Global Shippers, Inc Case File Discussion

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International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies

Teams, Cross-Cultural

Contributors: Arménio Rego & Miguel Pina e Cunha Edited by: Stewart R. Clegg & James R. Bailey Book Title: International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies Chapter Title: "Teams, Cross-Cultural" Pub. Date: 2008 Access Date: February 1, 2019 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks Print ISBN: 9781412915151 Online ISBN: 9781412956246 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412956246.n528 Print pages: 1531-1533

© 2008 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412956246.n528

A cross-cultural team (CCT) is a group of individuals from two or more national cultures accomplishing an organizational task, interacting interdependently, and mutually sharing responsibility for outcomes. Examples of a CCT can be as different as a management team of a Sino-American joint venture, a football or basketball team counting on high-profile superstars from a dozen countries, and a team of engineers working together on new product development “round the clock” in three different time zones. CCT members can interact face- to-face, virtually, or in both ways. CCTs do not possess inherent (dis)advantages over monocultural teams, since the relationship between cultural heterogeneity and effectiveness depends on such aspects as the na- ture of the task, the degree of heterogeneity, the leader behavior, and the cross-cultural competences of its members.

Conceptual Overview Several factors account for the use of CCT in organizations. When a subsidiary does not have enough capa- bilities to solve a problem, to take advantage of opportunities, or to respond to threats, it may take advantage of capabilities residing in other parts of the organization. In other cases, the need for efficiency precludes the constitution of local teams when the necessary knowledge exists elsewhere and may be accessed. The time it takes to build new capabilities can also discourage a company from building a new team from scratch. Sometimes, certain capabilities (e.g., R&D) may be scarce and inimitable or may be locally bounded. Com- panies may also want to take advantage of competencies located at different places (e.g., local market skills, knowledge of competitors, or best practices) or to gain insight about ways to achieve the overall integration, local differentiation, and learning at the global level. The constitution of a CCT for managing international joint ventures (IJV) is also frequent.

Considering the above, some companies are trying to develop networks of people with diverse capabilities throughout the organization and to mobilize them quickly into well-functioning teams operating at the global level. CCTs are thus emerging in several distinct contexts, including the management of IJV, the development of products for multi-country markets, the formulation of integrated strategies for a wide range of countries, the rationalization of worldwide manufacturing operations, and the composition of talented top management teams.

Cross-cultural teams can thrive on cultural diversity, although people from different cultures tend to differ in their values, cognitive schema, outward physical behavior (e.g., eye contact, punctuality, conversational style, interruption patterns, and conflict resolution) and language. Historical animosities between neighboring coun- tries may lead to a lack of trust between individuals on the same team, who may also come to the team setting with different understandings of what teamwork is all about. The meaning of “leadership” also depends on national culture and differs for team members on the basis of their cultural background.

Culture can thus create barriers to communication and understanding and be a source of interpersonal con- flict. It can also create different judgments and reactions to the same leader behavior. These effects may be especially problematic during the early stages of the team's life cycle, when cultural differences create time- consuming discussions and introduce uncertainty into the relationships between/among members or between members and their leader.

Well-functioning cross-cultural teams can, however, facilitate innovative approaches to complex organization- al challenges and devise new ways of implementing innovative solutions. They can generate more ideas of higher quality in brainstorming tasks and outperform homogeneous teams in identifying problems and gener- ating solutions, leading to significant productivity gains. These positive effects result from the fact that diver- sity increases the breadth of perspective and the problem-solving capacity of the team.

The above discussion indicates that cross-cultural teams, like any other teams, can be either effective or in- effective. As Joseph Distefano and Martha Maznevski have argued, they can be “destroyers” or “creators.”

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Within “creator” teams, cultural differences are explicitly recognized and accepted and are incorporated into every group process. They create culturally synergistic solutions, promote creativity and cohesiveness among team members, and nourish the acceptance of new ideas. These positive effects tend to result from the ap- plication of three principles: (1) teams map the “territory” to understand the differences among individuals and the impacts of these differences; (2) they create bridges by communicating in ways that explicitly take differ- ences into account; and (3) they integrate members by monitoring participating patterns, resolving disputes, and creating new perspectives that are appreciative of differences.

The role of the leader is particularly relevant at the outset of the CCT, since this is the time when team break- downs due to diversity are more likely. Some leader characteristics can be potent instigators of a well-func- tioning team. These include the ability to understand the technical challenges faced by the team; the ability to influence, negotiate and motivate; openmindedness for learning; humility; cross-cultural communication com- petences; multicultural experience; cultural sensitivity to anticipate the strains that can emerge from multicul- tural interaction; emotional stability; cultural empathy; and cultural intelligence.

Another cause of CCT effectiveness is the nature of the task. Three types of tasks have been considered to be creative, computational, and coordinative. Donald Hambrick, Sue Davison, Scott Snell, and Charles Snow have suggested that multinational group effectiveness depends on the interaction between the nature of the task and the heterogeneity level in different diversity variables. For example, high-value diversity contributes to improved effectiveness when the task is creative, but not when it is computational or coordinative, and a low degree of familiarity with the team's working language decreases group effectiveness, the effect being more pronounced when the task is one of coordination. In general, diversity creates the greatest difficulties for groups charged with coordination tasks, and it is more promising in creative work.

Another relevant topic for the analysis of crosscultural teams, as proposed by Christopher Earley and Elaine Mosakowski, is the amount of heterogeneity. A team composed of Swedes and Finns, for example, is not as diverse as a group of Swedes and Chinese. Highly homogeneous teams are those whose members perceive themselves as sharing key salient characteristics. This homogeneity leads team members to share expec- tations about how each member should act. In a moderately heterogeneous team, members perceive differ- ences among themselves based on a few salient features that make the distinction between subgroups pos- sible. They can identify more with “their” subteam than with the team as a whole. Subgroups, factions, and several subcultures may therefore be expected, as evidenced by Donald Hambrick, Jiatao Li, Katherine Xin, and Anne Tsui in their study of an IJV management team, in which two coalitions (Chinese and North Amer- icans) felt significant levels of conflict and mistrust, reduced their interactions, and began to make decisions in a rigid and mechanical way. A highly heterogeneous team is one whose members differ on salient traits. It cannot easily rely on a preexisting identity or on subgroup identities, because few commonalities exist. When facing external demands, the team forms a “hybrid culture” of simplified rules, norms, expectations, and roles that members share and “enact” after mutual interaction. This may require significant time and effort to build up the team, but it may also offer a sense of identity, generate positive affect, facilitate communication, pro- mote trust, and improve performance.

Earley and Mosakowski found an empirically upright U-shaped relationship between cultural heterogeneity and team effectiveness: If sufficient opportunity to work together exists, homogeneous and highly heteroge- neous teams will be more effective than moderately heterogeneous ones. One implication is clear: companies should carefully avoid the constitution of teams where cultural factions are likely to emerge. For example, Li, Xin, Tsui, and Hambrick have suggested that in order to avoid the emergence of managerial factions, man- agement teams should be characterized by high levels of heterogeneity. Another implication is that, in the short run, teams may not develop a strong hybrid culture and may fail to deliver the desired performance. It is also in recently formed teams that leaders should be more vigilant of possible team breakdowns caused by diversity.

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Critical Commentary and Future Directions Research on the relationship between cultural heterogeneity and team performance tends to be mixed and complex. Every team is different and needs to operate distinctly to unleash the potential of multicultural mem- bership. Several variables (e.g., leadership style, nature of the task, heterogeneity, cross-cultural competen- cies of members, team stage) moderate the relationship. Future studies may explore these and other moder- ators and the ways they interact. Research questions may include the following: (a) How does the nature of the task interact with team heterogeneity and leader behavior? (b) How do these interactions influence team functioning and performance? (c) Do CCTs with members from different organizations differ from those made by members of the same company? (d) What factors moderate the relationship between leadership and CCT performance? (e) What happens when the leader corresponds to the leadership prototype of some members, but not of others? (f) What leadership competencies and styles are necessary to lead different kinds of CCTs (e.g., R&D teams, top management teams)?

Another important research stream refers to virtuality. New pressures facing organizations have led many of them to use virtual CCTs. Some authors, such as Norhayati Zakaria, Andrea Amelinckx, and David Wilemon, suggest that these teams may become ongoing structures rather than short-term, projectspecific entities, or may even become the prevalent form of work for many multinationals. If this exercise of foresight is correct, they will become an integral and common element of the global organizational landscape. However, as as- serted by Mitzi Montoya-Weiss, Anne Massey, and Michael Song, researchers have just begun to explore vir- tual CCTs, with extant theory on how teams operate being largely based on research carried out on nonvirtual teams. Virtual CCTs confront researchers and practitioners with a number of new challenges resulting from the confluence of technology-mediated communication, geographical dispersion, and the absence of face-to- face interaction. All these factors heighten the potential for the lack of understanding and the diminution of trust.

Therefore, research on virtual CCTs is necessary in a number of areas, including the virtual/nonvirtual com- parison: How does virtuality impact cross-cultural and monocultural teams? Are there different determinants of their performance? Do virtual cross-cultural teams require different leadership styles? A second area con- cerns trust: What are the effects of cultural heterogeneity on trust in the case of virtual teams? What methods can be used to accelerate the development of trust? What is the relationship between trust and team perfor- mance? Another research avenue concerns the exercise of power and influence: How do leaders (and team members) exercise power and influence in virtual CCTs? How do members from different cultures respond to the exercise of interpersonal power and influence? A fourth area is that of conflict management: What sources of substantive and relational conflict emerge in virtual CCTs? How are conflicts and disagreements handled? What are the most effective conflict management styles? A final area refers to team performance: How should the performance of virtual CCTs be assessed? What variables moderate the relationship between determi- nants and effectiveness?

In summary, the cross-cultural team is a microcosm of diversity, and a fundamental entity for understanding both the promises and the difficulties of working with people from other cultures. If working in diverse settings may be easier said than done, the new virtual organizational arrangements may be adding a new layer of complexity to the challenges of teaming up with the faceless other.

• cross-cultural teams • teams • team performance • virtual • team management • top management team

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• virtual teams

Arménio Rego & and Miguel Pina e Cunha http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412956246.n528 See also

• Team Diversity • Team Learning • Team Process • Teams, Virtual