Culture Matters

Decision-Making in Global Virtual Teams

Norhayati Zakaria

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781482240160
• eBook ISBN: 9781315355665
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Governo e imprese
• Index: Business

Global virtual teams (GVTs) have evolved as a common work structure in multinational corporations due to their efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The cultural differences can produce great benefits in terms of perspective, creativity, and innovation, but can also exacerbate interpersonal tensions, miscommunications, and clashing decision-making behaviors. This book outlines cultural competencies specific to GVTs and sheds light on management strategies for creating an optimal inter-cultural GVT environment. It covers theory, decision making strategies, and activities for cultural competence and problem resolution, all told through vignettes and lessons-learned.

DISTRIBUTED DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES AND ACTIVITIES

III

What can I do, it is the bureaucracy!

Henry Butler, the marketing manager at Sime Tyres in London, waited and waited for a decision. He looked at the calendar. He was frustrated because they were behind the deadline for almost one week now. He should receive the final say from the team in Thailand and then communicate it to their Swiss team. The meeting will be held in Geneva, and it is just around the corner. Without waiting any further, he decided to send a quick email—“Prawan, what is your decision? Who will be the speaker and how many participants?” The Swiss team member, Anthony Marcus, as the project manager of Alphard Consulting Inc., was shocked that the awaited decision has not been made by Prawan because he needs to organize and coordinate the event with Henry. He was also getting anxious about it and thus decided to respond to the email, which said “…we are running short of time, we need to finalize the number of people to attend the meeting. It is only three weeks away. Please get back to us promptly.” Henry and Anthony are still waiting despite the two emails that were sent. Time is ticking, yet decisions were not made. In his bewilderment, Anthony wonders, “…hmmm, how do I push the team to make decisions urgently?” While on the other corner of the world, Henry sighed and said to himself, “If only they are in my office, I will surely knock on their doors. Unfortunately, they are thousands of miles away!”

Chapter 7

Overview of Distributed Decision-Making Process

Introduction

Who makes the decision? What kinds of decisions do people make at the workplace, and for what reasons are they carried out, and when are they needed? If at all, can one transfer or empower the responsibility of making decisions to others? To answer these questions, let me first define what decision making is. According to Saaty (2012), making decisions in organizations undergoes a multifaceted process based on many intricate and challenging issues, despite the fact that people need to make decisions at all times and at all levels. He further suggests that decision making is a complex world, and it is governed by two dimensions, which are the human behavioral and thought process. The human behaviors are driven by the instinct–drive theory, which describes how a person is subjected to one’s own instinct when making decisions. As such, factors like sentiment, value, ambition, attitude, taste and preferences, and inclination are seen as more desirable compared to logic reasoning and logic thinking. Saaty (2012) also further integrates the theory of learning to understand how a person makes a decision. He defined learning as “…the ability to recognize a specific act in the light of previous experience. It is an iterative, or repeated, process of adding knowledge that elaborates on or expands existing knowledge” (p. 9). With both theories at hand, it is interesting to explore whether or not such intuitive and learning behaviors of people at the workplace provide an understanding on how the different work structures, such as the virtual work environment, play out when it comes to the decision-making process.

Essentially, given the heightened level of globalization and the ubiquitous use of computer-mediated technologies in organizations at present, people are confronted with new ways of making decisions at a virtual workplace. Thus, with this entire complex distributed decision-making process, it is essential to understand that the decision-making process is still the root of management roles in any organizations. In a globalized world, the reality of workplace presents each employee at multiple layers of management with varied types of decisions for diverse reasons at a different time zone with different practices as well. In fact, in all organizations, all layers of management are involved in decision making—i.e., one way or another—whether or not it is for a simple or challenging task at the workplace. For example, on a daily and routine basis, no organization can operate without making decisions—either small or big ones. The only difference that sets apart one layer of management from the others is the degree of decisions to be made, by whom, and by when. Likewise, on a long-term and competitive basis, no organization can excel without making timely and accurate decisions within a strategic time frame. If organizations regard time as money, then decisions are costly. High-performing organizations depend on efficient decisions and effective action plans. The phrase money talks becomes the main agenda for any organization to incorporate its strategic plan of maximizing profits and minimizing costs. The goal of making profit is the bottom line for all organizations.

Many organizations consider the decision-making process as the heart of organizational process, culture, and structure; thus, for the distributed decision-making process to be effective, organizations need to consider such process as both a science and art in itself. Moreover, for global virtual teams (GVTs), given the complexities of distance and time zone, decisions need to carefully incorporate the scientific process because, in every step of a decision, people need to explore situations and problems, then identify the choices when they need to solve a problem, consequently think carefully about the problems and the choices at hand, deliberate the ideas among people, and finally arrive at a solution by taking appropriate actions. It is in a scientific manner because it follows a systematic way of doing things—involving one process to another, which has a beginning and an end. This process itself can be time consuming because the members are from different geographical locations with different time zones. Yet, GVTs are also confronted with many challenges in arriving to a decision, as well as realizing an action due to cultural differences such as in communication styles, work practices, and procedures. This is where the aesthetic or creativity element comes into the picture. The art of decision making entails a manager to solve a problem and find a solution through an innovative way by taking the cultural elements into perspective. It may result in diverse ways of solving a problem to reach efficient and effective decisions. People, organization system and structures, work policies and procedures, and technology are some of the key aspects that need to be put in place at the organizational level. Yet many of the organizations failed to take into consideration the magnitude and impact of the virtual-space factors when they manage their GVTs due to members coming from different organizations. They failed to incorporate both the scientific and innovative manner of managing the distributed decision-making process.

Therefore, this study focused on email participation and did not consider other computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools such as blogs or Wiki Webs, or Web conferencing, or face-to-face meetings. Effective participation in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was measured by the substantive contributions that were made by Civil Society participants during the four stages of the decision-making process: (1) problem recognition/agenda setting, (2) information search, (3) specification of alternatives, and (4) choice. I investigated the communicative behaviors from two distinct cultural orientations, high context and low context, since an individual may contribute in the four stages differently depending on whether he or she uses high-context versus low-context cultural communication styles and the cultural values that one is ascribed to.

The first stage in decision making is problem recognition (Adler 1997). It was crucial for participants to correctly identify and recognize the problems that they wanted to solve or bring to attention in the WSIS. This is the initial step in the decision-making process. In public policy-making processes, Kingdon (1995) termed this stage as agenda setting. The second stage is a response to problems and issues, which Adler termed as information search. At this stage, once people identify the problems, as well as begin to look for ways to solve them, they would provide many responses as a way to search for information that helps them make a decision on the most viable solution for the problem encountered (Adler 1997). The third stage is specification of alternatives in which people choose from a range of options (Kingdon 1995). In this stage, it centers on the ability of a Civil Society participant to make a proposal by giving or generating ideas, and presenting a position on the problems identified, or putting across self-interest issues. The final stage is called choice where a solution (one or many or even a nonsolution) is arrived at either by consensus or by authoritative action. It is noteworthy that success in one of these stages is not an indication of success in others. In addition, the stages do not necessarily occur in a linear fashion. The stages are iterative and interdependent and may occur several times before a solution is reached and/or agreed upon by participants. Likewise, some stages can be left out. The most effective process is that participants reach a solution that addresses the problem and that arises from the proposals made and the responses generated.

In phase one of the WSIS in Geneva, th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• SECTION I GLOBAL VIRTUAL TEAM
• SECTION II CULTURE AND ITS MEANING
• SECTION III DISTRIBUTED DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES AND ACTIVITIES
• SECTION IV CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON DISTRIBUTED DECISION MAKING
• SECTION V STRATEGIES AND COMPETENCIES FOR MANAGING GLOBAL VIRTUAL TEAMS
• Index