Building Cohesion Across Borders: Team Dynamics in International Environments

Sammanfattning

This thesis investigates how professionals working in multinational corporations build and maintain team cohesion in remote work arrangements. This investigation is contrasted against how cohesion is built in traditional face-to-face settings. Remote work has now become a permanent feature of organizational life where managers are now required to lead teams over vast geographical and cultural distances.In order to address this issue a qualitative study grounded in theoretical frameworks on trust, culture, communication and leadership was conducted. Empirical data was collected through eleven semi-structured interviews with professionals all working in internationally dispersed teams in both commercial and industrial sectors.The findings show that in the four themes the same pattern emerges: what develops naturally in a shared physical environment needs to be actively created in virtual ones. Trust takes longer to build remotely and requires physical interaction as a foundation. Cultural differences are harder to detect and easier to misinterpret digitally. Informal communication, which builds personal connection, is absent in virtual settings. Leadership was found to be a structural challenge and not an individual one.This study contributes to international business literature by arguing that virtual leadership challenges are structural rather than individual at the same time it offers practical insights for managers working in these environments.