An Investigation of the Efficiency of Synergistic Multicultural Teams

The current globalized environment has increased the prevalence of multicultural teams in the workplace. While much research has focused on the advantages of such teams, the challenges companies should anticipate when using them has not received as much attention. These difficulties, specifically communication and trust, need to be considered to ensure that the company remains competitive in an economy driven by growing client expectations. In addition, companies often have to meet tight delivery schedules in order to survive, an expectation which adds strain on production teams. Efforts to address these issues have ranged widely, with some researchers suggesting cultural awareness training and others early and clear communication between parties to identify their responsibilities and establish issue resolution procedures. However, little research has explored strategies of team creation for mitigating the challenges associated with diverse teams. To address this need, this research focuses on investigating whether a particular approach, the Kolbe guidelines for team creation, can be used to predict the resilience of multicultural teams to time constraints. The research was completed in two steps: the pilot study which provided evidence that the Kolbe guidelines could predict multicultural teams’ performance and the main study which provided additional support for the guidelines’ performance prediction capabilities but not for their potential as resilience predictor.