Dynamics Of Culturally Diverse Groups

By Author: STEPHANIE
Total Articles: 237
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In an era of globalization most people work in an environment of cultural diversity. Increasingly, companies rely on teamwork, arguing that diverse teams make better decisions than do homogeneous teams; however, better performance does not come automatically. Culturally diverse teams face many challenges.

As you have learned, people from different cultures have different approaches to making decisions, solving problems, and negotiating deals. They view the world differently. Westerners tend to have a linear view of the world with an either-or approach, whereas Asians have a more holistic world view that is inclusive of contradictions. Al-though the top executives at both Daimler and Chrysler tended to be either German or American, the employees and managers had a variety of backgrounds. Daimler employs many Turks and people from Eastern Europe. Chrysler in many ways reflects the cultural diversity of the American population at large. You can see similar situations in almost all major corporations around the world. For example, in one Swiss multinational company all work teams are culturally links london ...
... diverse. In a team of 10 people it is not uncommon to have four or five nationalities represented. Even if the majority of the team members are Swiss, the cultural diversity still can be a major issue. The Swiss Germans, Swiss French, and Swiss Italians all come from different orientations and speak different languages. The cultural and communication dynamics in such groups are complex and at times confusing.

To harness the potential of culturally diverse groups businesses need to spend time developing those groups by creating cultural awareness, understanding, and respect. The material in this book is at the heart of that process.

As you probably know from your own experiences in group projects, groups do not become productive automatically. It can be a long process. For example, it took months for the team at DaimlerChrysler to develop a brochure for expatriation strategies. It has been several years since the merger, and the two entities still are not one cohesive unit. It seems that they are getting closer, but they don't always speak with one voice. During the entire time of the merger, some people argued that the integration teams were not working fast enough whereas others argued they were not taking enough care to work out important details. It was almost a no-win situation. On the surface the team-building phase is not always productive. Talking about building a cohesive team seems to get nowhere. Critics, for example, charged links of london that managers were wasting 25 percent of their time on integration aspects rather than building and selling cars. From that viewpoint bringing together culturally diverse teams takes attention away from the actual business task.