What Factors need to be considered when managing cross-cultural teams

Housseyn RouabaStudent Number: 1426294Module: BU7023Managing in Organisations

We value our team environment where people treat each other with integrity and respect. There is great passion, innovation and commitment to working together to fulf il l ambitious goals and realise true potential.

Team culture Uniliver

So, how do we as manager, manage mult i-cul tural teams?

According to Nancy Adler (2008) cited in (Kawar, 2012, p. 1)?Cross-cultural management explains the behaviour of people in organisations around the world and shows people how to work in organisations with employees and client populations from many dif ferent cultures.?

Many successful managers use 3 points strategies to tackle problems related to multicultural team management which are:

Working in a rapidly changing globalised environment, we have to deal with people who speak dif ferent languages and live by dif ferent customs and values. Organisations have to vary managerial style and suit each individual?s needs and f ind common ground to cope with issues across cultural boundaries. (Anbari, et al., 2009). Some other challenges faced are:

- Cultural dif ferences.

- Dif ference of communication styles, working styles and quality of work.

- Dif ference in time zones leading to mismatched work coordination.

- Dif ference in managerial styles.

Identify Cultural Challenges

1. Understand the cul tural chal lenges Using the six cultural dimensions of Greet Hofstede which can give us information to apply strategies and take decisions as accurate as possible without making a deep wide analysis, these dimensions can assess cultural gap between local culture and corporate culture (Geert Hofstede Cultural dimensions, 2015) .

Power distance (high versus low) The extent to which the less powerful members of society accept that power is distributed unequally

Uncertainly avoidance (high versus low) The extent to which people feel threatened by uncertainty and ambiguity and try to avoid such situations. For example the Americans are well known as risk takers rather than the Asians that avoid uncertainty (Anbari, et al., 2009)

Individual ism Vs Col lect ivist It means that some culture value the belonging to a group and share responsibil it ies like Chinese whereas the Americans value individualism and prefer to attend their personal goals rather than team work and look after themselves and their immediate family.

Mascul inity Vs Femininity Masculinity: the dominant values in society are achievement and success. Femininity: the dominant values in society are caring for others and quality of l ife.

Long term orientat ion (long term versus short term orientation) The extent to which people show a pragmatic or future-oriented perspective rather than a normative or short-term point of view

Indulgence Vs Restraint The extent to which people try to control their desires and impulses. Relatively weak control is called "Indulgence" and relatively strong control is called "Restraint".

Despite the challenges, there are advantages for managing cross-cultural teams which are:

- People from dif ferent cultures bring with them an array of creative and innovative experiences and ideas

- Multicultural teams have the advantage of 24h work rotation.

- Off ices across various geographical locations.

Managing cross cultural teams is about "Diversity in f irms". In fact, diversity is a good thing because it is interesting to share dif ferent experiences. It is important to employ dif ferent kinds of people: people with dif ferent cultures, men and women, young people and old people, people with disability and people without disability... According to dif ferent theories, if a company manages diversity, it will make more prof its.

More important, if management systems are devised without regard for culture or blindly generalized from one cultural environment to another, the result is often conflict, misunderstanding, dissatisfaction, undermined morale, and high turnover. The productivity losses can easily lead to a complete business failure, as happened to Wal-Mart in Germany. (Taras, Steel and Kirkman, 2011)

Understanding the cultural issues in managing cross boundaries is vital. For example, education underlies the way in which the same conflict might be addressed in France by seeking orders from a superior, in Britain by sending the people in conflict on a management course, and in Germany by employing a consultant.

Obviously English is the f irst international language in the world and it is considered as the language of business however in some countries, the tongue language is imposed such as

At Unilever managers believe that as every person is unique and complete the others, so too is every culture. Unilever places high attention on people and the environment with trying to give every employee the same opportunity (Progress report 2012: unilever sustainable living plan, 2012). This would be achieved according to (Anbari, et al., 2009). through: Recognition, Respect and Reconciliation

2. Consistency

3. Cul tural Adaptat ion Unilever adapts the country?s culture with the corporate culture. It stands for l inking its brand with the local culture which make Unilever a good example of successful cultural adaptation in more than 150 countries with high employee engagement. (Our vitality mission, 2015)

Cultural adaptation includes communication style adaptation as well as some cultures such as Japan, Taiwan and Brazil prefers face to face and analytical milestones whereas some others like Hungry and India prefer written status reports and f ixed intervals.

However in countries like Germany and Netherlands favour detailed progress reports with f ixed intervals. Though continuous phone updates with

written backup which is the case of Australia, USA, UK and Sweden (Mueller & Turner, 2004).

Cultural adaptation is also known as Cultural Intell igence. Through, organisation can achieve employee satisfaction and engage the employees in order to gain competit ive advantages

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Our vitality mission. (2015, 04 10). Retrieved from unilever: http:/ /www.unilever.co.uk/aboutus/ introductiontounilever/ vitality/

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Taras, V., Steel, P. and Kirkman, B. (2011). Three decades of research on national culture in the workplace. Organizational Dynamics, 40(3), pp.189-198.

Chevrier, S. (2003). Cross-cultural management in multinational project groups. Journal of World Business 38 , 141?149

References