Multicultural Teams Research Articles

THE MANAGEMENT OF CROSS-CULTURAL VIRTUAL TEAMS

The accelerated development of information and communication technology, the transformation of business activity, which has become more global and competitive, and the prevalence of services based on knowledge and information led to the appearance of new models of virtual teamwork, more flexible and adaptive, which go beyond the classical functional departmental barriers and require the collaboration of employees with diverse skills, judgments and expertise. The COVID-19 pandemic event accelerated the adoption of these new work models worldwide at a scale never seen before. Cross-cultural virtual teams can be found in several fields, such as research and product development, quality circles, affinity groups, outsourcing teams, customer services, helpdesk services, academic and research groups. Under the framework of crossvergence theory, this conceptual article explores the contingencies of cross-cultural virtual teams, discussing its main challenges and explores a set of practices for multicultural team management in the virtual environment.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0394/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

The implications of stakeholder consultation on employee engagement: An African cross-border acquisition.

The objective of the study was to explore the power of stakeholder consultation on employee engagement during a cross-border acquisition in a multi-cultural context. Further, to describe the psychosocial factors at play during the employee involvement process towards enhancing employee engagement. This qualitative study presents the results from data collected in Tanzania through semi-structured interviews (46 participants) and analyzed in accordance with the hermeneutic circle and Tesch's content analysis method. The results of this study contribute to the body of knowledge to better understand the psychosocial factors at play within a multi-cultural environment which inform stakeholder consultation and will enable or hinder employee engagement. A transitional space should be created, fostering mature stakeholder engagement, promoting employee inclusion, engagement, and knowledge sharing. Bringing together two worlds requires building bridges to cross the cliff between contexts and overcoming diversity challenges, while incorporating diversity management in the consulting process. A multi-cultural team should be established, incorporating diversity management, applying the principles of respect, participation and transparent communication, with regular feedback on decisions made. External stakeholders in authoritative positions are not well received and should consider traditional superiority versus business hierarchy when establishing leader-follower relationships.

Theory-Driven, Multi-Stage Process to Develop a Culturally-Informed Anti-Stigma Intervention for Pregnant Women Living with HIV in Botswana.

Despite a well-established universal HIV diagnosis and treatment program, Botswana continues to face a high HIV prevalence, in large part due to persistent stigma, which particularly affects pregnant women and interferes with healthcare engagement. Tackling stigma as a fundamental cause of HIV disparities is an important but understudied aspect of current HIV interventions. Our multinational and multicultural team used a theory-driven, multi-stage iterative process to develop measures and interventions to first identify and then target the most culturally-salient aspects of stigma for mothers living with HIV in Botswana. This methodology report examines the stage-by-stage application of the "What Matters Most" (WMM) theory and lessons learned, sharing a replicable template for developing culturally-shaped anti-stigma interventions. First, we conducted initial qualitative work based on the WMM theory to identify key structural and cultural factors shaping stigma for women living with HIV in Botswana. Second, we developed a psychometrically validated scale measuring how "what matters most" contributes to and protects against stigma for this population. Third, we designed an anti-stigma intervention, "Mothers Moving towards Empowerment" (MME), centered on the local values identified using WMM theory that underly empowerment and motherhood by adapting a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-informed, group-based, and peer-co-led anti-stigma intervention specifically for pregnant women living with HIV. Fourth, we conducted a pilot study of MME in which participants were allocated to two trial arms: intervention or treatment-as-usual control. Our qualitative research identified that bearing and caring for children are capabilities essential to the concept of respected womanhood, which can be threatened by a real or perceived HIV diagnosis. These values informed the development and validation of a scale to measure these culturally-salient aspects of stigma for women living with HIV in Botswana. These findings further informed our intervention adaptation and pilot evaluation, in which the intervention group showed significant decreases in HIV stigma and depressive symptoms compared to the control group. Participants reported overcoming reluctance to disclose their HIV status to family, leading to improved social support. Previous studies have not utilized culturally-based approaches to assess, resist, and intervene with HIV-related stigma. By applying WMM in each stage, we identified cultural and gendered differences that enabled participants to resist HIV stigma. Focusing on these capabilities that enable full personhood, we developed an effective culturally-tailored anti-stigma intervention for pregnant women living with HIV in Botswana. This theory-driven, multi-stage approach can be replicated to achieve stigma reduction for other outcomes, populations, and contexts.

Evaluation of a Multicultural Approach to Teaching Entrepreneurship

Abstract One of the most important challenges in the field of higher education is to educate students about entrepreneurial attitudes and professional competences necessary for working in a multicultural environment in collaboration with a real business environment. Streamlining this process is one of the aims of the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership Project titled Entrepreneurship and Communication in Multicultural Teams (ECMT+). The cognitive purpose of this paper is to explore and evaluate students’ reflections on entrepreneurship teaching in an international and multicultural team. The applied research methods include a pilot quantitative survey using questionnaires and a qualitative research method of a reflective essay among students participating in the two-week Intensive Programme that took place in March 2017 at Karelia University in Finland. Respondents were chosen purposeful and included 48 participants from 14 countries worldwide. They represented seven high education institutions from seven different European countries. The study has been conducted anonymously via the Claroline Connect platform. The purpose of the empirical research was to diagnose the opinions of program participants, among others about new methods of business education they have experienced, diversity of multicultural context and relationships with other team members, their entrepreneurial attitude, and ability to solve problems at designing business solutions in the multicultural team.. Preliminary results appear to present interesting data and may provide a starting point for an in-depth empirical research associated with entrepreneurship in multicultural teams. The study reveals positive effects of applied methods of business education, significant involvement of participants in achieving the goal and gaining new knowledge within the analyzed area.

Embracing multicultural tensions: How team members’ multicultural paradox mindsets foster team information elaboration and creativity

We explore why teams with the same level of cultural diversity can differ in their level of creativity. To this end, we introduce the concept of paradox mindsets to research on multicultural teams. We argue that team members with a high multicultural paradox mindset are accepting of and energized by intercultural tensions, both emphasizing cultural differences and finding common ground. Their presence thus enables multicultural teams to embrace these tensions and leverage their cultural diversity toward team creativity. Specifically, we hypothesize that teams with members that have a high multicultural paradox mindset are more creative because these members promote information elaboration at the team level, which in turn fosters creativity. We test our hypotheses in a study of 217 individuals randomly assigned to 63 culturally diverse teams. Results provide support for our overarching theory.

International Portuguese Nurse Leaders' Insights for Multicultural Nursing.

Cultural diversity among patients and healthcare workers in the Portuguese healthcare organizations will increasingly challenge nurse managers to develop favorable nursing work environments and to improve culturally congruent care. Aim: This study aimed to identify nurse managers’ interventions that improve favorable nursing work environments in multicultural nursing teams and culturally congruent care for patients, based on Portuguese nurse leaders’ experience in international settings. Methods: A qualitative and exploratory study was conducted as the first stage of a sequential exploratory mixed study design. A convenience sample of Portuguese nurses with leadership experience of multicultural teams was recruited to participate in one focus group. Qualitative data were recorded and transcribed for content analysis. Text segments were organized into themes and categories with the support of the qualitative software IRaMuTeQ. Results: Nurse managers’ interventions, such as adapting the leadership style, thanking nurses for their work, adjusting the unit to attend to patients’ worship practices, and supporting foreign nurses in learning the local language, were categorized into three main themes and five categories—transcultural nursing leadership assumptions, capitalizing nurses, improving culturally congruent care, team problems and strategies, and improving effective communication. Conclusions: These findings corroborate international studies, advocate for capable nurse managers to lead in a globalized world, and are suitable to develop a transcultural nursing leadership questionnaire.

Challenging intercultural discomforts: Intercultural communicative competence through digital storytelling

Discomfort perceived by speakers in intercultural situations becomes one of the main psychological factors which makes speakers give up attempts at communication and may result in frustration or inefficient communication. The article discusses the pedagogical potential of digital storytelling, understood as multimodal pedagogy that encourages creative expression and self-representation, as a tool for challenging and mitigating perceived communicational and intercultural discomfort within the context of intercultural competence development and training. The authors argue that collaborative digital storytelling in multicultural teams raises intercultural awareness by creating a safe, structured, and facilitated (virtual) space for students to develop their ability to interact with people from another country and culture in a foreign language and represents a viable tool of challenging and overcoming intercultural discomfort by providing an opportunity for repeated intercultural interaction through negotiation of meaning and intersubjective construction of knowledge as well as by providing motivating real-life context for students’ work. In supporting dialogic and constructivist approaches to educational practice, digital storytelling is fully equipped to provide a viable alternative to direct instruction and transmissive models of teaching. In addition to this, by providing a digital element, digital storytelling allows students to reflect on the culturally as well as technologically mediated nature of communication.

Team Leaders as Cognition Orchestrators - Improving Creativity by Reducing Cognitive Biases

This paper articulates an idea of team leaders as cognition orchestrators – those who orchestrate and facilitate multicultural teams’ interactions during the creative process – as a novel approach to understanding how multicultural team leaders leverage teams’ diverse cognition-based resources to enhance creative performance. I theorize that team leaders can create and maintain a team climate – a social fabric facilitating effective knowledge generation – to foster the creative performance of culturally diverse teams through mitigating members’ cognitive biases. I identify seven types of cognitive biases relevant to team creativity, namely projection bias, egocentric empathy gap, focusing illusion, confirmation bias, endowment effect, and authority bias (or the rule “respect and obey others”). This paper further puts forward a set of propositions to address these biases towards improving team creative performance. Through this paper, while responding to the call for more research on the positive side of cultural diversity, I shed more light on leaders as agents of changes in team processes through mitigating cognition biases. Crossing the management discipline, this work is also the first attempt to introduce a design-driven approach (using a non-human actor for interaction and communication) towards resolving the intercultural encounters in multicultural teams.

The Role of Cultural Intelligence in Teams with Newcomers: A Multi-Level Model

We examine the importance of team cultural intelligence (CQ) in multicultural teams that have two common characteristics—teams tasked with creative performance that have culturally different newcomers. Team CQ is conceptualized as a shared cognitive system of cultural capabilities among longer tenured, incumbent members on the team. We argue that this set of team-level cultural cognitive capabilities influences team creativity as mediated by team information elaboration. We incorporate the role of motivation and suggest that team learning goal orientation will enhance the effect of team CQ on team outcomes. At the individual level, we explain how newcomers’ CQ may impact newcomer creativity via their information seeking behaviors. This model suggests that more attention to how team CQ is conceptualized, what motivations are contextually important, and how teams with culturally distinct newcomers incorporate these new members in team processes will be important themes in future CQ research.

Intercultural Communication Competence: Well-being and Performance of Multicultural Teams

Multiethnic groups coexist in a typical Malaysian university setting. Cultural patterns are expressed through communication facilitating better understanding between diverse cultural groups. Intercultural communication competence based on ethnicity is explained by employing structural equation modelling using Barrett and colleagues' (2013) indicators of attitude, knowledge and skills. These three constructs are hypothesized to explain intercultural communication competence and its effect on well-being and performance. Purposive sampling via a self-administered survey involved 288 Malaysian educators from higher education. The findings confirm that both endogenous constructs -- well-being and team performance -- can be used as predictive factors to assess intercultural communication competence.

Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence: The Superlative Approach to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently being developed by large corporations, and governments all over the world are yearning for it. AI isn’t a futuristic concept; it is already here, and it is being implemented in a range of industries. Finance, national security, health care, criminal justice, transportation, and smart cities are all examples of this. There are countless examples of AI having a substantial impact on the world and complementing human abilities. However, due to the immense societal ramifications of these technologies, AI is on the verge of disrupting a host of industries, so the technique by which AI systems are created must be better understood. The goal of the study was to look at what it meant to be human-centred, how to create human-centred AI, and what considerations should be made for human-centred AI to achieve sustainability and the SDGs. Using a systematic literature review technique, the study discovered that a human-centred AI strategy strives to create and implement AI systems in ways that benefit mankind and serve their interests. The study also found that a human-in-the-loop concept should be used to develop procedures for creating human-centred AI, as well as other initiatives, such as the promotion of AI accountability, encouraging businesses to use autonomy wisely, to motivate businesses to be aware of human and algorithmic biases, to ensure that businesses prioritize customers, and form multicultural teams to tackle AI research. The study concluded with policy recommendations for human-centred AI to help accomplish the SDGs, including expanding government AI investments, addressing data and algorithm biases, and resolving data access issues, among other things.

Managers’ power in an environment of cultural diversity – in the opinion of managers from Poland, Spain and Italy

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The aims of the article are to describe how managers of different nationalities understand the concept of “power”, to identify the sources of their power and ways of exercising it, and to determine the impact of managers’ power on different areas of managing people in a culturally diverse work environment.
 THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The research problems are an attempt to answer the following questions: How do managers who work with multicultural teams define “power”? What sources of power and ways of exercising power do they use in managing their teams? What areas of people management in culturally diverse teams are significantly influenced by their power? The research methods are a review of the subject literature and the results of 24 individual in-depth interviews.
 THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The theoretical part of the article explains the term “power” and describes the sources of power used by managers in managing people. The research part reports the results of a qualitative study (interviews with the Polish, Spanish and Italian managers).
 RESEARCH RESULTS: Based on the subject literature and the results of the study, the author has demonstrated that managers’ power is of great importance as it affects employees and different areas of people management. This is very important in an environment of cultural diversity, in which employees from various cultural backgrounds can have different sensitivity to the sources of power used by managers.
 CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Managers responsible for managing teams should pay special attention to the sources of power and the ways in which power is exercised, the impact of power on employees’ attitudes and behaviours, their motivation to work and the decisions taken in different areas of people management. Managers’ responsibility to use power appropriately is particularly important in work environment of cultural diversity.

Exploration of the moderator effect of cultural diversity on team performance across 45 professional football leagues: An ecological dynamics perspective on cross-cultural research

ObjectiveTo investigate the moderating effect of cultural diversity on team performance in professional football worldwide through the lens of ecological dynamics and cross-cultural psychology. Designand Method: Based a sample of 23,186 matches played by 728 teams across 45 leagues during the 2020/21 season, two sets of moderated regression analyses were conducted to examine the effect on sporting results of the interaction between teams’ cultural diversity, their dominant playing style and market value. In addition to bivariate correlations, a total of 16 ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models were designed to test 5 hypotheses. A new theoretical model, the Integrative Categorization-Intentionality Model (ICIM), was proposed to explain four key findings. FindingsCDI’s role as a statistically significant cross-cultural moderator was confirmed in relation to all three styles of play: possession-based (ß = −0.08, p < 0.05), constructive attacking (ß = −0.30, p < 0.01), and defensive (ß = 0.28, p < 0.05), the respective models explaining 35.6%, 34% and 35% of the variance. Results showed that cultural heterogeneity contributes to goal scoring in teams reliant on the first two styles, whilst defensively-oriented teams were more likely to improve performance with increasing cultural homogeneity. Moreover, the positive effect of cultural heterogeneity on sporting outcomes was more likely in less affluent teams. Finally, empirical evidence revealed a link between enhanced performance and a higher proportion of domestic defensive players in defensively oriented teams (ß = −0.11, p < 0.05), and, similarly, between a higher proportion of foreign offensive players in offensively-oriented teams (ß = −0.27, p < 0.01). ConclusionsThe study has practical implications for scouting/recruitment of players when strategizing on team cultural and functional composition, as well as for coaches in terms of designing suitable training practices gauged to match and develop multicultural teams’ diverse skill set, or more generally, in relation to managing multicultural teams.

Challenges And Benefits of Working In Multicultural Teams: Evidence from Poland and Romania

In modern times it is becoming more and more common to create teams consisting of representatives of many cultures. The functioning of multicultural teams brings many benefits, but also forces to overcome many difficulties.

Intercultural Management as an Important Aspect of Modern Managers’ Work: Educational Challenges

The issue of intercultural management has become particularly pertinent because of globalization and the internationalization of economic activity undertaken by contemporary companies. Intercultural management and its challenges are extensively analysed in numerous Polish and foreign publications. The significant role played by intercultural management primarily stems from the tremendous impact it exerts on the efficient functioning of multicultural teams, the relationships between the people in these teams, and their communication and motivation. Moreover, at present it is a crucial aspect of the everyday work of managers operating in culturally diverse work environments. The article is of a theoretical nature. The first part describes the role and importance of manager values in the context of cultural diversity in their work environments, followed by the presentation of the concept and meaning of intercultural management. Next, the impact managers exert on the management of culturally diverse teams in modern organizations is analysed. The final part describes selected challenges connected to educating and training modern managers to work in intercultural work environments. The aim of the article is to demonstrate the role and importance of intercultural management as a vital aspect of modern managers’ work and to identify educational challenges related to this area.

Leadership In Multicultural Teams

Due to the constantly changing environment contemporary organizations need to redefine the roles of their managers and highlight the significance of certain competencies. They are primarily required to attract, maintain and develop the most competent people, keep a high efficiency, stimulate innovation, adjust mutual visions, strategies and conduct and provide a work-life balance.

‘Maybe it’s culture and maybe it isn’t’: An ethnographic study of sensemaking, culture and performance in a multicultural team

Links between cultural diversity and team performance remain unclear despite extensive research. This study critiques essentialist ‘Input-Process-Output’ logics to focus on team members’ sensemaking. Using observation and interview data from an ethnographic study of an Indian-German team over an 18-month high-pressure project, we used thematic analysis and event sequencing to map sensemaking of culture and performance over time. Team members initially constructed a prospective frame linking stereotypes of cultural difference to performance, which plausibly explained problems while protecting identity. This frame proved resistant to updating. While overt conflict was avoided, the failure to confront difficulties closed down alternative explanations and prevented innovation and learning. Team performance was evaluated both positively and negatively reflecting ongoing ambiguity around performance. The role of culture in performance was only challenged post-project after time for reflection. The longitudinal, ethnographic approach enables this research to contribute to sensemaking by demonstrating the importance of prospective framing and highlighting the role of identity and plausibility in resisting updating frames. We argue that essentialist conceptions of the unequivocal positive or negative outcome of cultural diversity as ‘double-edged sword’ should be reframed to stress agency and the importance of facilitating conditions for learning in multicultural teams.

Multicultural Team Conflict Management in the Workplace

Multicultural Team Conflict Management in the Workplace

Effective wellbeing programs for multicultural teams

Effective wellbeing programs for multicultural teams

SIGNIFICANT ASPECTS OF CONSTRUCTIVE INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

At present the essence of cultural knowledge lies in its integration with major aspects of our life and belongs to the global skills which are also known as “life skills” and needed to achieve for lifelong success and fulfilment in the fast-changing and diverse world. The paper discusses the findings of international researchers (Kramsch (1992), Triandis (2002), Hall (1959), Schwartz (2012), Kulich (2002, 2015), M. Taylor (2002), M. Gelfand (2018) who explored different aspects of cultural awareness demonstrates the benefits of such knowledge for smooth and painless adaptation to new culture and society, transforms this knowledge into competence and develop flexibility and adaptability. The author consolidates and sums up these aspects and proposes some advice for efficient cooperation in multicultural teams. Among the recommendations how to nudge a culture she singles out the following: to share the best practices of expats; to transform cultural knowledge into competence and develop flexibility and adaptability in cros-cultural communication; to be aware of etic and emic lenses of different cultures; to avoid stereotyping judgements and estimates; to apply knowledge of ethnorelativism towards understanding the foreigners; to understand the logic of tight-loose cultures to cultivate cultural empathy; to accept different cultural norms to lower judgmental attitudes towards them; to observe, ask politely and interpret for understanding other cultures; to learn target language to bridge cultural gaps; to be open and sincere in conversation, avoid taboo and personal questions, ask what is important to others in culturally appropriate ways.