PROJ6006: Managing Global Teams & Organisational Behaviour Discussion

This discussion post examines the challenges and strategies for managing global teams, particularly in the context of Ecological Wastewater Solutions Pty Ltd (EWS) expanding into West Africa. It highlights the importance of building diverse teams with global expertise to leverage different perspectives and cultural understanding. The post acknowledges potential obstacles such as communication barriers, time zone differences, and the need for consensus-building across locations. It emphasizes the role of managers in navigating these challenges through effective communication technologies and awareness of cultural nuances and national holidays. The discussion aims to explore how managers can foster collaboration and minimize distrust within global teams, ultimately contributing to the successful completion of projects. Desklib offers a range of resources, including past papers and solved assignments, to support students in understanding and mastering these concepts.

Running head: MANAGING GLOBAL TEAMS
Managing Global Teams
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1MANAGING GLOBAL TEAMS
With EWS taking the advantage of an opportunity present in the West African regions
to expand their business, they face the challenge of falling into the trap of creating teams
based on the need for the project to be completed, and not focusing on the need for more
localized and diverse opinions that may be required to accomplish the project. It will be
important for EWS to build teams with members that have expertise from all over the world
and this can provide different perspectives on strategic and organizational challenges.
Multicultural teams are able to understand more and have respect for cultural differences,
which will teach the employees to be tolerant, flexible and open-minded (Saarinen 2016).
When the global teams has been initiated, managers at EWS will realize that everyday
tasks are becoming more challenging since it is important to reach a consensus from
everybody across the different locations. Mixed messages arising from cultural differences is
capable of arising distrust and overall negativity within the members of the team is a big
obstacle and it will be one that will be important to note as the complexity of projects
increase.
For a manager at EWS to become a global team manager, he/she will face challenges
of limited in-person interaction that will give rise to more issues related to time zones and
languages (Tenzer and Pudelko 2015). To minimize the issues of managing a team over
international borders, EWS will have to start using a variety of communication technologies
such as video and audio conferencing along with e-mails.
To successfully manage a global team, there are three important things that a manager
should do. The EWS manager should navigate the different time zones and find possible
meeting times suitable for everyone, be fully aware of the national holidays in all the
countries, share a common software platform that is accessible to all the members and make
sure that the team members are checking up on each other as well.

2MANAGING GLOBAL TEAMS

3MANAGING GLOBAL TEAMS
References:
Saarinen, J., 2016. Managing global virtual teams.
Tenzer, H. and Pudelko, M., 2015. Leading across language barriers: Managing language-
induced emotions in multinational teams. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(4), pp.606-625.