Seeking Common Ground While Respecting Differences: Strategy Quality of Multicultural E-Sports Teams

时间：2022年10月28日10:30

地点：承泽园401

ABSTRACT：

How does national cultural diversity influence team decisions in a born-digital as well as born-global sector, such as e-sports? Building on the insights of common ground research and social categorization theory, we argue that in e-sports sector territory-free common grounds are developed, and so are the culture-free gamer identity that transcends virtual and physical worlds. Multicultural e-sports teams could enjoy the benefits of diverse knowledge but not suffer social disintegration when the gamer identity is salient. Since the salience of e-sports gamer identity is subject to challenge mainly in the physical world, to enhance its salience gamers can increase their immersion in the virtual world, reduce connection between the virtual and physical worlds, and/or to increase its salience in the physical world. The results of the regression analysis of 4,035 League of Legends games played by 102 professional teams from 2017 to 2020 delivered support our arguments. When gamers’ e-sports identities become more salient as a result of urgent game rule changes, larger number of virtual characters team members play with, and home court environment, diversity in team members’ national cultures improves the quality of the team strategy, which further associated with better team performance.

Bio：

Zhenzhen Xie is an associate professor in the Department of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy in the School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University. She received her PhD degree from the Department of Management in Hong Kong Unviersity of Science & Technology. Her research interests include the cross-border mergers and acquisitions conducted by multinational corporations from emerging economies, the research and development strategies of multinational corporations, and the impact of internationalization on the innovativeness. Her research has appeared in Journal of International Business Studies, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Management and Organization Review, and Journal of International Management, etc.