Challenges in Managing of Global Teams

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

1. Introduction

Today with globalization and liberalization of the economy, organizations are venturing into international markets to expand their base in international markets for enhancement of the profitability and growth of the organization. Therefore it is for this reason, that they hire local professionals and human resources who possess the required knowledge in the local markets of the respective zones. These led to the formation of global teams working on projects with various cultures and cultural backgrounds. Moreover, organizations also tend to recruit international ex-pats who have a high degree of knowledge in a specialized area or possess some key skills. This also leads to the formation of teams with diverse cultural backgrounds.

The Global teams with diverse cultural background differ in a wide array of aspects like food habits and other regular habits, tones of speaking, the accent of communication, different cultural values, etc which differs from one culture to another. So team members or expats sometimes find it difficult to cope with the cultural aspect of the other team members which makes them difficult to communicate and work with other team members. These have an enormous impact on foreign expats working abroad in a different cultural environment or global teams. It is also essential to mention that sometimes global teams also operate virtually from their native location and communicate via the internet and other digital technology. So with a lack of physical presence, there arise problems like lack of coordination and communication which also affects the performance of the team to a significant extent (Schuler, Jackson, and Tarique, 2011). So there is a need for constant monitoring and mentoring of the global teams which will essentially help to manage the various issues arising out of the global teams.

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2. Project Objective

The main objective of this project which the research will accomplish are depicted below:

i) To assess the importance of managing global teams.
ii) To evaluate the main factors which affect the performance of the team members in a global team.
iii) To analyze the different techniques and tactics that must be incorporated in managing global teams.

3. Project Scope

The emergence of globalization has significantly increased global teams with diverse cultural backgrounds. It is due to the wide cultural differences in the teams and other differences like the differences in language and cultural values; these have widespread implications on the overall communication and working of the team. These often result in in-coordination which results in performance overall. So the issues arising must be promptly solved arising out of these factors for managing the global teams. These lead to operating virtually and communicating over digital platforms. So the lack of physical presence results in total communication failure or understanding of the perspective of the teammates by the respective members of the team. Moreover, the time difference due to the geographic spread of the location of the operation of the team members also creates immense problems. Overall this also creates problems in working as a team and issues arise from the working of the global teams. It is apart from these that, with organizations trying to get the right talent and skill they often recruit foreign expats for the accomplishment of jobs requiring a high skill set (Carpenter and Fredrickson, 2014). So essentially the situation demands the expats to work in a different environment different from the environment of the native place they belong. So the organization needs to understand the problems of the ex-pats and take necessary strategies to solve the problems that the ex-pats are facing in the workplace due to the different cultural and working environments for enhancing the productivity of the job requiring the skill of the ex-pats.

PESTLE Analysis

4. Literature Review

4.1 Significance of Global Teams

A specific individual group working together as a unit is significantly referred to as a team. The overall teamwork within an organization is said to be necessary in the context of fulfilment of the key organizational objectives and goals, by exhibiting higher performance and efficiency. According to, Carpenter, (2014), with the overall growth and development of globalization and expansion of business organizations, into the international markets, the management of global teams has become a key priority for business organizations in terms of achieving high business performance and efficiency at the highest possible levels. The concept and significance of the global teams for an organization are mostly predominant concerning their business operations and activities in the global business and industry markets. While operating in international markets of their choice, the management of global teams is considered to be necessary for an organization to sustain its business in its respective global industry market. In this context, the development and management of the overall global teams is a necessity for the business organization to cater to the objective and goal requirements of their business operations or activities in the global or international markets. In this context of international market operations and activities, it is required for the organization to develop and maintain global teams that have widespread cultural diversity and differences. The development of such teams is said to be essential to effectively respond to the cultural trends, aspects, or other factors related to the international market, which in turn can be different from that of the domestic markets. Thus it is necessary for the organizations to effectively manage and monitor the overall diversity of their global teams and focus on minimization of cultural differences to achieve higher efficiency and performance in their respective international markets. In addition, the respective global teams are required to be working in specific geographic boundaries, which need working in collaboration and cohesion for improved business sustainability, growth, or development. Thus managing the global teams is considered to be one of the key major needs or necessities for organizations in the context of their global or international market activities and operations.

PESTLE Analysis

4.2 Challenges Faced in Management of Global Team

Global teams are seen to have high diversity and differences in the aspects or elements of culture, ethics, perceptions, and others. This is because people in global teams come from different backgrounds, having their own sets of beliefs, thoughts, opinions, and perceptions. This makes management difficult for organizations in international market operations. The key basic challenges that can be faced concerning the management of global teams can be explained and identified below;

Language Barriers: The key issue faced by global teams is the language barrier. When people coming from different backgrounds come to work together the overall language barrier significantly impacts or affects the overall communication process within the organization. A team member having no specific knowledge of the language spoken by other team members can feel left out with little or no communication or interaction with the team members (Schuler, 2011). This can have a large impact or influence on the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the communication process within the team, leading to inefficient performance or efficiency in the global markets. This can be mitigated by the development and encouragement of proper communication flow among the team members.
Cultural Differences: The overall cultural differences between the team members coming from different backgrounds are also a major issue or challenge in terms of the management of global teams. It may be difficult for people from diversified cultures and beliefs to work in harmony for better and improved organizational performance and efficiency. Cultural differences can lead to racial discrimination and employee isolation within the team which can result in difficulty in the management of global teams. This can be managed or mitigated by the implementation of proper and well-defined cultural management in global teams (Jarvenpaa, 2010).
Team Conflicts: In addition to the above-identified challenges, another key issue that can be faced, in the context of the management of global teams is the issue of team conflicts. Employees coming from different cultural and religious backgrounds are seen to have their own sets of thoughts, opinions, and beliefs. This can result in conflicts of interest among the team members which can largely hinder the overall workflow in the team negatively impacting or influencing the performance and efficiency. This specific issue can be easily mitigated by developing proper harmony and collaboration among the team members of the global teams so that they effectively work with a coherent vision towards fulfilling the specific objectives of the team for better performance and efficiency.

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5. Research Questions

The research questions that this particular research would answer from the conduct of the research are depicted below:

1) What is the importance of managing global teams in the context of the organization?

2) What are the issues and the major factors that trigger the issues in a global team with diverse cultural backgrounds?

3) What are the strategies and tactics that need to be undertaken for resolving the issues in a global team?

6. Research Design and Methodology:

It is for conducting the research in the research area of challenges in managing global teams, that a mixed research strategy would be undertaken. Since a mixed research strategy would be undertaken, a combination of qualitative research strategy and quantitative research strategy would be used for the analysis of the collected data for conducting the research and making a suitable conclusion and recommendation.

Qualitative Research:

It is for evaluation of the aspect of the challenges in managing global teams, that a comprehensive quantitative analysis of data would be undertaken. This will certainly help in making a systematic analysis of the data. Therefore for conducting the qualitative analysis, various secondary data like research papers, journals, and scholarly articles will be retrieved from the university databases to understand the different techniques used by organizations for managing global teams. Since these data will be collected from the university database, the quality of retrieved documents in the subject area of the research would be significantly good. This will ensure the reliability and validity of the data collected for making qualitative analysis.

It is also essential to mention that the primary data that will be collected through semi semi-structured interview process from the various HR managers of different organizations, will also be analyzed in detail for a qualitative analysis. Since the semi-structured interview process would facilitate in collection of the feedback directly through the interview of the HR managers of different MNCs, this would be highly reliable data as ground-level information is collected through the interviews. Therefore, the results and observations will lead to significant findings in terms of understanding the challenges in managing global teams.

COMPETITIVE STRATEGY TOOLS AND USES

Quantitative Research:

The research will also undertake a qualitative research strategy along with a quantitative research strategy for conducting the research. It is for performing quantitative research methodology, a survey comprising close-ended questionnaires would be undertaken from HR managers of different multinational companies would be essentially undertaken. The close-ended questionnaire would be able to get precise answers for each of the questions which will be further coded with the Likert Scale and then will be subjected to various statistical analyses. Moreover, the coded responses will be portrayed through a frequency table and a graphical representation will also be done on the response obtained for each of the questions with bar charts and pie charts to analyze the response effectively.

It is essential to mention that a survey will be conducted among 50 HR managers of MNCs based in Australia. A simple random technique would be a sampling technique for the selection of samples as this will able to get unbiased data as no classification or categorization of samples will be done. The main reason for choosing 50 respondents as the sample size for the survey as any sample of more than 30 enables a statistically significant sample.

It can be rightly said that the data obtained is highly reliable as no information would be distorted and forceful participation of respondents would not be done. Moreover, no influence would be done to influence the response of the respondents. This will strongly influence the reliability and validity of the analysis.

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7. Research Limitations

The limitations or challenges of the undertaken research have been explained below;

The research survey may not be effectively completed within the specified timeline.
The access to proper samples for the survey may be difficult (Montoya-Weiss, 2012).
Due to the limited research time frame, the accessing of valid and reliable secondary information data sources may be significantly challenging.

8. Timeline

The research process consists of various steps and each step must be conducted in an efficient and time-bound way to complete the entire research process. The estimated time that would be taken for each of the research processes is depicted below through a Gantt Chart.

SCHEDULE FOR IMPLEMENTATION
	Duration
Undertaken Activities	1st Week	2nd Week	3rd Week	4th Week	5th Week	6th Week	7th Week	8th Week
Introduction
Literature Review
Research Methods
Data Analysis
Conclusion
Project Completion

Fig: Research Timeline (source: self)

9. Conclusion

Managing global teams is an important issue in today’s globalized environment. The advent of globalization has influenced companies to venture into different international regions thus increasing the aspect of the concept of a global team with highly diverse cultural backgrounds from different parts of the world. So with the complexity of the teams in terms of the diversity in culture, language, and values; there is a need to manage these so that the diversity does not affect the team performance and hence the overall performance of the project overseen by multicultural teams. So these challenges must be curbed through mentoring and team alignment sessions and also through various techniques to make the team an effective performer (Jarvenpaa, and Leidner, 2010).