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Evaluate the impact of cultural differences on international business
The importance of cultural differences in international businesses
Cultural differences in multinational organizations
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The journal article is titled “Creating Hybrid Team Cultures: An Empirical Test of Transnational Team Functioning” authored by, P. Christopher Earley and Elaine Mosakowski from Indiana and Purdue University respectively. The journal provides information on a study that was carried out to measure the impact of heterogeneity and performance of an international organization. The journal tests the relationship between heterogeneity of a team specifically on the issues of cultural differences and the effectiveness of such a team. The main argument is that transnational teams once they have successfully overcome the challenges of heterogeneity will create a certain culture that is unique to them through which effective evaluation and performance is achieved. This type of a culture that the team attains is referred to as a hybrid culture (Earley & Masokwoski, 2000). The journal therefore contains three studies that test the relationship between team heterogeneity and effectiveness.
Main Findings
The findings of study 1 purports that in order to create a team that is heterogeneous yet unifi...
A virtual team refers to a collection of collaborating persons in geographically dispersed means. This group of persons do work across space, time and organizational boundaries and are connected together via information and telecommunication technologies in order to accomplish one or more organizational goals. The virtual teams do require new array of ways to work across boundaries through processes, systems, technology and people. This does require effective leadership in order to be a success.
Teams have become integral parts and driving forces of success in organizations. A key common attribute among highly
Dahlin, K. B., Weingart, L. R., & Hinds, P. J. (2005). Team Diversity and Information Use. The Academy of Management Journal , 48 (6), 1107-1123.
As the processes and systems used in business have become more complex, teams, not individuals, have become popular in many organizations. Teams are made up of individuals from an organization brought together to solve a problem, improve a process or implement a new process. “A major advantage that a team has over an individual is its diversity of resources and ideas” (Burns, 1995, p. 52). However, this diversity can cause conflict within the team. The success of the team is strongly influenced by the team’s ability to recognize the causes of, manage and resolve conflict.
Keogh, Jack. "International Teams: Beyond Cultural Difference." www.jackkeogh.com. Keogh and Associate Consulting, LLC, n.d. Web. 6 May 2012. http://www.jackkeogh.com/Multicultural team article by JK.pdf
Cultural diversity is an essential piece of the team-building puzzle. As stated earlier, a heterogeneous team usually equals a successful team. A culturally diverse team brings the obvious cultural differences in language, dress and traditions to the table. In addition, less tangible characteristic such as moral values are equally, if not more important. These different methodologies and teachings help influence the team's direction. Persons of Western culture will have a different set of beliefs and methodologies from those of Middle Eastern or Eastern ethnicity. When team members take the time to learn and understand each culture's moral value, the result is a strong team foundation. High performance teams take and incorporate these cultural differences and use these different beliefs and values to attain the team goal.
Today’s organizations operate in a challenging and global environment, which has forced them to become leaners, reduce production cycles, and improve production and communication technology where essential employees and content expertise have been consolidated. Organizational leaders currently do not have definitive evidence of management styles that they should seek to ensure members of a culturally diverse virtual team develop leadership, trust, and accountability. Virtual team management effectiveness will be evaluated under the five main types of management styles (Robert Tannenbaum & Warren H. Schmidt, 1958 & 1973) and other modern styles. These management styles or theories are the autocratic, democratic, bureaucratic, paternalistic, and laissez-faire. However, there are other more “modern” management styles or lead...
When we think of the word team, individually many different ideas may come to mind about what a team really is. Some may think of an NFL team (Tennessee Titans), an NBA team (Sacramento Kings), or a NASA astronaut team with such pioneers as Edwin Aldrin, Jr. and Neil Armstrong as members. You might even think of the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, or Marines as teams. In fact they all are, and they have a great deal in common as teams. However, for the purposes of this paper I will examine the characteristics of work teams, as they apply to organizations and I will supply answers to the following questions: What is a team? Where did the team concept come from? What are the types of teams? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having teams in organizations? What does it take to make a team effective?
The use of culturally diverse business teams is an increasingly common situation in today’s world; especially as the world continues to become a global village. Leveraging on the cultural diverse backgrounds and experiences of members of such teams can be a source of improved performance which can ultimately reflect a competitive advantage in the business market. As Symons and Stenzel (2007) aptly state, “culturally diverse teams are more likely to engage in innovative `out-of-the-box' thinking, given their different life experiences in diverse social environments.” Another pointer to suggest that multicultural teams tend to be a source of competitive advantage in business is found in the paper by Di Stefano and Maznevski (2000) where they state that “multicultural teams have an enormous wealth of material with which to create innovative approaches to complex organizational challenges.” They furthermore state that “today’s business cannot flourish without the creative value afforded by high performing global teams.”
In the early research by Gassman (1467), he illustrated that although diversity in the team result language barriers and cultural differences are occurred frequently, some benefits can still be found, for example, open up opportunities. Another experiment in problem solving creativity found that, the team which composed of people have different attitudes and perspectives were much better than the team which composed of people with similar attitudes (Triandis). Although diversity in team members has been shown some advantages for creativity and innovation, there still some research and experiment demonstrated that there are no relationships between team member diversity and team performance or the diversity in team members have negative impact on creativity and innovation. Ochse (1990) illustrated that creativity may be impeded if the team member is quite knowledgeable at their own area. Another study from Diehl (1992), demonstrated that, although team member diversity did increase the team ability of creative ideas, it not mean that diversity teams are outperform homogeneous teams. As these researchers explored, diversity in team members, not only bring positive influence but also the negative
Organizations use teamwork because it increases productivity. This concept was used in corporations as early as the 1920s, but it has become increasingly important in recent years as employ...
Sonderberg, A-M & N Holden. (2002), Rethinking cross cultural management in a globalizing business world' International Journal of Cross Culture Management 2(1): 103-121
A well-managed bi-cultural team is proven to be a success because when people from different backgrounds bring their own unique cultural experiences to the situations they face in their companies and this broader perspective of viewpoints tends to allow for a better ultimate resolution, however if those teams are not managed properly, and if the size of those teams are not managed, and the individuals are not catered to, the cons may outweigh the
Many of the talents and skills they regularly use on a daily basis will transfer to the project tasks that they may to be assigned.
Many businesses place an emphasis on the importance of teamwork. A good team consists of people with different skills, abilities and characters. A successful team is able to blend these differences together to enable the organisation to achieve its desired objectives.