Implications for managers
As the number of global virtual teams is increasing dramatically these years, our findings are of practical importance for the HRM area. First, the study demonstrates that HRM personnel could engage in training and development activities aimed to increase global virtual teams' openness to language diversity such as diversity awareness training (cf. Kulik & Roberson, 2008). More importantly, however, our results indicate that inspiration motivation leadership offers the needed goal setting to make global virtual teams overcome problems related to insufficient internal communication. Management by exception, however, will not have the same constructive effect. This provides a foundation for the selection, training, and appraisal of team leaders in order to improve the performance management of global virtual teams. Although global HRM selection procedures have been argued to be fairly proficient in securing managers with technical expertise, less attention has been directed towards leadership styles (cf. Muethel, Gehrlein, & Hoegl, 2012). Our findings suggest that those responsible for selecting team leaders for global virtual teams should focus on individuals prone to an inspirational motivation style of leadership or at least have the abilities and the willingness to develop such qualities. A number of tools exist to assess the personality and leadership style of individual organisation members (cf. Den Hartog, Caley, & Dewe, 2007). These can be applied when promoting team members to become team leaders. With regard to training and development, a positive result of transformational leadership training techniques has been documented (Barling, Weber, & Kelloway, 1996).
