CASE STUDY - Managing multicultural teams
When a major international software developer needed to produce a new product quickly, the project manager assembled a team of employees from India and the United States. From the start, the team members could not agree on a delivery date for the product. The Americans thought the work could be done in two or three weeks; the Indians predicted it would take two to three months.
As time went on, the Indian team members [due to their culture of non-direct communication) proved reluctant to report setbacks in the production process, which the American team members would find out about only when the work was due to be passed to them.
Such conflicts, of course, may affect any team, but in this case they arose from cultural differences. As tensions mounted, conflict over delivery dates and feedback became personal, disrupting team members' communication about even mundane issues. The project manager decided he had to intervene - with the result that both the American and the Indian team members came to rely on him for direction regarding minute operational details that the team should have been able to handle itself.
The manager became so bogged down by quotidian issues that the project careened hopelessly off even the most pessimistic schedule - and the team members never learned to work together effectively.
Source: Brett, J., Behfar, K. and Kern, M. (2006) Managing multicultural teams. Harvard Business Review, 8401), November, pp. 84-6.
This case is representative of the workplace of today and the future - a workplace increasingly diverse in terms of age, gender and culture, which makes the conflict management and negotiation processes increasingly complex.
Questions
1. What complexities do these diversity factors add to conflict management and negotiation processes?
2. What strategies need to be put in place to deal with these?
3. What training and development strategies need to bet developed by an organisation to deal with the challenges of managing a culturally diverse Team?