this Shared Identity?” So, it

mentioned things like having common team names, having team logos, having

team t-shirts, whenever you come down to a remote site to go for team lunches.

Those things I have seen many times, you know, managers do that. But, how do

you do it remotely if you are not able to travel? Because even that is very costly, to

go to a different site. The only thing to create a team culture is inclusiveness,

because we have to understand that such a widely distributed team is not only

managing virtuality but it is also culturally different. So, how do you bring that

inclusiveness to develop or maintain your team culture? If the managers are not

culturally sensitive, not culturally aware, or are not able to empathize with someone

who is from a different culture, he or she will not be able to make a communication

environment which is all inclusive. So, it is important that the managers are also

trained, or even the members, on cross-cultural competency or cross-cultural

awareness. If you are dealing with a person like me in India, you have to understand

what is the Indian time zone, what would be the context in where I will be and

what is my working style. All that you have to empathize with, and you have to be

very sensitive to it, and that would actually bring in the team culture. But if you say,

“Hey, I am the client and you have to be available all the time, you will always be a

distant member with whom I just have to do work,” I will not feel that connected

with you. So that is one thing, inclusiveness, cultural awareness, appreciating and

recognizing work, taking interest, and having empathy with distant members. I

think that will maintain the team's culture in a remote environment. We know it is

very challenging, unless you sit together and work together, it is very challenging to

build that togetherness, but I think communication is the only thing that you can

do. They say that having a kickoff meeting, the first meeting, well, video calls can

help. Because at least people can see each other, and seeing someone's reaction to

your conversation is very important to build that human connection. So, I think

investing in video conferencing is very important. And maybe sometimes meeting

up, catching up together, if the budget of the company allows it, I think that would

be a great way. They need to meet at least once in person.

31:13 Pablo López: Great. Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic.

Now, I think we can move on to another different thing. Well, it is kind of different,

but it is also related to this same topic, which is regarding motivation and

engagement. We identified that this can be also a very big challenge for remote

companies. Even in a conventional office environment, some people have trouble

with motivation and engagement. So in that case, what can a remote worker do to

keep his or herself motivated? I mean, is it his or her responsibility? Is it the

company's responsibility? What have you identified?

31:58 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: So when it comes to basic motivation, we know it is

work to earn a living. So that is a basic motivation. But engagement is very

important, if I know that I will not be hurt in my team, if I know that others

dominate in the conversation, or if I am hesitant to share my views because the

other person is closed-minded, I think that itself will put me off and I would say,

“Okay, let me just do my work and what has been assigned to me and eventually I

will get my money at the end of the month.” So this engagement is the challenge.

Motivation is the same, whether it is remote or physical working, motivation is the

same: reward, appreciation, recognition, promotion, those are all basic motivations

whether remotely or physically. But what makes me lose the engagement is that

I am not seeing my team members or my manager, and I amsitting all day.

I am not exchanging any personal strong bonds with anybody, so why should

I put an extra effort in this? That is when I think shared identity and inclusion

will help to build that “us culture” or “we culture”. That you are giving me

a chance to share my ideas and my views are important to you, even though I do

not agree with the team, you are okay to listen to my apprehensions about the

decisions of the team. We also called it a “psychologically safe communication

environment” where I will be heard, my views can be different, but the manager

encourages open discussions and arguments that will keep me engaged in this,

and everybody's given a chance to do that. I think that will be a good way to keep

engaged.

34:12 Pablo López: Okay. So, I think it all comes down to being culturally aware,

right?

34:20 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Cultural awareness, yes. But once you are aware of

culture, what do you do next? These days a hot topic is DIE (diversity, inclusion and

equality). Now you have to bring that in a remote setting, and the only way of doing

that in a remote setting is communication, how you are talking, how you are

encouraging everybody to talk and share and participate. So that kind of inclusion

is very important.

34:52 Pablo López: All right.

34:54 Victoria Gálvez: I have a question.

34:55 Pablo López: Yeah, go on Victoria.

34:56 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Sure.

34:57 Victoria Gálvez: So, a lot of companies are now implementing cultural

awareness training, like workshops and sessions. And I wanted to know what you

think about, how valuable this is considering that this could also lead to all of a

sudden understanding that there are so many differences between your coworkers

from other countries and you, and so how to find the balance so that we can still

have that goal of creating the us culture in mind.

35:31 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Very good question, this is what the physical offices

were dealing with. So, you and us can have different cultures, but there are certain

universal values which we have to keep in mind while working together: honesty,

transparency, openness. So, if you look at global companies like Accenture, IBM and

Cisco who have offices in more than a hundred locations, how are they getting

people to work for one common goal? So, they have a defined set of core values,

which is universally accepted: honesty, being committed to your work, and

high-performance. These are universally accepted, whether you are from Mexico,

India, the US or Indonesia. So you have to get people to accept those common

values on which your core mission or vision or core culture is based on. You have to

create an organization of empathy. I am not saying to adapt to that culture of your

team members, just be aware that there can be different perspectives because of

this. Or if someone is saying only yes, it can be only because in their culture they

are very hesitant to say no, like in China. Just know the difference, not adapt to it,

and get everybody to agree on these common core values. So, Victoria, I think that

is my answer to this question.

37:44 Victoria Gálvez: Yes, it absolutely makes sense. Like, instead of focusing on

the actual differences, it is just being aware of them and then help them to focus

on the core values. And I also like the keyword empathy and how important that is.

We may not know the background of our coworkers, just like we would do in a

physical setting in which if we see someone who is having a hard day or a hard

time, then we come into the office and say, “Hey, what is going on?” And that is

sometimes lost, and I guess one of the reasons it could also be because of the lack

of collaborations. So, going back to what you said at the beginning, task

interdependence really allows that opportunity of interaction, and even though it is

about the task, it could also lead to some casual conversations in which you

actually get to know your coworkers as a person more, right? Did I get it correctly?

38:46 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Yes, very nicely.

38:48 Victoria Gálvez: Thank you. I'm learning a lot.

38:51 Pablo López: Okay, great. So, let's continue with our interview. Let's talk now

about something different. Please, next question, Sebastian. So, this question is

related to skills. There are some skills that make working remotely a much better

experience. So, we would like to know, in your experience, if you have identified any

set of skills that help to work better remotely.

39:15 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Yeah, I have. I think when it comes to hard skills, it is

mainly the usage of communication with computer mediated tools. There are so

many, especially if you look at IT, like Slack. Using these collaborative tools is one

hard skill. Language is one hard skill also, if your language is not English, especially

if you are a European and you are dealing with an American teammate, then

improving on your English language becomes very important. So, language skill

and the usage of computer mediated tools is very, very important. So these are two

hard skills. Soft skills are being culturally aware and communication skills. I think

those are the soft skills that I feel are very important in remote.

40:12 Pablo López: Great, so yeah, we have just a couple of questions left in order to

finish our interview. The next one is regarding productivity. Well, we have been

talking about these different challenges and different solutions, but also

productivity can be a very big challenge, and of course there are a lot of different

opinions about it too. So, we will like to ask you if you have identified any strategies

to enhance the work team's productivity.

40:40 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Yes. When you are talking about team productivity,

we are talking in terms of quality of work, costs, meeting deadlines, less error, and

improving efficiency. So, though I have looked at the social aspect of a team in my

research, if you look at the social aspect of teams, it will impact team processes. So,

if there is a team identity, oneness, communication, collaboration, cohesiveness,

and cooperation increase, which leads to better team productivity. So, all these

practices: knowing contextual information, dealing with synchronous and

asynchronous communication, managers, clarifying roles and responsibility,

showing empathy, managers should have regular and need tailored prompt

communication with these team members. All that will lead to better team

outcomes and will enhance productivity.

41:55 Pablo López: Okay. Great. So now in order to finish our interview, this next

question is actually related to your work. We would like to ask you, what are your

suggestions for people who wish to continue your research on the role of managers

in geographically distributed teams?

42:14 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: In this area there's a lot of research which I reviewed,

and there are two problems. Any research says, what should be the role of a

manager in a geographically distributed team? And the results say, a facilitator and

a communicator. You have to facilitate conversation, mentor people, coach people

on how to work together. So you have to act as a liaison, as a linking pin, and you

have to be a communicator, you have to be prompt in your communication with

everybody, you have to be regular and detailed. So, I think people who want to

explore more on this now can do more study on what are the roles of a manager

when the teams are partially distributed, hybrid, fully remote, have worked

together, or have members who have never worked together. I think they have to

understand the role of manager in these different contexts of remoteness. So, if you

do not have culturally diverse people and you are just working remotely, there is a

different role. Suppose all of you are in one location that is the United States and

you are in the same time zone, the cultural aspect is the only virtuality which you

have to probably deal with. How about if you have been working together in the

office and now post-pandemic you all decided that you really do not need an office

space and just work remotely. Then there are different dynamics involved. How

about if you have never worked together and it's the first time you are working in

this company. I think managers have to understand the context of remoteness, and

then they have to relocate how they can be task-oriented, and how they have to be relationship-oriented. Managers also have to understand the characteristics of

remoteness and act accordingly to make sure the team is more effective and

efficient in working. That can be further research avenues.

44:39 Pablo López: Great. Yeah. This topic has a lot of different things that are not

covered yet. Definitely, we will see more research in this topic in the future. But

yeah, with that we can wrap up our interview. I do not know if anyone else has

anything else to add.

44:55 Victoria Gálvez: I just wanted to add a comment. A lot of the information that

you have shared with us today has really been eye opening, especially for me in my

role as a manager. I think there are a lot of things that I will be able to apply into

our team. Just to give you some background about us. We started out fully remote.

Then after about a year of working together remotely, some of the team

members met in person for the first time, that was actually in December last year,

which was a very nice experience as well. And everything that we are learning

through these interviews that our R&D team is conducting, we are also trying to

implement in our own team so we can be the living proof that these research-based initiatives work.

45:53 Pablo López: Great. Thank you, Victoria, for that explanation. Again, thank you

for taking the time to join us here today. You will hear from us soon to send you

your request and also for the transcriptions.

46:11 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Yeah, sure. Actually, what I had shared was part of my

PhD study. The topic for my PhD study was “The Role of Managers in Bridging

Social Distance in Geographically Distributed Teams.” My study has been published

as a book chapter, you can probably search it. It is called “Managing Social Distance

in Geographically Distributed Teams.” So, all I have shared is a book chapter

published in a book which is about remote teams. Maybe you can just google it, I

have uploaded it on ResearchGate and you can probably have a look at it. All this

learning has been from that research study. So, thank you so much for giving me

this opportunity, it has been great. I really found your questions very interesting,

and I actually had to write it down to respond to these questions. Thank you so

much and it was so nice. I was glad to interact with all of you and I hope my

interview helps your company and to provide consulting to other global virtual

teams.

47:22 Pablo López: Yes, definitely. Thanks to you for sharing that chapter with us.

We will definitely look at it. Hope you have a nice day and hope to see you soon.

47:35 Ph. D. Vinita Seshadri: Thank you, same to you. Have a nice day to all of you.

47:37 Victoria Gálvez: Have a good day, bye.

47:40 Pablo López: Take care, thank you.

47:44 Sebastian Lezcano: Thank you.

—End of Interview—