MAR0386: Enhancing Team Building through Intercultural Competencies

This report delves into the critical aspects of intercultural business competencies, emphasizing the significance of effective team building and collaboration within international teams. It highlights the importance of understanding diverse cultural backgrounds, values, and communication styles to fost...Read More

Intercultural Business
Competencies
MAR0386

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Working in teams and successful team-building.............................................................................1
Working across cultures in international teams...............................................................................3
Theories in practice..........................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Intercultural Business Competencies can be defined as the ability to interact and
communicate with the people in order to complete the work in a potential manner. These are the
people who are from the different backgrounds in terms of culture and education. It is essential
for the organization to educate people about several values and beliefs along with the religions
and experiences for working effectively and efficiently. There are some of the examples which
includes respect and appreciation of other cultures, understanding other individuals behaviours,
culture customs, ways of thinking and communication styles or world views (Klimova, Klimova
and Dubinka, 2019). The following discussion is based on the working in teams and successful
team building and working across cultures in international teams along with the several theories
in practices with proper conclusion.
Working in teams and successful team-building
In organisation, team working plays an important role as it helps in achieving the goals
and objective in effective and smooth manner. Teamwork helps in encouraging and engaging
employees to share their creative and innovative ideas in order to improve the business
performance and growth. While working in a team, employee cooperate with each other and
collaboratively work together in order to achieve business goals and objectives. For developing
effective team, it is important for manager to clarify the responsibilities, roles and
accountabilities (Jiao, Xu and Zhao, 2020). The team members work together and also make
decisions together for the betterment of organisation. Team work is one of the useful way
through which work can be accomplished in effective manner as different people generate
multiple ideas and also solve the issues in smooth way. When employees work in a team, a
diverse skills of people are gathered together in order to enhance the business performance. The
well planned teams helps in increasing the motivation and morale level of employees due to
which they give productive outcomes in achieving the vision and mission of company.
It is important for manager to organise social activities and events in order to build the
relationship and connection between the employees. While working in a team, communication
plays a vital role due to which employees can interact efficiently and explain their things in
effective manner. Team members helps in creating social support for improving morale,
conducting difficult task and enhancing the motivation level of employees. The effective
teamwork takes time to complete their work in order to give better outcomes (Yao and Du-
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Babcock, 2020). There are various characteristics of effective team members such as planning
and leadership, clear mission and focus, clear and consistent communication and also assign the
roles and responsibilities.
For building effective teamwork, a good planning and leadership is required in order to
organise and work together for reaching its goals. A good leadership helps in providing clear
vision to team and also makes them understand why the goals are important. When in
organisation there is a good leader they make their team focused, accountable and mediate
conflicts. A good leader helps in providing feedback, guidance and also encourage their team to
give their productive outcomes. When leader gives feedback to their employees it helps them to
improve their skills and efficiency. It is important for the manager to give proper feedback on
consistent basis so that they can understand their relationship between efforts and their
performance. It is important for the organisation to have clear mission and focus as it helps in
achieving the target in significant manner. Organisation must have good leaders as they keeps
team focused and also assign the roles and responsibilities according to the task. In order to make
team focused it is necessary to use an agenda and distribute it prior to meetings so that
employees can be prepared. The mature and functional team must have meetings agenda and
planning documents so that they can make the assumptions about the group direction. It is
essential for the team members to have consistent communication in order to exchange the
information in effective and smooth manner. The bad communication between the team can be
ineffective and unproductive. Through good communication, company can engage their
employees and also offer team members a chance to acknowledging, contribute and incorporate
those contribution into the work of team (Wang Guénier, 2020).
While working in a team, it is essential to assign the duties according to the interest of
employees so that they can perform better and give their valuable outcomes. Generally, when
staff works together a conflict arises between them due to different opinions and perspective.
These conflicts influence the performance and productivity of business. It also create an impact
on the brand image and reputation. Manager of company must focus on reducing the conflict in
order to create positive working environment. When there is conflict between the employees it
influence the dedication and contribution level of staff. In order to manage the conflict, it is
necessary to separate the problem from the person, refer to the team ground rules and search for
commonality in opposing ideas (Ilie, 2019). Teamwork provides various benefits to organisation
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as it increases the potential for innovation, enhance personal growth, boost productivity, provide
more opportunities for growth and also make team members happy. There are various factors of
successful team such as shared understanding of team's mission, commitment to the team goals,
clearly defined roles and responsibilities, an established decision making model and effective
group process. In order to develop effective team, there are few skills which are required like
communication, responsibility, honesty, active listening, empathy, collaboration and awareness.
It is important for organisation to develop effective team so that they can focus on improving the
growth and performance of business. The effective team contribute their best perform due to
which they attract more and more customer towards the brand and increase the sale of business
(Ferreira-Lopes, Elexpuru-Albizuri and Bezanilla, 2021). It is the responsibility of manager to
hire right employees so that they can help in improving the success rate of organisation. While
hiring the employees, it is necessary to determine the qualification and educational background
of candidate so that a right talent can be hired in organisation.
Working across cultures in international teams
It is termed as the cross cultural team which is defined as the international or global
teams. It includes the several people who have their origination from variety of backgrounds and
cultures along with the unique experiences. If companies are not able to consider the differences
in the team the it can lead to the conflicts and lower productivity within an organization. There
are basically five elements which are to be considered essentially while developing the
international teams in regards with the assorted cultures and its working. Awareness and
preparation along with the language and humour and also the openness are the elements which
are to be considered while developing the global team. There are basically five dimensions of
cultural differences among teams such as power distance and uncertainty avoidance along with
the individualism and collectivism which is followed by the masculinity and femininity or time
orientation. There are some principles which must be practised by the organizations such as
educating about other cultures and languages. Encouraging employees to try new things and
accommodate differences and also treating the people as individuals. This helps in better
understanding of each other culture and adapting the same while working as a team in order to
achieve the common task given (Tar and Lázár, 2019).
There are various challenges faced by the organizations while managing the international
teams which are cross cultured in nature. Communication and expression is one of the challenge.
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This is because different ways of interactive nature can hinders the proper communication flow.
Information gaps is an another challenge. Due to the differences in communication, it results in
the information gaps which affects the outcome of the task in a negative manner. Work style is
also one of the challenge. People who are involved in the team have different backgrounds with
assorted working styles as well which hinders in coordination among the employees. Motivation
factors is also an another challenge. If there are different types of people of variety of cultures
then the motivation level gets low of the employees due to improper communication flow. There
are several strategies for managing the cross cultural teams. Adopting flexibility is one of the
strategy. This is because this flexibility in terms of interaction can helps in engaging the
employee by them themselves. Promoting open communication is an another strategy. Open
communication involves the formal as well as the informal communication which helps in easy
interaction with each other. Encouraging team building activities is also one of the strategy.
There must be the implementation of the management activities for better working environment
so that team management can be effective in nature. Addressing the conflicts immediately is also
an another strategy. This is because it avoids the major conflicts in future and resolves the
problems at the initial stages only (de Hei, Tabacaru, Sjoer and Walenkamp, 2020).
There are several benefits of cross culture teams management within organization. It
helps in effective and efficient practices of hiring in the company in a strategic manner. It
support sin improving the access to a broader and diversified pool of talents. It aids in
formulating the more inclusive and innovative workplace with healthy working environment and
positivity in working culture as well. It assist in enhancing the interactions and communication
with the employees and vendors along with the partners and customers. It further helps in
attracting and retaining the best and skilled talent towards the organization as well. Moreover, it
supports in managing the diverse work teams. This ultimately benefits the entire organization in
better growth and development with achieving higher level of productivity (Corner, Liu and
Bird, 2021).
Theories in practice
Hofstede's dimension theory of team management is one of the most used theories in several
organizations in order to manage their teams who are culturally assorted. There are basically five
concerns given by this theory which is important to follow while applying this theory in team
management. Power index distance is one of the area of this theory. It helps in measuring the
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level of inequality that exists and also is accepted by the less powerful staff within organization.
This area concerns with the accepting the power of the leader and using the team work tactics by
simply involving as many people as they can in decision making process. Individualism is an
another area of this theory. This area concerns with the acknowledgement of accomplishments
by not interfering too much on personal information. It also involves in the encouragement of
debate and expressing own ideas. Moreover, showing respect in terms of age and wisdom and
simply suppressing feelings and emotions in terms work for maintaining harmony (Savicki,
2020). Masculinity is also one of the area of this theory. This area concerns with the awareness
which are expected by the people in terms of distinct roles of male and females. It involves the
advising the men to avoid emotions discussions or any emotion based topic. It is important to
avoid the mentality of old boys club mindset. Furthermore, ensuring the job design and practices
must not be discriminatory in regards of any gender but must be treated equally men and women.
Uncertainty avoidance index is also an another area of this theory. This area concerns with
maintaining clarity and concise parameters and expectations. It also involves the proper planning
and preparing about the communication flow with detailing tactics about the mutual tasks
completed by the team. Moreover expressing emotions with the help of hand gestures and raised
voices but not imposing strict rules on an unnecessary basis. It is important minimise the
emotional responses by simply being calm and expressing the curiosity after discovering
differences. Long term orientation is an another area of this theory implemented by the
organizations. This area concerns about showing the respect towards assorted traditions followed
by the people in the team. It is essential to take care that the team leader must not display
extravagance. This is can be done by simply rewarding perseverance and loyalty along with the
commitment. The most significant thing to remember in this area of concerns is to not to hesitate
in order to introduce the necessary changes being implemented within the team (Braslauskas,
2020).
Other theories includes are the Kluckhohn & Strodbeck’s Cultural Dimensions which has
six values such as relationship to nature, beliefs about human nature, relationships between
people, nature of human activity, conception of space and orientation to time. Hall’s Cultural
Dimensions is also one of the theory which includes Context and space along with the time.
GLOBE Project’s Nine Dimensions of Culture is an another theory implemented by most of the
organizations,. It includes nine dimensions such as assertiveness and future orientation along
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with the gender differentiation and uncertainty avoidance which is followed by the power
distance and institutional collectivism and also the family collectivism or performance and
human orientation as well (Khukhlaev, Gritsenko, Pavlova and Shorokhova, 2020). These are the
theories which has helped several organizations in fighting against disadvantages of intercultural
business competencies. Following up the different theories has supported the companies in
managing the employees. Employees are considered as one of the most biggest assets of the
organizations and hence it is required to be managed with good job satisfaction level. This is
because employees are the people who are responsible for the execution of the planning which is
done by the employers. It ultimately improves the productivity of the company.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded that Intercultural Business Competencies is an important concept to learn
and study so that its applications can be applied in the real world organizations. This is because
an organization consist many number of human resources who performs different tasks and
responsibilities. These people have different backgrounds but still working in a team. Therefore,
such teams are necessary to manage in order to avoid the conflicts due to assorted culture and
values. Hence, it is essential to analyse the concept of working in teams and successful team-
building. It is significant to determine the concept of working across cultures in international
teams. It is crucial to examine the several theories in practice associated with the cultural
competencies in business. Thereby, the above report covers all such areas in order to better
understand the concept of intercultural business competencies.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Braslauskas, J., 2020. Effective creative intercultural communication in the context of business
interaction: theoretical and practical aspects. Creativity studies, 13(1), pp.199-215.
Corner, A.J., Liu, L.A. and Bird, A., 2021. Intercultural competencies for emerging markets: A
contextualized approach. International Business Review, 30(3), p.101792.
de Hei, M., Tabacaru, C., Sjoer, E. and Walenkamp, J., 2020. Developing intercultural
competence through collaborative learning in international higher education. Journal of
Studies in International Education, 24(2), pp.190-211.
Ferreira-Lopes, L., Elexpuru-Albizuri, I. and Bezanilla, M.J., 2021. Developing business
students’ intercultural competence through intercultural virtual collaboration: a task
sequence implementation. Journal of International Education in Business.
Ilie, O.A., 2019, June. The intercultural competence. Developing effective intercultural
communication skills. In International conference Knowledge-based organization (Vol.
25, No. 2, pp. 264-268).
Jiao, J., Xu, D. and Zhao, X., 2020. The Development and validation of an intercultural business
communication competence scale: Evidence from mainland China. SAGE Open, 10(4),
p.2158244020971614.
Khukhlaev, O.E., Gritsenko, V.V., Pavlova, O.S. and Shorokhova, V.A., 2020. Comprehensive
model of intercultural competence: theoretical substantiation. RUDN Journal of
Psychology and Pedagogics, 17(1), pp.13-28.
Klimova, I.I., Klimova, G.V. and Dubinka, S.A., 2019. Students’ communicative competence in
the context of intercultural business communication.
Savicki, V. ed., 2020. Developing intercultural competence and transformation: Theory,
research, and application in international education. Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Tar, I. and Lázár, T., 2019. 7Teaching intercultural competencies at the University of
Debrecen. Professional competencies in language learning and teaching, p.77.
Wang Guénier, A.D., 2020. A multimodal course design for intercultural business
communication. Journal of Teaching in International Business, 31(3), pp.214-237.
Yao, Y. and Du-Babcock, B., 2020. English as a lingua franca in Mainland China: An analysis of
intercultural business communicative competence. International Journal of Business
Communication, p.2329488419898221.
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