Cross-Cultural Team: Issues and Trends

Business executives acknowledged that “Teams” are essential in an organization’s structure in order to achieve their objectives and goals. The benefit that a company could exploit in having teams rather than groups of people working in confinement of their own functionalities provides competitive advantage through the access of different skills, experiences, ideas, commitment, and flexibility. After so many books were written about teams, managers were convinced that teams outperform those individuals who are working on their own functions. Performance challenges and measures are being met on time and of high regard when team concept is applied. But why do many companies fail to exploit such available talent or outside their organization? On this paper, our “Team” looked on specific articles written on the mostly read management and behavioral journals, which discussed the issues governing teams of crosscultural in nature. We made an evaluation of the common issues that a cross-cultural team faces by citing examples of companies, which have had experiences in that area. The team used the concept of Affinity Diagram to narrow the issues into three categories namely: Communication, Behavior, and Ethics and Values and jointly focused on such issues to come-up with a better outcome. The team concluded that these issues have a connection with each other. One and the others influences the need or function that a cross-cultural team must exercise so that the performance challenges it faces could be achieved and accomplished tangibly as well as intangibly