Introduction
The evolution of globalization and the advancement of communication technology have increased the amount of cross cultural, virtual teams in existence in today’s business world. Cross cultural, virtual teams can leverage on the diverse experiences of its members to achieve good results even without the members meeting face to face.
Having good leadership of any project team is undoubtedly essential for the success of the team. It is thus imperative for virtual, cross cultural teams to be led properly and carefully so that their cultural diversity and virtual presence does not become a source of conflict and eventual failure.
Challenges posed by cultural diversity among team members
There are a number of challenges that a project leader is likely to face when leading a cross cultural team. Brett et al (2006) describes four major challenges namely; challenges with communication style, troubles with accents and fluency, differing responses to hierarchy and differences in decision making styles.
Cross cultural teams are quite unique when compared to traditional mono-cultural business teams. Mono-cultural team members share similar ideas on how to pass information. The team members of a mono-cultural team also interpret statements in a similar manner. Thus, mannerisms and words spoken are usually clearly understood with almost no ambiguity. This represents a possible advantage over cross cultural teams who have members with different communication styles. There is a tendency for people who come from a background where words and meanings are explicitly stated to misunderstand other members who like to imply meanings in their statements and vice versa. This misunderstanding can often lead to conflicts that can eventual...
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...1), pp.84-91, Business Source Premier [online].
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Symons, J. & Stenzel, C. (2007) ‘Virtually borderless: an examination of culture in virtual teaming’, Journal of General Management, 32 (3), pp.1-17, Business Source Premier [online].
http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=25012463&site=ehost-live . Accessed: 21st March, 2012
Kossek, E.E, Lobel, S.A & Brown, J. (2005) ‘Human Resource Strategies to Manage Workforce Diversity: Examining the Business Case’. Available at: http://books.google.com.ng/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zUYHDw_detEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA53&dq=HR+strategies+in+designing+multicultural+teams&ots=GQEMrnrt3N&sig=jXJCo2ifZdrMBa4rC-8ruKFJClw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false Accessed: 27th March, 2012.
The diversity of an organization’s workforce and taking affirmative steps to attract, develop and retain diverse employees has become an essential component to business success. It is to encourage managers to use all resources when recruiting to enhance the cultural diversity in their work place as “dynamic atmosphere of collaboration”.
The process of forming virtual teams is very crucial and plays a significant role in the success of a virtual team, since the team members can be formed from virtually anywhere. As such, the management of the particular organizations needs to take significant care in the formation of virtual teams. Lerner (2008), did say that the leaders of distributed teams should have a heightened sense of awareness of the various subgroup formations and their weaknesses”. Thus the formation of virtual teams is critical to ensuring the objectives for a given project are met and the chemistry of the team is proper to achieve given goals. Karayaz (2006) did define thr...
Moran, R. T., Harris, P. R., & Moran, S. V. (2007). Managing Cultural Differences, Seventh Edition: Global Leadership Strategies for the 21st Century (7th ed.). Butterworth-Heinemann.
The purpose of creating teams is to solve a problem or issue through the use of diverse ideas and solutions. There are many times in life, whether at work or at school that one will encounter a diverse mix of personalities. Workplace diversity is everywhere, from the small corner business to the fortune 500 company, and is one of the most important challenges facing companies today. This mix of diverse personalities, gender, race, experience, and culture is what makes a team successful. This is an example of a heterogeneous team. On the other hand, a team with the same make-up, or homogeneous, has limitations on creativity, viewpoints and ideas. This paper will look at cultural diversity and demographic characteristics, specifically age, gender, expertise/ experience and how each plays an integral part in the construction of a high performance team.
...he solution. Instead the solution is to develop richer and more complex processes of accomplishing the leadership tasks. Project Managers facing a complex challenge should focus on how to set direction for the team, create alignment between them, and generate their commitment and ignore how many people are, or are not, leaders. Making the accomplishment of the leadership tasks at the core of leadership raises new questions: What are the barriers or obstacles project managers should clears in order to set a clear direction, create an effective alignment, and generate a solid commitment? What resources exist in the organization that project managers could tap in for creating direction, alignment, and commitment as a complex challenge is being tackled? Answering these kind of questions can assist organizations avoid the traditional problems of distributed leadership
The management and development of leadership, trust, and accountability in culturally diverse virtual team members is an important business topic in today’s global economy.
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.
There are several factors that are important if a culturally diverse business team is to flourish and realize its vast potential. Di Stefano and Maznevski (2000) claim that there are three imperative steps to achieving multicultural team success; namely, mapping the team; where the team members need to clearly understand their cultural differences in how they work and view success. This is often led by the team leader. Next, the team must bridge, that is, to communicate with one another, bearing in mind their cultural differences. Finally, the team must integrate, meaning that they bring together these differences and leverage on them to succeed.
Thomas, D., Bostrom, R. P., & Gouge, M. (2007). Making knowledge work in virtual teams. Communications of the ACM, 50(11), 85-90. Retrieved June 13, 2008, from EBSCOhost database.
Parker, G., (2003). Cross- Functional Teams: Working with Allies, Enemies, and Other Strangers. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass. pp. 170- 194.
This week’s class discussion and the reading are very critical for every leader in this globalized world. I will base my reflections on the article “Leading across Cultures”
In today’s globalized world, multicultural teams accomplish a significant proportion of organizational work. Multicultural teams are formed because they improve organizational effectiveness in the global business environment. As such, multicultural teams offer huge potential to organizations. The most critical and practical challenge multicultural teams face is managing conflicts across members’ national cultural boundaries. Other cultural challenges in multicultural teams include dealing with coordination and control issues, maintaining communication richness, and developing and maintaining team cohesiveness. For multicultural teams to be effective, members must learn to address the challenges that arise from team members’ differing nationalities and cultural backgrounds.
There are four different types of teams. These teams are problem-solving teams, self-managed work teams, cross-functional teams, and virtual teams. Problem-solving teams work together to help find methods to improve the work environment or have suggestions to increase employee’s morale. Self-managed work teams organize the responsibilities of the employee’s such as assigning tasks to individuals, scheduling conflicts, and evaluate employee performances. Cross-functional teams are individuals whom all have experience in the same work field. The individuals come together as a team to incorporate their thoughts, designs, and new ideas to accomplish what the company needs to improve or create. Virtual teams are individuals that work together, but only by technology such as the internet, emails, or web cam.
...Harris, Sarah V. Moran (2011). Managing Cultural Differences, Leadership Skills and Strategies for Working in a Global World. 8th ed. UK: Elsevier Inc.. 10-25.
Virtual teams – virtual team is one of the most popular teams in every organization because in virtual team the member are separated in different nation and use technologies to communicate to accomplish their goal on the time.