Distefano
Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 45– 63, 2000
© 2000 Elsevier Science, Inc.
ISSN 0090-2616/00/$–see frontmatter
PII S0090-2616(00)00012-7
Creating Value with Diverse
Teams in Global Management
JOSEPH J. DISTEFANO
INTRODUCTION
T
oday’s economy increasingly requires people to collaborate in teams that cross cultural and geographic boundaries. Sometimes team members are all located in the same physical setting. More and more frequently, they are scattered across a city, a country, or the globe. In theory, these teams should create significant competitive advantage by bringing together different ideas, pools of knowledge, and approaches to work. However, in practice global teams do not often create the value expected. Instead, members clash, and the teams are either paralyzed into inaction or worse. With today’s workforce demographics, the existence of culturally diverse teams is inevitable; and with today’s competitive environment, firms cannot afford to forego their value.
A few years ago we began a systematic study of multicultural teams. The literature told us that diverse teams have a lot of potential. Compared to homogeneous teams they can be more creative, generate more and
MARTHA L. MAZNEVSKI
better alternatives to problems, and generate more and better criteria for evaluating alternatives. However, in no research did diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones on overall solution quality, and in only one study did they equal the homogeneous teams. But a couple of studies and a wealth of anecdotal evidence suggested a slightly different story. Diverse teams tend to perform either better or worse than homogeneous ones, with more performing worse than better (see Fig. 1). We set out to determine what distinguished the poor performers from the high performers, and to develop ways of helping culturally diverse teams at the bottom of the performance graph leapfrog the homogeneous teams and create value. Why Focus on Multicultural
Teams?
Members of
© 2000 Elsevier Science, Inc.
ISSN 0090-2616/00/$–see frontmatter
PII S0090-2616(00)00012-7
Creating Value with Diverse
Teams in Global Management
JOSEPH J. DISTEFANO
INTRODUCTION
T
oday’s economy increasingly requires people to collaborate in teams that cross cultural and geographic boundaries. Sometimes team members are all located in the same physical setting. More and more frequently, they are scattered across a city, a country, or the globe. In theory, these teams should create significant competitive advantage by bringing together different ideas, pools of knowledge, and approaches to work. However, in practice global teams do not often create the value expected. Instead, members clash, and the teams are either paralyzed into inaction or worse. With today’s workforce demographics, the existence of culturally diverse teams is inevitable; and with today’s competitive environment, firms cannot afford to forego their value.
A few years ago we began a systematic study of multicultural teams. The literature told us that diverse teams have a lot of potential. Compared to homogeneous teams they can be more creative, generate more and
MARTHA L. MAZNEVSKI
better alternatives to problems, and generate more and better criteria for evaluating alternatives. However, in no research did diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones on overall solution quality, and in only one study did they equal the homogeneous teams. But a couple of studies and a wealth of anecdotal evidence suggested a slightly different story. Diverse teams tend to perform either better or worse than homogeneous ones, with more performing worse than better (see Fig. 1). We set out to determine what distinguished the poor performers from the high performers, and to develop ways of helping culturally diverse teams at the bottom of the performance graph leapfrog the homogeneous teams and create value. Why Focus on Multicultural
Teams?
Members of
Bibliography: Park: Sage, 1991): 138 –173; F.J. Milliken and L.L Academy of Management Review 21 (1996): 402– 433; and S (1997): 239 –290. Two publications on culturally diverse teams that highly complement the material here are S.C Company,” Organizational Dynamics 24, no. 4 (1996): 50 – 67; and S Ward, Leading International Teams (Berkshire, UK: McGraw–Hill International, 2000). Perspective on Clinical Issues (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1984); and the article “Towards a Theory of Communication in Terms of Preconditions: A Conceptual Framework Giles and R.N. St. Clair (Eds.), Recent Advances in Language, Communication, and Social Psychology (London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1985). DiStefano and M.L. Maznevski (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2000) for cultural mapping include N.J. Adler, International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, 3rd ed., (Cincinnati, OH: South-Western College Publishing, 1997); G.H Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, (New York: McGraw–Hill, 1997); and (Avon: The Bath Press, 1993).