Conversational spaces in teams: A cross-cultural study of American and Spanish MBA teams

In today's organizational environment, managers and leaders are beginning to find themselves not only working with teams but also that these teams are becoming more cross-cultural, even multicultural - increasing the need for global leaders and managers. In this study, we used the Conversational Space Inventory (CoSI) (Lingham, 2004) that both measures and maps out a team's context (one involving human interaction and communication) based on their Real experiences and the Ideal experiences they would like to have along four major aspects: Divergent, Convergent, Status, and Recursive Spaces. We also provide a brief overview of the Theory of Conversational Learning (from which the CoSI was developed) and its relation to cross cultural research. The CoSI was administered to MBA students in similar programs in two countries - America (n=176) and Spain (n=152). The mapping from the data shows one distinct feature: Only the teams Real Divergent Spaces were different. Ideal Spaces for both cultures were similar. This finding would have implications for future research on teams and cross-cultural research.