An Examination of the Impact of International Student Status on Global Virtual Teams

ABSTRACT

Scant research exists on international student status and global virtual teams (GVTs). Yet, study abroad post-COVID-19 Pandemic is rebounding and GVTs are frequently used in classrooms and workplaces. This article fills this literary gap through developing and testing models examining student status, performance, creativity, and leadership, while investigating the impact of English language ability in order to inform the international business education (IBE) field. Specifically, the focus here is to understand how international student status affects a student’s individual performance on GVTs. Hypotheses were generated that English language ability would moderate the relationship between international student status and creativity, as well as international student status and leadership. Results showed support, although weak, for these hypotheses. However, the most significant finding was the direct impact of English language ability on the dependent variables. Furthermore, an important contribution here is evidence that international students provide creativity and leadership on teams as long as their language ability is perceived to be good. Instructors may use these findings to design mechanisms to aid cross-cultural teams to work more effectively by providing a better understand how English language ability may influence the team and control for this ability when including peer evaluations scores in grades.