Cultural Diversity and Organizational Commitment †MyAssignmenthelp

Question: Discuss about the Cultural Diversity and Organizational Commitment. Answer: Introduction The global teams are located in diverse geographical locations owing to the needs of the modern business (Nordbck and Espinosa 2015). In order to succeed in this competitive world, the organizations are increasingly opting for international business expansions. This requires them to set up offices at different parts of the world for greater business success. However, the managers of the cross-border teams often face difficulties in managing the global teams. They often find it difficult to manage the disperse teams. The managers of the multinational firms realize that there are a wide number of issues that they face during the management of the cross-cultural teams. This paper would analyze the different challenges of managing global teams and explore the various aspects of this topic. The objective of this project would be to understand the aspect of difficulties faced by multinational companies when they have to manage overseas team (Gibson et al. 2014). This project would strive to explore the concerns of the multinational managers in their day to day functioning of the business. The aims of the project are to understand the conceptual framework of different issues faced in a multi-cultural team. The different aspects of the cross-cultural teams need to be understood. The various kind of the management practices in global teams need to be understood in order to understand the different challenges. This project also aims to identify the different challenges that are being faced by the global teams which prevent them from achieving operational excellence. The scope of the project considers the offices of the multinational companies which are located in diverse geographical locations. The companies are located in diverse areas and they are separated from each other by national borders. The teams that are located in the same time zones, country and same locations are outside the project scope. As opined by Luo and Shenkar (2017), there are a variety of organizational mechanisms that the multinational corporations used to integrate their dispersed operations in a global marketplace. The competitive ability of the organization depends on the effective utilization of the critical resources of the organization. It is a difficult task to manage a team with individuals belonging from different nationalities and working in diverse functions, business entities and cultures (Nordbck and Espinosa 2015). The basic purpose of a culturally diverse team is to act in coordination so that their overall organizational; mission is fulfilled. Chou and Liao (2017) argue that it is not possible for the global firms to exploit different economies of scale and ensure maximum transfer of knowledge in a global scenario. It is important that the global managers grasp the different obstacles that are needed to be successful in the global teams (Nordbck and Espinosa 2015). According to Dunning (2014), the global teams and their supervisors need to formulate judicious strategic measures so that the level of challenges is being reduced considerably (Nordbck and Espinosa 2015). The virtual teams operate in a challenging environment in which there are short durations of interaction in which they are supposed to handle difficult tasks (Gibbs and Boyraz 2015). The establishment of the virtual teams requires excellent leadership, team training, easy access to technology and understanding of different time zones, cultures and languages. It is also important to implement open lines of communication in which the team members are motivated for team success (Chou and Liao 2017). It is possible to achieve organizational success of virtual teams if the managers are well aware of the different challenges and how to handle them well. The managers should find a common communication ground in which they would be able to understand the work patterns of each other. As stated by Charlier et al.(2016), the onset of the internet and the variety of communication tools have lead to the greater disperse of the teams and they have become more diverse. It is important that the organizational supervisors demonstrate adequate amount of leadership, which would help the team to function smoothly (Rao 2015). The managers should be competent enough so that they can understand the various difficulties of the global teams. A global mindset would help in finding solutions to critical problems so that the cross border employees face least resistance and hindrances from achieving their full organizational potential (Chou and Liao 2017). The findings of Morgan, Paucar-Caceres and Wright (2014) reveals that the remote location of the employees are becoming a trends these days as they are more opted by the employees. The reason for the preference of the remote location of work is the greater savings on the costs as well as increased prevalence of the remote employees (Morgan, Paucar-Caceres and Wright 2014). The various kinds of telecommuters working for an organization are usually satisfied with the different work-life balances as well as there are lower instances of job burnout in such cases (Wildman and Griffith 2015). The employers view telecommuting as the way for ensuring recruitment of the best people who would be best fit for the various types of job roles. But, the process of development of the remote employees requires constant monitoring as well as constant support (Morgan, Paucar-Caceres and Wright 2014). The remote working options should be used to attract as well as retain the employees and well as to enh ance the project decision quality which rises from the firms ability to place different individuals in distant locations (Morgan, Paucar-Caceres and Wright 2014). The diverse teams ensure that the employees are able to contact the customers of the company on a global basis, which would improve the customer satisfaction rates. As commented by Maldonado and Vera (2014), there are varieties of structural powers as well as functional powers that are enjoyed by the members working in the headquarters of a firm. There are issues with the perception of organizational powers between the employees of the organization, which often leads to conflict in the teams. There are challenges with the monitoring as well as evaluation of the virtual teams. There are also difficulties with the measurement of performance of the virtual teams located on different geographical territories. This is because of the fact that the supervisors are not able to come face to face with the team everyday and monitor their performances on a daily basis. The findings of Morgan, Paucar-Caceres and Wright (2014) reveal that the perception of power is among one of the most important reasons of cross cultural difficulties in management. The more powerful members are likely to exploit the less powerful ones and also the vice-versa case happens in the organizations. Thomas and Peterson (2017) states that it is natural for the cross-cultural teams to have certain differences between them. There are often indifferences between the employees of different nations, which becomes it difficult to work together. There is often high degree of stereotypes which makes the employees gives poor performance. There are often instances when there is indifferent perception of each others cultural attributes. For example, the employees of America may have different perception of the cultural beliefs, languages, rituals and local perceptions of the people of Asian countries (Thomas and Peterson 2017). The American employees may not gel well with their Asian counterparts as they feel that the latter would be dirty, shabby and lack basic etiquettes. There are often instances of cultural insensitivity in which the employees belonging to one culture may not be able to respect the cultural attributes of other teams located overseas (Thomas and Peterson 2017). This may create a strong hostility between the cross cultural teams, which may affect the overall organizational performances. It is often a challenge to implement employee engagement measures for the cross-cultural teams. The employees working in the off-shore tasks may lack motivation as the employees located in the home countries (Wood and Wilberger 2015). This is because of the fact that the employees located in the hometown have the privilege of visiting office everyday, which the offshore members are unable to do. They often find it useless to do official work while staying in a foreign land. This often reduces their work output and the projects witness failure. The face-to-face communication cannot be substituted and the distant employees may feel that they have the power to do anything as they would not be monitored constantly (Thomas and Peterson 2017). The workers who are located in a distant location may find it difficult to attend the mid-night meetings and conferences as their supervisors may be located in a different time zone. The time zones pose several risk factors for the managers and they might find it difficult to manage the same (Thomas and Peterson 2017). Another key challenge of the global teams is the linguistic barriers that are often responsible for the creation of misunderstanding in between the team. The managers of the firm often fail to address the language issues of the employees and this reduces the performance of the employees as they often feel demotivated to work in these cultures (Thomas and Peterson 2017). If there is not enriching organizational culture, then the productivity of the employees would reduce to great extent. The global teams often fail in the coordination between the cross culture teams and this reduces the pace of the decision making process. The managers often find it difficult to organize and manage the reviews, meeting, seminars and interaction between the cross border employees (Gelfand et al. 2017). The employees who have their immediate supervisors and their team working abroad may feel left out and hence they may not be able to participate fully in the organizational decisions (Brantley et al. 2015). There can be slow pace of grasping of the major job responsibilities in the organization. There are certain benefits of the cross cultural teams, however, there is more number of challenges that are faced by the cross-border managers. The basis of the cross-border teams is the computer mediated communication (Brantley et al. 2015). In this kind of communication, there is absence of the non-verbal cues as well as there is indirect communication transfer that often poses difficulty for the employees (Brantley et al. 2015). There are high instances of misunderstandings that lead to low levels of trust and cohesion in the team. There may be incorrect assumptions and there are instances when the virtual team members may not be able to understand the intentions of the other team mates located in distant locations (Brantley et al. 2015). There may be misinterpretation of the facts and there are instances of incorrect assumptions that may cause interpersonal struggles (Brantley et al. 2015). The viewpoints of Lilian (2014) states that the virtual teams may lack the vision and mission as there is flexible space, time and also there are lack of visual cues. The knowledge sharing becomes a difficult job and there are possibilities of information overload (Brantley et al. 2015). There are also issues with the training of the manpower who would be using the telecommunication processes for contacting the members located in overseas location (Brantley et al. 2015). The technical glitch of the communication tools may hamper the connectivity and the cross border team may have issues contacting with the teams located in distant locations. In the event of a technical snag in the absence of technical team, then it is possible that the interruption may continue for several weeks (Brantley et al. 2015). This often hampers the team productivity and hence the employees or the team would not be able to meet organizational objectives. The management of the global teams is not only the sole responsibility of the department managers, but it is also the responsibility of the human resource managers (Brantley et al. 2015). There is often lack of participation of the human resource managers, which leads to failure of the overseas project (Germain and McGuire 2014). The HR personnel may be too busy in the office work, that they are unable to focus on the overseas employees. There are often trust issues with the foreign team members and those employees who are working in remote locations. This often ruins the interpersonal relationships and affects the team output. Conclusion There are several challenges that the international managers face while managing global teams. There are several different kinds of problems that are faced by the global teams. This review analyzed some of the main challenges and discussed major concepts. In spite of the steps taken towards reducing these differences, this is a common problem and continues to haunt the global managers. The various aspects of the cross-cultural conflicts are being explored in detail and the related concepts of the global team management are discussed. References Bower, G.H. and Cohen, P.R., 2014. Emotional influences in memory and thinking: Brantley, H., Henry, M., Sabo, S. and Young, N., 2015. 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