Taking it Out of Context: Collaborating Within and Across Cultures in Face-to-Face Settings and via Instant Messaging

As new communications media foster international collaborations, we would be remiss in overlooking cultural differences when assessing them. In this study, 24 pairs in three cultural groupings—American-American (AA), Chinese-Chinese (CC) and American-Chinese (AC) –worked on two decision-making tasks, one face-to-face and the other via IM. Drawing upon prior research, we predicted differences in conversational efficiency, conversational content, interaction quality, persuasion, and performance. The quantitative results combined with conversation analysis suggest that the groups viewed the task differently—AA pairs as an exercise in situation-specific compromise; CC as consensus-reaching. Cultural differences were reduced but not eliminated in the IM condition.