Managing Multinational Teams: Global Perspectives: Volume 18

Dedicated to our dear families and friends, with special thanks to Champagne, Tuxedo, Zack, Emma, Molly, Googun, Lisa, Calvin, and David for their understanding and support

Bindu Aryais currently a doctoral student in International Business and Strategy at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her dissertation will empirically investigate how collaborative efforts between for-profit, not-for-profit and governmental agencies facilitate outcomes and can function to enhance sustainable development. Her research on how social networks facilitate organizational and group decision-making processes and outcomes has appeared in Journal of Management (forthcoming).

In 1991, the Academy of Management Review (AMR) published a special issue whose focus was on the dearth of internationally oriented management theory and studies addressing this. The management literature was filled with theories formulated primarily by scholars from the United States or other Westernized areas of the world and with studies whose samples were generally, also, from these Western areas. After noting the trend toward international diversity in the “American workforce,” AMR special guest-editors Doktor, Tung, and Von Glinow (1991) noted that the need for theory that tests the international-applicability of management theories was – not only desirable, but – urgent.

This chapter develops a conceptual framework to explain variance in the functioning of multinational work teams. We draw upon existing theories of multinational teams (MNTs) looking at the core internal dynamics that provide critical building blocks for understanding team functioning. These dynamics are then examined in terms of the cultural intelligence of team members and how it interacts with the core features of an MNT. We discuss the ramifications of these results for structuring and running global teams in the field.

Although cross-cultural research tends to compare deeply held values across nations, different cultures can exist within nations, as evidenced by clashes of cultures in Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. We refer to multicultural teams (MCTs) to reflect our interest in team dynamics involving people from varying cultures (which may or may not include people of different nationalities). MCTs are likely to be characterized by “cultural value diversity,” or varying cultural values among members, and we present data in support of the hypothesis that MCT performance is influenced more significantly by cultural value diversity than by the aggregated level of any particular cultural value or demographic diversity within the teams.

Traditional multinational team (MNT) research has concentrated on negative phenomena such as in-group/out-group distinctions, social loafing, and pressures for convergence. In contrast, we examine instances where MNT members exhibit cross-national inclusive behavior, cross-national responsiveness, and cross-national divergence of ideas, which in turn result in positive outcomes such as cohesion, trust, and innovation. Furthermore, we identify important catalyzing mechanisms that effectively encourage these functional behaviors. For example, we highlight the importance of social categorization based on common group membership, social comparisons to referent others outside the team from other nations, and suspension of attributions based on national stereotypes – all of which will help turn the tide of the current research on MNTs.

We examined the effects of group structure and electronic communication patterns on the performance of 18 multinational teams over an 8-month period. The teams were composed of a mix of Western and non-Western executives located throughout the world. In these highly diverse teams, team performance did not vary as a function of demographic heterogeneity; however, demographic homogeneity within the teams’ subgroups negatively affected team performance. The following communication patterns were associated with better team performance: a hierarchical communication structure, expressions of trust in the team's competence, references to the self, and information-providing statements.

In today's internationalized world, value creation consists of knowledge and work integration involving workers from around the world. Members of these globally distributed work teams (GDWT) encounter organizational behavior issues (identity, cultural differences, and leadership) and organization design issues (dependencies, information processing, media use, and teamwork structures). While most research on GDWT focuses on the first set of issues, this chapter is among the few to systematically explore the second set. We propose and elaborate on strategies for either reducing the intensity of collaboration, or enabling teams to collaborate intensely on a global scale. Implications for research and practice are explored.

Dispersed multinational teams include people from multiple nations, some of whom are not collocated. In a knowledge economy, such teams must locate, store, allocate, and retrieve knowledge. Three central questions are: (a) How can dispersed multinational teams manage knowledge resource flows? (b) What factors influence knowledge resource distribution in these teams? and (c) How do dispersed multinational teams evolve over time? This chapter examines knowledge resource sharing in multinational teams through three theoretical lenses: transactive memory theory, collective action theory, and evolutionary theory, and concludes with practical suggestions for managing dispersed multinational teams that are derived from these three theoretical lenses.

Multinational corporations (MNCs) confront complex challenges to continuously achieve higher levels of social performance across diverse country and cultural contexts. Yet many MNCs have reactive strategies toward corporate social responsibility (CSR). Such strategies do not leverage multicultural team diversity for dynamic learning. Meanwhile, cross-sector alliances between MNCs and not-for-profit entities present a rich opportunity for MNC learning. Multicultural teams often lie at the core of such initiatives in MNCs, although they have been, at best, a peripheral concern of CSR research and theory. We redress this gap in the CSR literature by integrating theory on social capital and the external team perspective and applying this to the CSR context. Our analysis has practical implications for MNCs as well, suggesting further extensions.

Multicultural teams (MCTs) and their managers are subject to numerous exogenous forces that profoundly affect how these teams’ members relate, what their difficulties are, and how they interact with task, technology and the larger organization(s) around them. We approach such teams from a multi-level perspective, focusing on global business culture, industry situation, and national political context as macro forces affecting these teams. We explain how these factors affect team functioning through the centripetal and centrifugal forces that they exert on individuals. Our perspective will acknowledge the complex reality of social construction among team members, and offer the view that members’ expectations and their mutual interactions are responsible for shaping each other's subsequent cognitions.

Are global business teams (GBTs) nothing more than just a group of individuals collaborating across cultural and geographic distances? We argue that such a view represents a gross simplification of the reality, since every GBT member also represents the knowledge and interests of an organizational unit. Recognizing the broader strategic context within which teams are embedded, we advance a typology of GBTs. We argue that different types of GBTs impose different motivational structures on team members as well as different coordination challenges. We also examine how the salience and consequences of various emergent and designed team characteristics will differ across different types of GBTs.

Assessing the literature on top management teams (TMTs) published through 2004, we found a predominantly U.S.-centric set of studies on TMTs and the upper echelons perspective (Hambrick & Mason, 1984). Through 1996, this literature was virtually silent on the impact of increasing globalization of economic transactions on TMTs – surprising given emphases in strategy on multinational firms, their organizational forms, and modes of entry into foreign markets. We identify critical areas for research on international dimensions of TMTs, their relationships to national and organizational contexts, and their influence on firm outcomes in a world increasingly populated by firms addressing global markets.

In this chapter we question whether current conceptualizations of global leadership competencies adequately address the dynamic and complex nature of the multinational team (MNT) context. We report findings from a study that incorporated the perspectives of MNT leaders as well as members on MNT leadership. We asked MNT leaders and their team members to identify the competencies that they believe are needed for effectively managing MNTs. The findings from this study promise to enhance our understanding about the specific nature of the MNT context, as viewed by the two parties that are at the frontline of multinational teamwork: team members and leaders. We use this dual perspective to clarify global competencies that MNT leaders may need to develop in themselves, and to propose a framework that may assist multinational organizations in identifying, rewarding, and developing MNT leaders.

The literature on academic international research teams (AIRTs) has drawn conclusions and made recommendations based on cross-sectional “snapshots” of the research team process – observations made prior to the conclusion of the research project. Several large-scale AIRTs have now evolved through a life cycle including result-related publications. We evaluate and extend the literature using a project life cycle perspective, in which each stage exhibits different challenges and opportunities that influence the quality, reliability and validity of the final research output and the overall viability of the knowledge-creation project. We conclude with recommendations for the effective management of AIRTs and, indeed, perhaps all multinational, globally distributed teams engaged in both basic and applied knowledge creation.

Managing a large multinational team such as the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) project (ongoing since the early 1990s) presents numerous leadership, communication and organization challenges. This chapter discusses the challenges that occurred in the GLOBE project owing to: (a) the long-term nature of the project, (b) the evolving (growing) size of the GLOBE team, (c) the large membership size of the GLOBE team, (d) the virtual nature of the team's communications, and (e) the cultural differences of the GLOBE participants. Survey responses from 50 researchers regarding their experiences in GLOBE help document our experiences. Because these challenges will be encountered by other multinational teams, we provide recommendations for forming and maintaining successful multinational teams.