Multicultural teams have come to be very common in recent years. With cross border mobility becoming much easier the amount of population enchanting from one country to another has grown significantly. This has also led to more population from dissimilar cultural and ethnic backgrounds intermarrying. Their children could be born and grow up in dissimilar countries and have hybrid cultural identities. Globalization and the advances in transportation and transportation technology have reduced trade barriers and increased interaction among people.
Is global homogeneity a feasible and desirable vision? Philosophically this would be very questionable. This would be immediately equated with suppression of differences and diversity, which are inalienable human rights. It can be argued that it would destroy cultures and diminish creativity. There are adequate instances in human history e.g., the fate of the Native Americans or the Conquistador actions in South America, where one culture has by force exterminated other cultures. Then there are scores of other examples where aspects of cultures have blended straight through interaction e.g., India and the United States. Today, though genocides happen under our very eyes e.g., in the Balkans or in some parts of Africa, the prevailing models of cultures influencing others is mutual interaction, where there is ample room for retaining one’s own cultural identity. As of the 2000 census, “minorities” have come to be the majority population in six of the eight largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Thus living with and managing diversity has come to be the central theme of this century.
Many studies have in fact shown that diversity in human capital categorically leads to increased creativity and efficiency in many cases. Studies have also shown that the failure to successfully integrate diverse workforces has negative implications for organizational performance. This is most publicly expressed in legal actions, such as recent discrimination suits against multinational corporations such as Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Xerox.
The skills needed for managing with population from diverse backgrounds at work or exterior the workplace can be very dissimilar because in the workplace we are in our work roles and there are many external constraints to our behavior. Many population categorically spend more time awake with their colleagues than with their spouse and children. So any problems arising in this area will assuredly spill over onto the incommunicable life.
Looking determined into the factors that sway multicultural team leadership or management, we can recognize five factors that operate at team levels:
National culture
Corporate culture of the organisation
Nature of the commerce or functional culture (coal mine, marketing, accounting)
Stage of team development
Personal attributes
National Culture – There are ample theories and much investigate into how national cultures sway team behavior. Ger Hofstede’s Culture’s Consequences (1980) and Cultures and Organizations (1991) are two examples. National culture has many dimensions like orientation to time, style of communication, personal space, competitiveness and worldview. Generally we are dealing also with stereotypes and cultural biases here. Regional and personal life contact or character traits can override these ascribed ‘national’ culture traits. In real life this means that an Italian team member can be a shy, quite person or a German can be hopeless with timetables.
Corporate Culture – Corporate culture is very closely related to the functional culture and it is a ensue of a historical process where the founder and successive leaders have left their marks. A large multinational organisation is bound to have a more structured, hierarchic and bureaucratic approach to running its affairs while an Internet web manufacture firm with 5 young creative artists would be an entirely dissimilar environment.
Nature of the commerce – Coal miners, web designers and international bankers would seem to come from dissimilar worlds. Dress, language, etiquette, unwritten codes of behavior, appropriate institution and skills needed on the job vary to a great extent in dissimilar industries. It is of vital importance that the industry, the organisation or the environment allows team members to display a sense of pride in one’s pro identity.
Stage of Team improvement – If the team is just recently formed with no history or experience, the rules of the game have to be learn by everyone. If the team has a history of performing efficiently, new entrants can rely on established institution and older members to teach them the skills required. The stage of improvement of the team member also plays a great role here. If the team is in the formation stage, the rules of the game are still being negotiated and population are learning their own roles. The ‘veteran’ team member has carved a obtain role for himself while the entrant has to struggle.
Personal Attributes – Last but not least is all the other factors like personality, competence profile, the individual’s own life experience, expectations of rewards, acknowledgment and delight from working in the team as well as previous history of team working.
The first three factors are static factors, which means that their characteristics cannot be categorically changed by individual action. Team members or even the whole team cannot turn the national culture. Individuals, teams and organisations have to learn to adapt to them. In fact the efficiency of the team is directly correlated to how well this adaptation has been achieved. But intervention can greatly sway the last two factors of Stages of Team improvement and Personal Attributes. A team can accelerate its strengthen from formation stage to the stage of maturity and an individual can turn personal attributes by acquiring new competences.
Superior sustainable team doing can be achieved only if team members learn to take into list dimensions of organizational culture and those of national culture like orientation to time, style of communication, personal space, competitiveness and worldview. Only when these have been successfully adapted to their working practices to reflect the team members’ background realities can teams categorically see the added value that multicultural teams bring.
Key Factors of Multicultural Team administration & Leadership
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