Challenges In Managing Multicultural Team

CHALLENGES IN MANAGING MULTICUTURAL TEAM

Multicultural groups offer various favourable circumstances to global organisations, including profound knowledge of distinctive market products, culturally sensitive customer service and 24-hour work shifts (Kristin et.al, 2006). However those preferences may be exceeded by issues coming from cultural contrasts, which can genuinely impede the competence of a group or actually bring it to a stalemate.

Multicultural teams have gotten to be more normal in our organizations, and contemporary universal management literature reveals that the management of multicultural teams is an imperative part of human resource management (Kristin et.al, 2006). Most recent Research have concentrated on the positive effects of utilizing multicultural teams, for instance, Earley and Mosakowski (2000) expressed that multicultural teams are utilized on the grounds that they are seen to surpass monoculture teams, particularly when performance obliges different skills and judgment.

A multicultural team simply refers to a team which consists of individuals form different culture and this takes place now in different working environment (Jackson, 2002). However, there is a huge focus on the significance of multi-cultural teams. This is teams operating between global businesses that could profit from a vast knowledge and understand that different cultures have an impact on the world of trade. As employment of managers has developed to be more universal, the prevalence of multi-cultural teams turns out to be greater hence there is a subsequent need to investigate how these groups function and comprehend their weaknesses and strengths (Aswathappa and Dash, 2008).

Aswathappa and Dash (2008) further mentioned the types of multicultural diversity in teams. The multicultural teams consist of three types. The token, bicultural and the multicultural.

• Token Teams

In token teams every member except one originates from the same background. In the most recent decades, prevalently male management groups started to give pay adequate attention to the few, regularly token, female individuals. Today numerous partnerships concentrate fundamentally more consideration on utilizing the potential commitment of their token ethnic members.

• Bicultural Teams

In a bicultural team, two or more people represent each of two distinct cultures. Bicultural teams should ceaselessly perceive and incorporate the viewpoints of both representatives’ cultures. When the number of people from each culture in the team is equivalent, then the group with the highest number of representative tends to dominate.

• Multicultural Team

In multicultural teams, individuals represent to three or more ethnic background. Today, an expanding number of corporate teams are internationally distanced teams, that is, groups made out of individuals from as far and wide as possible who meet electronically. The financial and political force structure of the delegate individuals moderates the group's progress and in this way, its adequacy. To perform most adequately multicultural teams need to perceive and coordinate all represented cultures.
Jackson & trochim (2002) has used the concept mapping to identify nine challenges faced by multicultural teams.
Direct versus indirect confrontation
This challenge incorporates cultural contrasts in preferences for open disagreement and confrontation in communication versus a more consensus building structure. Teams reported facing difficulties when colleagues with an inclination for verbally "forceful" communication style worked with an inclination for more "consensus building" in communicating their opinions. This challenge was connected with raising interpersonal strain and an inclination to concentrate more on the delivery of message as opposed to the substance of the message.
Excessively forceful delivery and non-verbal signs communicating annoyance appeared to expand the impression of incompatibility in multicultural teams.

Violations of Respect and hierachy
This set of challenges was brought on by varying respect for status, the chain of command and business hones that created unconventional power differentials. The most genuine flouting of respect and hierachy was not regarding the heirachy of leadership normally including improper contact by junior directors from a low power distance culture with senior management from a high power-distance culture(Hofstede,1980). These violation were intensely obvious and connected with imperative outcomes for instance losing an agreement, so senior administration normally mediated with dramatic symbolic displays of respect for the other party such as sending top-level officials to the next nation with a statement of an apology.

Fluency (Accents and vocabulary)

This classification portrayed challenges brought on by negative responses to accents and the different implications of a few words. The more genuine challenges originated from members comparing lack of fluency with the lack of brainpower. This was common amongst teams and with customers or clients, and was typically linked with expanded interpersonal strain. Inside groups, less fluent individuals were regularly indicated less regard or treated with more fretfulness in light of the fact that they were difficult to comprehend. With clients or customers, it was regular for managers to get objections equating with low quality customer service. A less genuine challenge was when team members utilized words with distinctive meanings crosswise over cultures. For example one group of indian accounting auditors utilized the word "assessment" in their communications to their American partners.

On the other hand, in india, this shows a pending examination and in the United States this implies that a fine has as of now been imposed. on the contrary, a manager issued a letter of recommendation describing an employee to be “ambitious”. The manager felt this was a positive characteristic, on the other hand, in the employee's culture this word potrayed an individual of being excessively political and double-crossing.

Time, Urgency and Pace
On cultural contrasts in
These challenges concentrated on cultural distictions in prospects for undertaking projects which includes what started supplying “on-time” as opposed to “lateness”. The most serious of these difficulties needed to do with meeting due dates for deliverables and making implausible timetables. For instance,in different countries a reasonable timeline was characterized as six weeks, while in others a sensible timeline for the same venture was six months. These difficulties normally had huge results in light of the fact that they had measurable and substantial expenses (manufacturing component parts, filing purchanse orders, disrupting a serial process, breaking contracts etc). Outrage, misconceptions and reputation were uncertain when these sorts of timing challenges emerged and discernments that the other team either had preposterous expectations or was moving too slow or inefficiently were pervasive (Tajfel & Turner,1986). One major part of teamwork is facilitating the efforts and yields of individual members, so it is not suprising that multicultural groups are confronted with this challenge . Issues of work pace or how much time to spend on different tasks are endemic to group taks and an important part of clarifying team-level task strategies (Hackman,1990). The additional layer of complexity added by culture seemed to be about the size of the gap in expectations for what a reasonable timeline was (Triandis,1976).Multicultural teams needed to speak up on asymmetries in time estimates that differed within substantial time periods