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—
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