Multicultural working groups and teams

interests, objectives who interact continuingly
Work Team - a group

of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common mission, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable

teams

an overview of the ways in which differences can have

an impact on global teams.

Ekelund, 2004, pp. 232- 234, Table 12.1, adapted)

practices;
Consensus decision-making;
Interpersonal bonds;
Lack of cross-cultural communication barriers;
More cooperation and trust.

to other cultures;
Ethnocentrism.

of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity

in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.

facilitate highly effective teams under right conditions

ideas;
Multiple interpretations;
Increase flexibility;
Increase problem-solving skills;
Better understanding of foreign employees;
Ability to

work with foreign clients;

together, often bring preconceived, erroneous stereotypes with them
Inaccurate biases
Inaccurate communication
Attitudinal

problems
May cause lack of cohesion resulting in unit’s inability to take concerted action or be productive

recognize and prepare to deal with their differences
Team leader must

help identify/define overall goal
Managers must give team positive feedback on process and output

have the most harmonious relations are those where its members:

have the

same status
do not have contradictory interests
do not feel that their ethnic identity is threatened

conditions in the pre-start and start-up phases of global teaming

that will enhance the chances that a team will succeed.

creates, the complexity the team faces in meeting its objective

can be characterized along four different dimensions:

task, context, people, and time.

This section of the lecture contains a discussion of these dimensions and how they interact with one another to contribute to complexity in global teams.

elements:

- workflow interdependence and
- task environment.

of the activities that need to be performed to accomplish

a task.
Tasks are at the low end of interdependence when they can be performed separately by team members and then pooled into a finished product. Moving up the continuum of interdependence, work activities can become sequential and flow unidirectionally from one member to the next.

When activities flow back and forth between members they take on a reciprocal character over time and become even more interdependent. At the high end of the continuum, when team members must make sense together of events or issues, problem-solve or collaborate together simultaneously to complete a task, workflow becomes intensely interdependent.

continuum that varies from static to dynamic.

A static environment

is one that is predictable and stable and is one unlikely to disrupt team tasks or to require much monitoring. Many manufacturing settings have static environments.

At the other end of the continuum, a team’s task environment can be very dynamic and contain many uncertainties. R&D teams and new product development teams often face very dynamic environments. The environment has to be monitored constantly and new information must be brought into the team for interpretation and action on a continuing basis. A dynamic environment can greatly affect a team’s ability to accomplish its task.

if the complexity of the task is low, then there

is no need for team members to work closely together.
But in case of high task complexity the team members have to interact with each other. Therefore, to perform complex tasks they should understand each other and be adapted to each other and such group needs more professional management.

based on context differences. Context is a way of life

and work in a specific geographic area with its own set of business conditions, cultural assumptions, and unique history. Some of the dimensions of context are climate, nationality, education, politics, judicial systems, economic systems, corporate governance, management systems, and incentive, motivation or reward schemes. Next Figure offers a comparison on the dimension of context between traditional teams, that typically work within a single context, and global teams, that are likely to work across multiple contexts.

a variety of expertise and perspectives that are likely required

to accomplish the work and achieve objectives.

This requirement means that the people who design and support, lead or work in global teams bring with them varying degrees of commitment, motivation, expectations, skills, and identities that come from their own (unique) work roles and their national, occupational, and organizational cultures. As a result, global teams are internally diverse on many dimensions, and these differences can add considerable complexity to the teaming situation in multiple ways.

be a team.
Different cultures and organizations can have different

models of teamwork, or “metaphors” that influence team members’ behaviors, for example, a family, community, military or sport metaphor that coincides with national and organizational values

(less than six months) in which to accomplish a complex

task pose the greatest challenges to team design, because they are not likely to have the luxury of time to sort out differences and problems as they arise.
Therefore, it is especially important for these teams to pay careful attention to putting in place a structure that will minimize the complexity that they will have to manage.

high, managers may need to do more to structure the

task and determine workable expectations at the outset, before the team members are brought together for the first time.
Managers should be careful not to make the team too large in an effort to match the complexity of the task. It is an attempt to assign too many different people, representing all possible organizations or groups. However, the more the people involved, the more the resources are required – and all these means need much more coordination, and increase complexity of the task.

complexity?
There are four key design techniques that help create a

supportive environment for global teams:
(1) clearly specify the task objective and align it with organizational strategic initiatives;
(2) make appropriate resources available;
(3) select team members who have the skills, abilities, and experience to work in a global team, including the team leader, if appropriate;
(4) create a sense of urgency

can be helpful in structuring early discussions of the team’s

mission, roles, and responsibilities and in the development of norms for interaction, surfacing salient cultural differences and other contextual influences that the team will need to negotiate.

Ideally, facilitators help team members learn skills for communicating and interacting effectively and can take on the facilitator’s role themselves as they work together over time.

work with some form of organized training that is blended

with work on defining the mission and team goals.

Training can provide explicit instructions about how team members are to conceptualize a problem and how to work together to accomplish an objective.

Initial training can also include skills training that can enhance collaboration, particularly cross-cultural communication, and culture-specific training to surface differences and similarities and to negotiate teaming processes.

at start-up, leaders need to pay particular attention to accomplishing

three things that can significantly affect teamwork, either positively or negatively, through their initial interactions together:

(1) create a working environment;
(2) develop shared “mental models”;
(3) create a sense of community.

have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one

another and the group, and a shared faith that member’s needs will be met through their commitment to be together" (McMillan and Chavis, 1986).