"We are optimally evolved to talk at a range of about 5 feet in groups of no more than 90 people" says Ceri Roderick, a partner at an occupation psychologist practice in an article in the "Culture of Collaboration" supplement in the Financial Times last month.
He goes on to say that "unified communications", operating in real time and combining as many forms of communication as possible, such as images, voice and text is the best way when building relationships and trust, solving problems or reviewing progress.
I agree, as the only time I have heard remote conferencing really working across cultures was when it was something that combined voice with everyone being able see slides, data etc and someone doing streaming minutes across the bottom of the screen.
He also says that virtual teams should make time to meet occasionally, and again I concur - it helps people understand the personal and cultural context of others.
The article goes on to point out that video conferencing still isn't growing very fast, despite predictions, and according to Prof Peter Cochrane of ConceptLabs, this is due to poor quality, with no eye contact, gaze awareness, no body language, small people images and no depth of field. Apparently this can now be fixed. But I still think such conferences should include images and text.
Jeffrey Mann of Gartner rightly stresses that asynchronous communication still has a valuable role when communicating with someone in another language, as it gives them more time to think and react.
It finishes off with the inevitable references to Web 2.0 and how a new generation are hitting the workplace who communicate through wikis, blogs and social networks.
Victor Mallet in the Financial Times (subscription required) points out that the Asianisation of business will mean Westerners will have to get used to conference calls being in the middle of the night their time, rather than the middle of the night Asian time...
I posted an article on my official consulting website explaining why videoconferencing doesn't work between different cultures. The same can be said for conference calls, much favoured by US multinationals. A Japanese manager pointed out to me last week that not only do high context cultures dislike them because they can't see the other person's body language, but also that even people from more low context cultures can wreck their efficacy. He said conference calls at his US/German chemicals company regularly grind to a halt when a German participant disagrees on a very narrow point in his area of expertise, then goes off on this tangent at great length, totally throwing the US HQ boss, who only has a thin overall grasp of all the issues.