Business Research Assignment 1: Managing Global Teams Challenges

This business research report delves into the multifaceted challenges faced by multinational companies in managing global teams. The paper explores the difficulties arising from geographically dispersed teams, cultural differences, and communication barriers. It highlights the importance of understanding diverse management practices and the impact of virtual team dynamics, including leadership, technology, and time zone considerations. The report also examines issues related to remote work, power dynamics, linguistic barriers, and employee engagement, emphasizing the need for effective strategies to mitigate these challenges and foster organizational success. The report concludes by discussing the challenges of computer-mediated communication and the importance of human resource management in supporting global team operations. The report provides insights into challenges faced by multinational companies to manage overseas teams and the different aspects of cross-cultural teams. It also focuses on the challenges that are faced by global teams which prevent them from achieving operational excellence.

Running head: BUSINESS RESEARCH
Business Research
Assignment 1
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Project Objective.............................................................................................................................2
Project Scope...................................................................................................................................3
Literature Review............................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
The global teams are located in diverse geographical locations owing to the needs of the
modern business (Nordbäck and Espinosa 2015). In order to succeed in this competitive world,
the organizations are increasingly opting for international business expansions. This requires
them to set up offices at different parts of the world for greater business success. However, the
managers of the cross-border teams often face difficulties in managing the global teams. They
often find it difficult to manage the disperse teams. The managers of the multinational firms
realize that there are a wide number of issues that they face during the management of the cross-
cultural teams. This paper would analyze the different challenges of managing global teams and
explore the various aspects of this topic.
Project Objective
The objective of this project would be to understand the aspect of difficulties faced by
multinational companies when they have to manage overseas team (Gibson et al. 2014). This
project would strive to explore the concerns of the multinational managers in their day to day
functioning of the business. The aims of the project are to understand the conceptual framework
of different issues faced in a multi-cultural team. The different aspects of the cross-cultural teams
need to be understood. The various kind of the management practices in global teams need to be
understood in order to understand the different challenges. This project also aims to identify the
different challenges that are being faced by the global teams which prevent them from achieving
operational excellence.

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Project Scope
The scope of the project considers the offices of the multinational companies which are
located in diverse geographical locations. The companies are located in diverse areas and they
are separated from each other by national borders. The teams that are located in the same time
zones, country and same locations are outside the project scope.
Literature Review
As opined by Luo and Shenkar (2017), there are a variety of organizational
mechanisms that the multinational corporations used to integrate their dispersed operations in a
global marketplace. The competitive ability of the organization depends on the effective
utilization of the critical resources of the organization. It is a difficult task to manage a team with
individuals belonging from different nationalities and working in diverse functions, business
entities and cultures (Nordbäck and Espinosa 2015). The basic purpose of a culturally diverse
team is to act in coordination so that their overall organizational; mission is fulfilled. Chou and
Liao (2017) argue that it is not possible for the global firms to exploit different economies of
scale and ensure maximum transfer of knowledge in a global scenario. It is important that the
global managers grasp the different obstacles that are needed to be successful in the global teams
(Nordbäck and Espinosa 2015).
According to Dunning (2014), the global teams and their supervisors need to formulate
judicious strategic measures so that the level of challenges is being reduced considerably
(Nordbäck and Espinosa 2015). The virtual teams operate in a challenging environment in which
there are short durations of interaction in which they are supposed to handle difficult tasks
(Gibbs and Boyraz 2015). The establishment of the virtual teams requires excellent leadership,
team training, easy access to technology and understanding of different time zones, cultures and

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languages. It is also important to implement open lines of communication in which the team
members are motivated for team success (Chou and Liao 2017). It is possible to achieve
organizational success of virtual teams if the managers are well aware of the different challenges
and how to handle them well. The managers should find a common communication ground in
which they would be able to understand the work patterns of each other.
As stated by Charlier et al.(2016), the onset of the internet and the variety of
communication tools have lead to the greater disperse of the teams and they have become more
diverse. It is important that the organizational supervisors demonstrate adequate amount of
leadership, which would help the team to function smoothly (Rao 2015). The managers should
be competent enough so that they can understand the various difficulties of the global teams. A
global mindset would help in finding solutions to critical problems so that the cross border
employees face least resistance and hindrances from achieving their full organizational potential
(Chou and Liao 2017).
The findings of Morgan, Paucar-Caceres and Wright (2014) reveals that the remote
location of the employees are becoming a trends these days as they are more opted by the
employees. The reason for the preference of the remote location of work is the greater savings on
the costs as well as increased prevalence of the remote employees (Morgan, Paucar-Caceres and
Wright 2014). The various kinds of telecommuters working for an organization are usually
satisfied with the different work-life balances as well as there are lower instances of job burnout
in such cases (Wildman and Griffith 2015). The employers view telecommuting as the way for
ensuring recruitment of the best people who would be best fit for the various types of job roles.
But, the process of development of the remote employees requires constant monitoring as well as
constant support (Morgan, Paucar-Caceres and Wright 2014). The remote working options

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should be used to attract as well as retain the employees and well as to enhance the project
decision quality which rises from the firm’s ability to place different individuals in distant
locations (Morgan, Paucar-Caceres and Wright 2014). The diverse teams ensure that the
employees are able to contact the customers of the company on a global basis, which would
improve the customer satisfaction rates.
As commented by Maldonado and Vera (2014), there are varieties of structural powers as
well as functional powers that are enjoyed by the members working in the headquarters of a firm.
There are issues with the perception of organizational powers between the employees of the
organization, which often leads to conflict in the teams. There are challenges with the monitoring
as well as evaluation of the virtual teams. There are also difficulties with the measurement of
performance of the virtual teams located on different geographical territories. This is because of
the fact that the supervisors are not able to come face to face with the team everyday and monitor
their performances on a daily basis. The findings of Morgan, Paucar-Caceres and Wright (2014)
reveal that the perception of power is among one of the most important reasons of cross cultural
difficulties in management. The more powerful members are likely to exploit the less powerful
ones and also the vice-versa case happens in the organizations.
Thomas and Peterson (2017) states that it is natural for the cross-cultural teams to have
certain differences between them. There are often indifferences between the employees of
different nations, which becomes it difficult to work together. There is often high degree of
stereotypes which makes the employees gives poor performance. There are often instances when
there is indifferent perception of each other’s cultural attributes. For example, the employees of
America may have different perception of the cultural beliefs, languages, rituals and local
perceptions of the people of Asian countries (Thomas and Peterson 2017). The American

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employees may not gel well with their Asian counterparts as they feel that the latter would be
dirty, shabby and lack basic etiquettes. There are often instances of cultural insensitivity in
which the employees belonging to one culture may not be able to respect the cultural attributes of
other teams located overseas (Thomas and Peterson 2017). This may create a strong hostility
between the cross cultural teams, which may affect the overall organizational performances.
It is often a challenge to implement employee engagement measures for the cross-
cultural teams. The employees working in the off-shore tasks may lack motivation as the
employees located in the home countries (Wood and Wilberger 2015). This is because of the fact
that the employees located in the hometown have the privilege of visiting office everyday, which
the offshore members are unable to do. They often find it useless to do official work while
staying in a foreign land. This often reduces their work output and the projects witness failure.
The face-to-face communication cannot be substituted and the distant employees may feel that
they have the power to do anything as they would not be monitored constantly (Thomas and
Peterson 2017). The workers who are located in a distant location may find it difficult to attend
the “mid-night” meetings and conferences as their supervisors may be located in a different time
zone. The time zones pose several risk factors for the managers and they might find it difficult to
manage the same (Thomas and Peterson 2017). Another key challenge of the global teams is the
linguistic barriers that are often responsible for the creation of misunderstanding in between the
team. The managers of the firm often fail to address the language issues of the employees and
this reduces the performance of the employees as they often feel demotivated to work in these
cultures (Thomas and Peterson 2017). If there is not enriching organizational culture, then the
productivity of the employees would reduce to great extent.

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The global teams often fail in the coordination between the cross culture teams and this
reduces the pace of the decision making process. The managers often find it difficult to organize
and manage the reviews, meeting, seminars and interaction between the cross border employees
(Gelfand et al. 2017). The employees who have their immediate supervisors and their team
working abroad may feel left out and hence they may not be able to participate fully in the
organizational decisions (Brantley et al. 2015). There can be slow pace of grasping of the major
job responsibilities in the organization.
There are certain benefits of the cross cultural teams, however, there is more number of
challenges that are faced by the cross-border managers. The basis of the cross-border teams is the
computer mediated communication (Brantley et al. 2015). In this kind of communication, there
is absence of the non-verbal cues as well as there is indirect communication transfer that often
poses difficulty for the employees (Brantley et al. 2015). There are high instances of
misunderstandings that lead to low levels of trust and cohesion in the team. There may be
incorrect assumptions and there are instances when the virtual team members may not be able to
understand the intentions of the other team mates located in distant locations (Brantley et al.
2015). There may be misinterpretation of the facts and there are instances of incorrect
assumptions that may cause interpersonal struggles (Brantley et al. 2015).
The viewpoints of Lilian (2014) states that the virtual teams may lack the vision and
mission as there is flexible space, time and also there are lack of visual cues. The knowledge
sharing becomes a difficult job and there are possibilities of information overload (Brantley et al.
2015). There are also issues with the training of the manpower who would be using the
telecommunication processes for contacting the members located in overseas location (Brantley
et al. 2015). The technical glitch of the communication tools may hamper the connectivity and

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the cross border team may have issues contacting with the teams located in distant locations. In
the event of a technical snag in the absence of technical team, then it is possible that the
interruption may continue for several weeks (Brantley et al. 2015). This often hampers the team
productivity and hence the employees or the team would not be able to meet organizational
objectives.
The management of the global teams is not only the sole responsibility of the department
managers, but it is also the responsibility of the human resource managers (Brantley et al. 2015).
There is often lack of participation of the human resource managers, which leads to failure of
the overseas project (Germain and McGuire 2014). The HR personnel may be too busy in the
office work, that they are unable to focus on the overseas employees. There are often trust issues
with the foreign team members and those employees who are working in remote locations. This
often ruins the interpersonal relationships and affects the team output.
Conclusion
There are several challenges that the international managers face while managing global
teams. There are several different kinds of problems that are faced by the global teams. This
review analyzed some of the main challenges and discussed major concepts. In spite of the steps
taken towards reducing these differences, this is a common problem and continues to haunt the
global managers. The various aspects of the cross-cultural conflicts are being explored in detail
and the related concepts of the global team management are discussed.

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References
Bower, G.H. and Cohen, P.R., 2014. Emotional influences in memory and thinking:
Brantley, H., Henry, M., Sabo, S. and Young, N., 2015. Promoting Globalization: Cross-Cultural
Teaching and 21st Century Learning Experiences. Promoting Global Literacy Skills through
Technology-Infused Teaching and Learning, pp.147-165.
Charlier, S.D., Stewart, G.L., Greco, L.M. and Reeves, C.J., 2016. Emergent leadership in virtual
teams: A multilevel investigation of individual communication and team dispersion
antecedents. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(5), pp.745-764.
Chou, T.C. and Liao, J.L., 2017. IT governance balancing global integration and local
responsiveness for multinational companies. Total Quality Management & Business
Excellence, 28(1-2), pp.32-46.
Dunning, J.H., 2014. The Globalization of Business (Routledge Revivals): The Challenge of the
1990s. Routledge.
Gelfand, M.J., Aycan, Z., Erez, M. and Leung, K., 2017. Cross-cultural industrial organizational
psychology and organizational behavior: A hundred-year journey. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 102(3), p.514.
Germain, M.L. and McGuire, D., 2014. The role of swift trust in virtual teams and implications
for human resource development. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 16(3), pp.356-370.
Gibbs, J.L. and Boyraz, M., 2015. International HRM’s role in managing global teams. The
Routledge companion to international human resource management, pp.532-551.

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Gibson, C.B., Huang, L., Kirkman, B.L. and Shapiro, D.L., 2014. Where global and virtual meet:
The value of examining the intersection of these elements in twenty-first-century teams. Annu.
Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav., 1(1), pp.217-244.
Lilian, S.C., 2014. Virtual teams: Opportunities and challenges for e-leaders. Procedia-Social
and Behavioral Sciences, 110, pp.1251-1261.
Luo, Y. and Shenkar, O., 2017. The Multinational Corporation as a Multilingual Community:
Language and Organization in a Global Context. In Language in International Business (pp. 59-
92). Springer International Publishing.
Maldonado, T. and Vera, D., 2014. Leadership skills for international crises: The role of cultural
intelligence and improvisation. Organizational Dynamics, 43(4), pp.257-265.
Morgan, L., Paucar-Caceres, A. and Wright, G., 2014. Leading effective global virtual teams:
The consequences of methods of communication. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 27(6),
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Rao, A.N., 2015. Trust and Team Performance: Assessing the Moderating Role of Risk in Global
Outsourcing Teams. International Management Review, 11(1), p.5.
Thomas, D.C. and Peterson, M.F., 2017. Cross-cultural management: Essential concepts. Sage
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Wildman, J.L. and Griffith, R.L., 2015. Leading global teams means dealing with different.
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