The report research, how global teams can mitigate the challenges and risk that can present itself by operating globally. By developing a framework that highlight some challenges global teams face, it provides solution on how global companies such as Mexta can resolve these issues and be successful. Intercultural differences should not be seen as an obstacle but as an opportunity.
Business Teamwork and Collaboration: Team Consultancy Report
The report research, how global teams can mitigate the challenges and risk that can present itself by operating globally. By developing a framework that highlight some challenges global teams face, it provides solution on how global companies such as Mexta can resolve these issues and be successful. Intercultural differences should not be seen as an obstacle but as an opportunity.
Different Leadership Styles and Culture
US Leadership Styles
Research from (Bourke, n.d) finds that ‘’Western leadership principles have focused on elements such as profit generation, long-term future planning, human relationships, and strategic planning’’. In the US and Australia, “authority is legitimized more on performance and merit, there is greater delegation and decentralization of decision making and control” (Lok & Crawford, 2003). Western organizations generally have flatter structures, which come with a less prescriptive model of leadership. Leadership styles such Transformational leadership are often associated with a flatter organizational structure and low power distance as in western firms (Chen, 2001; Whitley, 1997, Lok & Crawford, 2003). The majority of “American firms are more dependent on capital markets for their capital and pay much more attention to Wall Street than is yet common in Asia” (Mills, 2005) In America, “the chief executive officers of very large firms often have virtually no direct connections to top politicians, the government is treated at arm's length and business is done by businesspeople”. (Mills, 2005).
Chinese Leadership Styles
In China, the manager embodies a kind of "father figure", which means that employees expect him or her to care for them beyond their professional lives and into their private life as well. This is expressed, for example, in the fact that the manager is also invited to wedding celebrations and is generally contacted with personal concerns quite in contrast to Western countries, where there is a strict separation between professional and private life. There is a strict hierarchy and a strong focus on authority. For these reasons, a rather authoritarian style of leadership is expected from the employees. Since collectivism is also strong in China, one can also assume that individual responsibility or initiative is not very desirable. Much more important is the group in which an employee has a fixed role to which he or she adapts his or her behavior and in which there is strong dependence on one another. In addition, trust and the building of relationships play a major role in China, from which it can be deduced that a basis of trust must also be created between the manager, who has a strong role model function, and the teams in order to achieve corresponding goals (Rothlauf 2009: 494ff.).
Language Barriers
Language Barriers presents challenges for global teams and managers, as many team members come from different cultures, as a result, miscommunication might happen between them. For Snyder (2003), ‘‘even when employees have good language skills, they naturally interpret written and verbal communication through the filter of their own culture’’ (Bergie et al., 2008). Improving communication among co-workers is essential for effective knowledge sharing, decision making, coordination, and, ultimately, performance results (Neely, 2015). Another, communication problem arises when a common language is required to conduct team business, if the “official language for the virtual team is English, not every non-native English-speaking member finds it easy to communicate during a team meeting” (Bergie et al., 2008). In (Neely, 2015) research, team members that are most fluent in the official language of a company will have the most influence, in order to solve these issues team members must follow three rules for communication in a meeting, which are dial down dominance, dial up engagement and balance participation to include inclusion.
Trust and Purpose
Trust is at the foundation of all successful relationships and inn order for virtual teams to succeed, they need to build and foster their relationship carefully and intentionally (Coppola, Hiltz and Rotter, 2004, J Bergie et al., 2008). In the research of (J Bergie et al., 2008) the authors pointed out that ‘’getting a team together physically is perhaps the best step a manager can take to enhance communication and trust between its members and minimize the sense of isolation’’.
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- Quote paper
- Anonymous,, 2021, Team Consultancy Report. Business Teamwork and Collaboration, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1154893
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