The impact of cultural diversity on team management : empirical evidence from US multinationals in Ireland

In the last fifteen years, the Irish workforce has changed and is now largely multicultural; mainly due to the implementation of EU headquarters of US multinationals. The research has shown that cultural diversity within a team is an important competitive advantage in today’s competitive marketplace. Multicultural teams are a necessity to respond to today’s business environment; these teams are composed of members with different cultural background where each of them has a certain way of approaching working methods. In terms of cultural diversity the literature is very large; the concept of culture is very broad and cannot be defined as a fixed concept. This thesis aims to evaluate the impact of cultural diversity in team management from a manager’s perspective. In most US multinationals implemented in Ireland teamwork is impacted by various national cultures from each individual team member. An online interview has been created based on the ‘Cultural Perspective Questionnaire’ and on the literature theories; these interviews have been distributed to selected managers by email which is a new qualitative method of data collection. The findings of these interviews revealed that cultural diversity is a strong competitive advantage especially while responding to customers’ expectations. This competitive advantage has to be fostered and maximized in terms of cultural awareness among managers and employees. This way, challenges and disadvantages will be minimized; strong communication is the key for successful multicultural teams. The limitations of this thesis have to be considered as no generalizations can be made from the findings; especially that this topic has to remain ethical with regards to personal cultures. However future studies should be carried out on this topic to have a wider and deeper overview of the Irish multicultural workforce