Bicultural Managers Leading Multicultural Teams within Agile Organizations

Abstract

Background: Most organizations in high-receiving immigrant nations lack insight into how a bicultural employee’s special skills might be leveraged to improve performance within agile organizations. Biculturals are recognized as an important segment of managers, organizational leaders have a gap in knowledge about this group’s distinctive experiences and the implications of such within their work environment. Methodology: This integrative literature review focused on studying current research findings on bicultural managers’ boundary spanning competencies and multicultural team effectiveness within agile organizations. A wide range of search terms was used to extract and select pertinent literature from numerous search engines and databases, with emphasis on studies published within the past 5 years and high number of citations. Findings: This integrative literature review provides in-depth knowledge for understanding the management experiences of biculturals in agile organizations and the implications of their bicultural competencies and skills in leading multicultural teams. Although many bicultural managers’ competencies and their effectiveness in managing related challenges are influenced by their work environments, they possess understanding of multiple cultures that can enhance team outcomes and complex team-level competencies associated with better performance. Originality: This integrative literature review can be utilized by future researchers as foundational material in studies to extend theoretical foundations and to extend the results of prior related studies. It has helped to highlight managerial and theoretical implications and to inform recommendations for future research that could contribute to improving the effectiveness and performance of multicultural teams within agile organizations.