What is the impact of national cultures on global team interactions?

With people from different corners of the world working together under one roof helps to build a multi cultural work environment. People tend to learn a lot of new things fro each other & this helps to bring them closer & there is a better understanding b/w eachother.

Peolple tend to respect each other's cultre thereby respect each other. This helps the team to work together & reach a common goal.

@ Prarthana: This is quite a popular issue among scholars in international management esp the ones who study cross-cultural management. The global team interactions are impacted by the diversity and heterogeneity of national cultures. The 'melting pot' phenomenon that develops in a cross-cultural team is supposed to bring in diversity of views avoiding groupthink and leading to better quality decisions. That's the common thinking. But there might be some cons too in a cross-cultural team. For instance, politicization based on national identities.

Cultural diversity has its share of plus and minus points , knowledge wise yes people tend to gain exposures but work culture wise we may face some bumps, as if u look from indian point of view working late is a common standard but for other geographies it might not be true , and people there believe in 9 to 6 culture, and this causes an imbalance in work culture and thus formation of groups which is dangerous again, i believe one has to carefully put a mix in a team in a balanced way , a leader has to really create an environment of balance while setting up of teams.

and yeah one thing i wana share, there are ideologies which say, "if you cant finish your time on time and have to slog regularly , you are inefficient ", does this mean we Indians are inefficient??? as our late office culture is very known

Attitude towards time, to wealth, to work, to family, to ethics, could all be different among different national cultures.

We will take a few examples:

For instance, working late, for whatever reason, is acceptable and indicates a positive attitude in India. This is considered 'strong' work ethics. But the same trait is considered bad work ethics in the West. An implementation team of an Indian software company, with an Indian team leader but mostly consisting of team mates of assorted nationalities ran into trouble within weeks at the client site. The manifestation of a failed leadership was evident: General disaffection, lack of interest, absenteeism, clien dissatisfaction.  The reason : The so-called "shared value" of the team leader was dedication that ignored rules of working hours held so sacrosanct among the others. 

Another example: Our attitude towards family:  In India work comes first, and then the family. Even families shun individuals who forsake work with a view to tend to family. This is so even in Japan. But in the West, a good work-life balance that gives importance to after-work life is emphasised.Strict 5 day weeks is the norm.

Another one : Team spirit: For centuries our seers and Gods - the real methaphors of our national culture - have exhorted us to be inward looking. Realisation of the inner self, salvation of individual soul, spiritual separation or detatchment from fruits of labour - These have all resulted in Indians generally giving importance to traits that aim at individual excellence.  We hear critics argue that  team spirit were seldom highlighted in our culture. With the result, Indians generally are perceived in global communities as those who are inward looking and who need to have greater appreciation of the importance of team spirit.

For organations operating globally, core values can within different national organisations of the same company, and not just among people.

Attitudes towards one's work (dharma), money (Artha) are acquired slowly over a period of life time, and sudden adaption to global cultures needed to be handled slowly, with understanding and patience.

P B Ramesh

sherma100@yahoo.in

due to this scattering people lose all their relatives specially wifes, and parents. this should be avoided.

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http://www.isocial.in

Geert Hofstede investigated this. Different cultures has different combinations of 5 dimensions. You can find the results on http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_india.shtml. He suggests each culture has an underlying organizational model. He refers to Mintzbergs structures in fives. The national model is highly dependent on the level of basic education in the country/industry.

The cure is to spend time on building a learning culture that cultivate heterogene teams. Homogene groups can never become a team, where people complement each other in insigth, overview and experience. We never needed teams in really bureaucratic organizations we needed clones of the manager.

You will need the learning culture in a team with members from the same culture as well. The main challenge is to be open to talk about the surprises you experience when one in the team does something unexpected. Usually it has nothing to do with national culture, but lack of mutual trust and empathy.

Virtual teams have been seen as a promising way of organizing work for organizations to cope with the current rapidly changing business environment. Issues concerning virtual teams have received considerable attention in both the academic and practical world. In this paper, a case study approach was used to explore Chinese perceptions of the impact of national cultural difference (China vs. U.S.) on knowledge sharing activities in global virtual teams. Four cultural dimensions (language, education, technology and material culture, and attitudes and values) were identified. The final results show that language has the most salient impact on an individual’s knowledge sharing activities, followed by education, attitudes and values, and technology and material culture. Individual characteristics, organizational culture, time zone problems and leadership style all have a mediated impact on knowledge sharing activities.