Collaboration between organizations or between distributed groups in global organizations often is accomplished through the formation of partially distributed teams (PDTs ). A PDT has at least two collocated subteams which are distant from each other. As electronic media are the primary means of communication between distributed subteams in a PDT the choice of media to use for both within-and between-subteam communications is critical. In a quasi-experimental field study we examine

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... choices over time and the effects that culture may have on them. Our findings indicate that frequency of media use changes over time and that culture is one variable that may affect it. As subteams within a PDT may have cultures different than each other, it is crucial to understand that there is no "one size fits all" choice of media for a PDT to use. PDTs. We look at the choices made for withinsubteam communication and between-subteam communication. A prior study [1] of PDTs doing similar tasks to the PDTs in this study suggested that PDTs will choose a variety of communication media and that those technologies chosen for within-subteam communication may differ than those chosen for between-subteam communication. In this study we seek to confirm those findings and to also investigate whether or not the media choices change over time. We also investigate whether cultural differences, a crucial element of many PDTs, affect the use of communications media. Thus, our Research Questions are: RQ1: Are choices of communication media by PDTs different for within-subteam communications than for between-subteam communications? RQ2: Do choices of communication media in a PDT change over time? RQ3: Does culture affect the choice and use of communication media in a PDT? The paper is organized as follows: first a literature review of communication and culture is presented and the hypotheses tested are described. Then the methodology, measures of constructs, analysis, results and discussion, conclusions, limitations, future research and contributions are presented. 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 978-0-7695-4525-7/12 $26.00