Multinational Work Teams

A New Perspective

P. Christopher Earley, Cristina B. Gibson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780805834642
• eBook ISBN: 9781135662493
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

This authored book's purpose is to extend and consolidate the evolving literature on multinational work teams by developing a comprehensive theory that incorporates a dynamic, multilevel view of such teams. The model used by the authors focuses on various features of the team's members, their interactions as a team, and the organizational context in which they operate. The concept of integration and differentiation, as well as the notion of equilibrium are used as a general force guiding the specific processes that link various levels of analysis in the model. Providing a framework for scholars and students in the field of organizational studies, this book presents:
*a comprehensive review of the literature related to multinational and multicultural teams;
*an overview of the specific model driving our thinking along with an extensive description of the component parts;
*the individual and group-level elements of teams and their members;
*the linking processes that connect various elements and structures;
*the catalysts that give rise to changes in various elements and structures described in the theory section; and
*a general integration of the model and an application of this framework for understanding MNT's in diverse cultural contexts.

1	Introduction and Overview

The internationalization of business, creation of a “global village” and similar influences remind us that a science of organizations and management is incomplete without the integration of concepts of culture, interdependence, and self-awareness. No longer is it appropriate to discuss organizational activities and employee actions without incorporating a more comprehensive view of where such activities take place. Not only must we include an immediate social context, but we must deal with the international and cultural aspects of the social world as well. More than ever, understanding of employee action requires knowledge of how action is related to the environment in which it is embedded. It is with this general focus, that we examine a number of significant issues derived from the way that people organize themselves in multinational work teams (MNT). Given the increasing complexity of the workplace, much modern work requires a high degree of interdependence and interaction of employees. This interaction is often relegated to a work group, or team. People do not work within a social void, rather, they interact and are interdependent on others as they work and behave in an organization. People work together so as to perform various tasks and they work together for social needs as well. Given the prevalence of work groups in modern organizations, it is clear that they are an essential element in understanding cross-cultural aspects of work and organization. Our lives are organized around many groups such as families, work crews, religious groups, sports teams, and so forth. Much of what we do for business and pleasure revolves around the group. This is not to imply that all actions occur in a work group; many of our actions occur within aggregates rather than natural groups.

WORK GROUPS AND TEAMS

Groups and teams are psychologically and sociologically distinct from casual aggregates of individuals (McGrath, 1984). Whereas a group has specific qualities involving roles, structure, and so forth, aggregates simply refer to a collection of individuals who gather for individual purposes and needs (e.g., audience at a movie). Of course, not all activities are group-based nor would we expect them to be. We perform actions for our individual needs in an individual context such as purchasing a favorite dessert, playing solitaire, or watching a movie on television alone. These behaviors do not constitute group behavior nor does their explanation fully apply to the dynamics of a group. Our focus is on the social context of work behavior in which people gather to perform some task or maintain group stability and relations.

McGrath (1984) who defines a group as a social aggregate that involves mutual awareness and potential mutual interaction. He uses families, work crews and task performance teams, and friendship (or social) groups as examples of groups, and he distinguishes groups from other social aggregates. Groups are distinguished based on three dimensions: size, interdependence, and temporal pattern. Social aggregates do not have the potential mutual interaction of a group. He argues that a group requires the following conditions:

… it must include two or more people, but it must remain relatively small so that all members can be mutually aware of and potentially in interaction with one another. Such mutual awareness and potential interaction provide at least a minimum degree of interdependence; that is, members’ choices and behaviors take one another into account. Interdependence, in turn, implies some degree of continuity over time: these relationships have, or quickly acquire, some history, and some anticipated future. A time based, mutual interdependence can reasonably be termed “dynamic.” In other words a group is an aggregation of two or more people who are to some degree in dynamic interrelation with one another … this definition of group would normally include families (at least the residential unit core), work crews, and many social or friendship groups, but would normally not include units that fit all of the other kinds of aggregations in that list (cultures, communities, organizations, etc.). (p. 8)

Turner (1987) describes a group as one that is psychologically meaningful for the members to which they relate themselves subjectively for comparisons, and they adopt norms and values from this group. A member of a group accepts membership in this group and it influences the member’s attitudes and behavior. He distinguishes the group from aggregate using an individual’s attachment to the group as a reference group rather than mere membership.

A number of other definitions have emerged focusing on the cognitive aspects of group membership (Erez & Earley, 1993; Messick & Mackie, 1989). A focus on cognition emphasizes thought processes and information processing. Cognitive representations of groups consist of complex, hierarchical structures that contain elements such as category labels, attributes, and exemplars. A category representation refers to a category label (e.g., college professor), an abstracted prototype (e.g., list of features such as old and grey, beard, glasses, befuddled), and the projection of these characteristics to the group as a whole (stereotype). For example, a category label such as a “college professor” may have associated with it general prototypes of a professor such as being old and having a grey beard or wearing glasses. Stereotyping occurs if these prototypic characteristics are applied to the general population of college professors. Klimoski and Mohammed (1994) talk about a “team mental model” as a shared psychological representation of at team’s environment constructed to permit sense-making and guide appropriate group action (Elron, Shamir, & Ben-Ari, 1998). When team members perceive shared understandings with other members, the positive affect and propensity to trust generated by such a discovery fuels performance improvement (Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994) and bolsters the group’s belief in its capability to perform, often referred to as the level of group efficacy (Bandura, 1997; Gibson, 1999).

From a cultural viewpoint, Mann (1980) points out a number of interesting features of “natural groupings.” A natural group refers to a group that exists of its own accord rather than the result of a laboratory manipulation. What is important about such a group is that it helps us understand the relevance of culture and society in a more direct fashion than through the use of laboratory, or ad hoc, groups. Ravlin, Thomas, and Ilsev (2000) take a perspective of understanding groups from a cultural perspective focusing on the conflict experienced within these groups (see Weldon & Jehn, 1998 for a similar approach).

Drawing from these perspectives, we adopt the major facets of McGrath’s and Turner’s views. A group or team refers to three or more individuals who interact directly or indirectly for the accomplishment of a common goal. A multinational team is a specific type of this more general form of team inasmuch as members must come from two or more different national or cultural backgrounds. For sake of simplicity, we use the idea of nationality as related to culture, although we freely admit that the connection between nation and culture is not a complete one. Within any given nation, there may exist multiple subcultures, and the national culture may not be completely shared (Rohner, 1984). Furthermore, nation–state is a relatively new concept in world history, and this is not to say that it will continue as a key feature denoting culture in the future. However, as we are operating (and writing this book) in a period for which nation and culture are highly coincident, we do not feel as if this is a major compromise to understanding team dynamics. Ultimately, we are referring to nationality as a grouping variable that captures differences among people in their cultural perspectives. In this sense, the term multinational and multicultural are used interchangeably as well in our book.

CURRENT PERSPECTIVES ON MULTINATIONAL TEAMS

As we describe in chapter 2, there are a number of significant studies in the literature focusing on the importance of cultural influences and group functioning. In the management literature, there has been a call to understand the dynamics of group development with an emphasis on the compositional nature of a team from a cultural perspective (e.g., Jackson, May, & Whitney, 1995; Maznevski, 1994; Snow, Snell, Davison, & Hambrick, 1996; Tsui, Egan & O’Reilly, 1992). However, the study of group dynamics cross-culturally has been the focus of several cross-cultural and social psychologists. For example, the famous studies of Asch (1956) concerning conformity and social influence have been replicated in a number of cultures and societies. In his classic paradigm, Asch examined conformity effects by having individuals judge the length of one line relative to another. A subject initially made a judgment concerning the relative length of the line after which he or she was placed in a room with other “subjects” (confederates). The next phase involved the “subjects” reporting that one line (the shorter one in reality) was longer than another one, contrary to the real subject’s earlier judgment. A conformity effect reflects a subject’s consequent judgment and the extent to which it falls in line with the other subjects’ judgments. This basic study has been replicated in a number of countries demonstrating conformity effects. Findings suggest that conformity effects are observed to a similar degree in many different cultures (e.g., United States, Germany, Japan, Brazil) and it is typically found that 30 to 35% of the subjects conform to the group standard.

Recent reviews of the teams and groups literature in management consistently show increasing interest in the area of cultural composition (Bettenhausen, 1991; Earley & Mosakowski, 2000; Erez & Earley, 1993; Goodman, Ravlin, & Argote, 1990; McGrath, 1984). However, few studies have appeared that more specifically address the issue of cultural composition (for recent exceptions see Argote & McGrath, 1993; Cox, Lobel, & McLeod, 1991; Earley & Mosakowski, 2000; Elron et al., 1998; Gibson, 1999; Jackson, May, & Whitney, 1995; Jackson, Stone, & Alvarez, 1992; Lau & Murnighan, 1998; Lawrence, 1997; Snow, Snell, Davison, & Hambrick, 1996; Thomas, Ravlin, & Wallace, 1996; Watson, Kumar, & Michaelson, 1993). Authors have noted the role of cultural influences in generating interpersonal conflict (e.g., Weisinger & Salipante, 1995; Yu, 1995) and differences in management styles (e.g., Earley, 1989, 1994; Kozan, 1989; Ohbuchi & Takahashi, 1994; Rossi & Todd-Mancillas, 1985; Westwood, Tang, & Kirkbride, 1992). This body of literature typically discusses cultural differences, such as individualism and collectivism, that collide in practice in the multicultural group, and does not specify the processes underlying the generation of intragroup conflict in multicultural groups. (for an exception, see Ting-Toomey, Gao, Trubisky, Yang, Kim, Lin, & Nishida, 1991 for their face-maintenance approach to differing conflict-handling styles).

What is lacking in the literature on cross-cultural teams is a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding how these unique teams operate and function. Although a number of useful midrange theories of the multinational team have been proposed (e.g., see Earley & Erez’s (1997), and Earley & Singh’s (2000), Granrose & Oskamp’s (1997) edited books for a number of very useful examples), the literature on international teams is lacking a comprehensive theoretical framework. It is our intention to provide such a framework for scholars working in this area.

CONCEPTIONS OF CULTURE

Given our focus, it should go without comment that a thorough conceptualization of culture is needed. How then, can we define a culture and operationalize constructs appropriately? Central to this point is how one can place boundaries around a cultural grouping (Rohner, 1984). One possibility is that researchers should not simply identify the group using general characteristics but should examine according to a degree of identification, “Perhaps it is better to group people according to their degree of ethnocultural identification. Thus, you have an aggregate but it is operationally defined. You don’t study Japanese-Americans, you study the extent to which there are clusters of Japanese-Americans who embrace and endorse patterns of behavior that are associated with a life style or world view.” (Marsella, 1994).

There is a nontrivial debate concerning cultural groups and the concept of culture that wages in many fields including Anthropology and Organizational Behavior. How should the construct of culture be dealt with conceptually? A number of researchers have commented on this topic in recent years including Brett, Tinsley, Janssens, Barness, & Lytle (1997), Earley and Singh (1995), Geertz (1973), Leung and Bond (1989), Lytle, Brett, Barness, Tinsley, & Janssens (1995), and Martin (1992), among others. Although there are a number of points on which this discussion has focused, a major issue discussed by the various parties concerns the nature of culture as an entity. Although some view culture as a complex collage that is not properly understood from an elementalist perspective (Geertz, 1973), others argue that it can be understood using fundamental dimensions (Hofstede, 1991). Likewise, there is a debate whether or not culture is a real phenomena existing outside of the minds of various observers (Rohner, 1984). Although the definitions of a culture, society, group, or individual are critical in a complete analysis of behavior in organizations, they are only a starting point. Once the key issues concerning analysis and aggregation are dealt with, there is still the fundamental question remaining, namely, what are the reasons that general, cultural influences may impact individual behavior and action in an organization? In other words, the aggregation procedure does not help us better understand the conceptual framework that underlies such aggregation. Quite the contrary, our aggregation procedures must be informed by our conceptual linkages.

Culture is often defined as a shared meaning system or mental programming (Hofstede, 1991; Shweder & LeVine, 1984). It implies that members of the same culture share a common meaning and they are likely to interpret and evaluate situational events and management practices in a similar way. In contrast, members of different cultures who do not share a common way of interpreting and evaluating situational events are more likely to respond in a different way to the same managerial approach. Therefore, managerial practices found effective in one culture may be in-effective in another culture. For example, sociotechnical systems were implemented in North European countries (Trist & Bamforth, 1951) and individual based job-enrichment designs were implemented in the United States. (Hackman & Oldham, 1980). However, attempts to implement quality circles or sociotechnical systems in the United States were not highly successful (Lawler, 1986). Differential monetary reward systems are often rejected in Israeli Kibbutzim because they contradict prevailing norms of equality (Leviatan & Rosner, 1980). Differential rewards are well accepted in the private sector and in individualistic cultures which are guided by the values of equity rather than equality (Erez, 1986). Thus, the various types of management practices, and motivational techniques are evaluated in light of certain standards that vary across cultures. It seems that the successful implementation of motivational techniques and managerial practices depend on their congruence with the cultural context.

Few existing theories of organizational behavior provide a conceptual framework for understanding how culture, managerial practices, and work behavior are interrelated (see Erez & Earley, 1993 for one such example). Models of organizational behavior developed in the West do not take this aspect of cultural differences into consideration. Rather, situational effects are commonly interpreted as artifacts. The need to adjust to changes in a complex environment brings into focus the cognitive mechanisms of information processing that help explain how employees interpret and evaluate the situation and how these processes affect their behavior.

As we discuss in chapter 2, not all groups are integrated and fully functional. Thus, for a group to be integrated and effective, it must have several other important characteristics including an emergent and simplified set of rules and actions, work capability expectations, and member perceptions that individuals within a team develop, share, and enact after mutual interactions. To the extent these rules, expectations, and roles are shared (Earley & Mosakowski, 2000; Ravlin, Thomas, & Ilsev, 2000; Rohner, 1984; Shweder & LeVine, 1984), a strong culture exists. A strong culture is not meant to imply that everyone has the same understanding of all issues (a completely overlapping worldview for example), but there must be significant overlap among team members. Our thesis is that effective teams are those with a strong team culture because shared member expectations facilitate individual and team performance and communication. A strong team culture may derive from overlapping and pre-existing characteristics of team members or newly developed patterns of team member interaction. Additionally, selection into (or out of) a group is not necessarily a voluntary action on the part of a member. For example, an individualist may choose to leave a family group (e.g., sever ties with an overly critical parent or divorce a spouse) whereas such an option is not easily exercised by a collectivist (Erez & Earley, 1993; Triandis, 1995). Our definition does not require a particular size or age of an aggregate to constitute a group, although groups will vary qualitatively according to these dimensions. Finally, our definition requires that we consider the nature and structure of a group separate from the individual members. This final point seems necessary because much research on groups takes an individualistic perspective focusing on individual needs and motives (Turner, 1987).

(The reader should note some nomenclature as well that we adopt throughout our book. As stated, we use the terms “group” and “team” interchangeably and we use the terms “multinational” and “multicultural,” interchangeably. We apply the group, or team, concept to a set of interacting parties coming from different national and cultural backgrounds. This is what we mean by a multinational team. In this sense, what we call the multinational team might as well be called a multicultural, transnational, transcultural, team. The critical parts of the definition were listed previously.)

So, how can we gain an increased understanding of team dynamics using a cultural lens? We live in a world of interaction and discourse from which our most fundamental self-perceptions are derived. We gain knowledge of ourselves and those with whom we interact based on many characteristics that become salient based on our cultural framework. To an American, the car one drives has symbolic significance whereas, to an Indian, schooling is an important sign of position and status. It is through various types of social interactions that all people define themselves within their social community, and this self-definition lies at the very heart of human endeavor. This is a particularly important issue as we approach our move into the global village. People struggle with a desire for self-understanding and self-awareness in the face of such variety and ambiguity as we are presented in a multicultural w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Series Foreword
• 1 Introduction and Overview
• 2 Literature Review of Multinational Teams
• 3 Theory Overview
• 4 Individual and Group-Level Elements
• 5 Linking Processes
• 6 Catalysts for Change and Development in Multinational Teams
• 7 Profiles of Elements, Catalysts, and Dynamic Processes in Operative MNTs
• 8 Conclusions and a Research Agenda
• Appendix A Multinational Implementation of Teams Interview Protocol
• Appendix B Multinational Implementation of Teams Survey
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index