Page 265 - DMGT548_GLOBAL_HRM

Global HRM

Notes 14.2 Multi-cultural Teams

International projects are successful only when emphasis is given to those factors that are
particularly vulnerable in cross-cultural settings and on building the team capable of dealing
with the challenge presented. It is common practice in bi-national projects to have formal
authority shared by two people one from each country. The challenge in the international
business and team building boils down to create a convergence of people differing personal
inputs towards the set of common final inputs. This means developing a process that facilities
communication and understanding between the people of different national cultures. Making
this process happen signifies the difference between successes and failure of the international
projects.
The secret is to transform the way people do things at the beginning of the project into more
effective behaviour as the project moves along. This transformation initially involves identifying
the inter-cultural differences among the parties. Once this is done, a programme of inter-cultural
team building is called for in order to make the transformation take place. The result of the team
building process is influencing the behaviour of the group toward meeting the project’s goals.
Inter-cultural team building thus calls for developing and conducting a programme that will
help transform the participants’ inputs into project outputs.
Experience in managing bi-national projects indicate that for cultural convergence to take place,
managers of both sides need to understand the culture of the other, analysing the different
patterns that make up that culture. This means learning about the other country’s history,
geography, economy, religion, tradition and politics. Both sides, therefore, need to become
aware of the basic differences involving educational levels, professional experience, and
experience on this kind of project, knowledge of language and host-country way of life.
Apart from this information, which can be readily obtained and assimilated, other perceptions
must be taken into account, such as beliefs, feelings, informal behaviour patterns, group norms
and values. All these factors strongly affect behaviour of project managers and team members.
Cross-cultural team building must take place so that individuals’ inputs can be channelled to
meet the project goals.
The success of a project depends as much on the project leader as on the dynamics of the project
team. A dynamic team is a high-performance team, one that utilises its energy to meet cost and
time schedules and solves uncertainties that arise in project implementation by joint problem-
solving and combined effort. All dynamic teams have certain characteristics which can be assessed
or developed through team building exercises. They are as under:

(a) Builds upon individuals strengths
(b) Supports leadership and each other
(c) Develops team climate

(d) Resolves disagreements and communicates openly
(e) Makes objective decisions and evaluates its own effectiveness
In order to develop the cross-cultural teams, it is important that there should be a proper
learning process. In the cross-cultural context, Hughes-Weiner qualifies the learning process
described by Kolb as follows:
1. Concrete experience: people from different cultures are likely to have different backgrounds
and different experiences.
2. Reflective observation: as a result of different behaviour patterns, socialisation and
institutional and work experiences, individuals from different cultures may make different
assumptions about what they see and understand through their experiences.

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