MAR0386: Intercultural Business Competencies in Global Teams

This report delves into intercultural business competencies, crucial for managing diverse workforces effectively. It covers team building, navigating cultural differences in international teams, and applying intercultural theories like Hofstede's dimensions to analyze cross-cultural scenarios. The report discusses cultural shock, its impact on human behavior, and strategies for successful team building, including role clarity, job satisfaction, trust, motivation, commitment, and empowerment. It also addresses challenges in cross-cultural communication and offers recommendations for managing multicultural teams, such as adopting diverse communication styles and organizing cross-cultural training. This analysis aims to provide solutions for international business challenges, emphasizing the importance of understanding and adapting to different cultural values and norms.

Intercultural Business
Competencies
MAR0386

ABSTRACT
This file is based on the topic Intercultural Business Competencies which helps the
organisation to mange diversified workforce in more effective and efficient manner. This file
contains various parts through which detailed understanding can be made for developing
intern cultural team in more prominent manner. The project is divided into two tasks which
covers the topic working in teams and successful team-building, working across cultures in
international teams and theories that help in evaluating intercultural dimension in building
team.

Table of Contents
ABSTRACT..............................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY...........................................................................................................................................4
Task 1: To understand about cultural shock, it’s impact on human behaviour and relevant inter-
cultural theories through analysing culturally diverse behaviour to explain the conflicting values,
beliefs and behaviours of others in the context of group work.........................................................4
Working in a team and successful team building:.........................................................................5
Working across cultures in international teams............................................................................6
Task 2: Analyse and evaluate cross-cultural scenarios in order to provide solutions in the context
of international arena by applying inter-cultural theories.................................................................8
CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................................................9
RECOMMENDATION..............................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Intercultural business competencies can be defined as the management ability of the
organisation to communicate effectively and efficiently with the diversified cultural
background. In recent times were competencies is at the peak, expanding business in different
nations or city is becoming more important to gain competitive advantages. Intercultural
competencies help the companies to work well with the different religious people in an
attractive way. In an organisation various employee works which has different values, beliefs,
norms, moral as well as religion. So managing them is vital so that business can achieve
success and grow with the time (Kumari and Nirban, 2018). It is very essential for the
organisation to educate their employee about the different culture because this will help them
to respect and value different religion people in great manner and built an immense team.
Some of the intercultural competencies are respecting and appreciating other culture,
understanding other people behaviour and attitude, flexible to work with different cultural
and customs and many more. The following discussion is based on working with the team
and successfully building international team with the help of several international cultural
theories so that work can be done in effective and efficient manner when organisation is
dealing in international market (Pikhart, 2018).
MAIN BODY
Task 1: To understand about cultural shock, it’s impact on human behaviour and relevant
inter-cultural theories through analysing culturally diverse behaviour to explain the
conflicting values, beliefs and behaviours of others in the context of group work.
Cultural shock: Cultural shock can be defined as the feeling or anxiety an individual
experience while they are moving to a new country or work with different cultural people in
international market. it includes various elements which are shock to a new environment,
having different religion, eating new food, learning new language and many more. There are
various impact of Cultural shock in human behaviour some of them are:
Culture stress: In this an individual feel stressful because of the difference. This
diversified culture creates stress in their behaviours and they could not work with proper
efficiency. Mental stress is very harmful as person cannot response well both in personal and
professional life. It can be divided into four stages that is honeymoon, frustration, adaptation
and acceptance stage when working in international level (Wang Guénier, 2020).
Negative attitude: Another impact of culture shock is that the behaviours and attitude
of the employee becomes negative. They feel very frustrated and ignore others. They create a

bad impression of them towards the other mind. They also start over drinking, extreme
homesickness and many more (Makhmudov, 2020).
Working in a team and successful team building:
In an organisation, team working plays a vital role in attain the goals in effective and
efficient manner. Team works helps the companies to reduce the duplication of work and
with various expertise organisation can perform in more productivity manner. One of the
advantages of team work is that it helps in encouraging and engaging staff in innovative
manner. With the help of team employee can share their creative ideas which assist in
enhancing performance and growth. Working in team means cooperating and coordinating
with the team members so that goals can be achieved (Tubadji and Nijkamp, 2019). For
developing an effective team it is crucial role of the mangers to clearly define the
responsibility of all the members in more accountable manner. This helps the team members
to work together and also take decision which is best for their team and organisation
betterment. Another advantage of successful team is that with the diversified skills and
knowledge of employee critical problem can be solved in smother manner. To build a
successful international team six elements need to be considered:
Role clarity: One of the biggest components of successful team is role clarity.
Employee should be aware about the role and responsibility that is to be played by them
while working in a team. Managers and leaders should clearly define the role they are going
to do. They should also tell the employee to whom they are accountable. This will helps in
removing the duplication of work and performing their activity in more productive manner.
Job satisfaction: Another major component to build a sucessful team is to know the
satisfaction level of the employee towards their work and with team. This is very important
because if employee is not satisfied with the job they are working in their team then
productivity cannot be decreases. This will also create an environment where employee is
highly demotivated and cannot perform well with their team. The will develop the felling of
grievance with their team members (Bavel, and et. al, 2020).
Trust: Trust is one of the most crucial elements while working with the international
or national team. If members could not trust on their team members then they will not rely on
the skills and knowledge person posses. If there is no trust then there will be more fights.
This will aids in achieving goals in more ineffective manner with lot of time. Trust helps in
developing a good bond with the employees with their team participants.

Motivation: Motivation also plays a vital role in building effective team and working
with team members in significant manner. If there is lack of motivation them effective team
cannot be developed because employee will work in less enthusiastic manner. Their
behaviour will be negative towards their members. Mangers should make sure that they
should boost the morale of employee so that they can work with their team with more energy
(Dawdy, McGuffin and Fegan, 2020).
Commitment: Commitment in teams refers that the members should understand and
agree with the work done by their team members. They should support their employee’s
decision so that they can move forward and build a successful team. In fact the members of
the team should be committed towards the same goal instead of working in individual
manner.
Empowerment: Another element of sucessful team building is empowerment. It
means that in a team the mangers should delegate his/ her power to the subordinate so that
they can seek some changes in decision making. This will give them authority or legal power
to someone. It helps in building sucessful team as employee will feel as part of the team when
there are diversified team members (Malčík, Malach and Kantor, 2018).
Working across cultures in international teams
Cross cultural international teams refers to the team which consist of employees with
different nations or countries. They all posses unique experiences and difference like culture,
religion, language, caste, belief and norms. If organisation found out any difference in the
international team then this will lead to conflicts and frustration among the individual. These
difference impact in the communication and engagement between the team members and will
affect the long term vision of the company. There are some of the challenges that can occur
while working in cross cultural international team if there is a conflict which are as follow:
Communication barrier: This is one of the biggest challenges if there is a conflict.
Nuances in communication affect the sharing of message in effective and efficient manner.
This will lead to information gap and will impacts the productivity and performance of the
organisation in the market (Courie, 2019).
Reduce motivation: Conflict in diversified culture and values lead to de Morales the
motivation of the employee. Motivation is one of the key elements while working with
different people and values. If there will be lack of motivation then employee cannot work
enthusiast with the different nation people. This leads to crate gap between them.

There are two components which matters a lot in international team that is personal diversity
and contextual diversity. Personal diversity means differences in the personal attributes.
Some of them are age, gender, skills, caste, language and many more. On the other hand
contextual diversity means difference in the surrounding and environment. Some of the
environmental factor are economical development, social development etc (Siakas,
Georgiadou and Siakas, 2020).
Apart from this there are five components which need to be considered while
developing international team. These elements are awareness, preparation, language, humour
and openness. This will help in developing assorted team in more prominent manner. Not
only this there are five more basic dimension of international cultural differences which are
power, distance, uncertainty followed by masculinity and femininity. These are some of the
principle which is needed to be follow and practices by the organisation so that they can
remove the barrier that occurs while forming and working with cross culture international
team. In fact the higher authorities need to force employees to interact with the team
members by conducting various activities. This would help them to learn about different
culture and get comfortable with the team members in effective manner.
There are various benefits of cross culture team management within the international
organisation. The foremost benefit that can be acquired is hiring and recruiting an effective
and efficient team as skilled and experienced employees can be selected from different
geographical location. Diversified pool of talents can be attractive which helps in improving
the market image in more prominent manner. Another formulating benefits of having cross
cultural team is knowing various cultural and ethics so that market strategy and product
strategy can be developed in more innovative manner. More international connection can be
made which helps in improving organisational performance (Ward, and et. al, 2018).
There are several ways through which organisation can manage their multicultural team.
Some of the ways that can effectively applied by the mangers are:
Adopting different cultural communication style: In this leaders and mangers can
nurtures variety of communication styles in their organisation. They can arrange for verbal
and non verbal communication session were they can tell them about the meaning and
gestures of different words to diversified employees.
Organising cross cultural training: To improve the surrounding and workplace in
international team mangers can plan or cross cultural training. The reason behind this is that
each individual get to know about the beliefs and norms of various culture or region in
greater sense (Magnusen, 2018).

Task 2: Analyse and evaluate cross-cultural scenarios in order to provide solutions in the
context of international arena by applying inter-cultural theories.
Theories that can be applied to evaluate cross cultural scenarios are:
Hofstede’s dimension theories: This is one of the widely used team management
theories which is adopted by various organisation in order to manage their assorted cultural
team. This theory is developed by Geert Hofstede to manage the communication between two
different cultures. There are five dimensions of this theory which play a vital role in
developing effective team. These dimensions are discussed below:
Power distance index: According to this dimension power is measured so that level of
fairness can be extracted. It can be defined as the extent to which the less powerful individual
of the team thinks that powers are being delegated on unequal manner. If there is high PDI
then it means power is being delegated and acquired in fairer manner without any doubts.
Individualism vs. collectivism: This is another dimension of this theory which is
based on the degree of integration made by the team members with other. in individualism
the employee does not like to be socially active with the team and in collectivism means that
employee is highly committed and like to talk with other members.
Uncertainty avoidance: In this theory, cross-cultural scenarios are being evaluated and
measured by the degree of acceptance that is made by the team during uncertainty. If there is
low acceptance then it means people use flexible approach with less regulation and loved to
have new ideas and thoughts and vice versa (Porto, 2019).
Masculinity and femininity: One of the biggest dimension of this theory is the
preference of team members toward the gender of the team member. If the team member are
more intend towards the masculinity society then they cannot accept that women should be
there boss or is working with the team. And in feminism women are equally respected as that
of men while working with cross cultural team members.
Another theory is Kluckhohn & Strodbeck’s Cultural Dimensions which has six ideals
such as relationship to nature, beliefs about human nature, relationships between people,
nature of human activity, conception of space and orientation to time. This theory is
developed by Florence's Hills and Clyde Kluckhohn. According to this theory these traits
and charterstics helps in forming the basis so that cultural development could take place when
working with cross cultural team (Porto, 2018).
Nest theory is Hall’s cultural dimension which considers context and space along with
time. According to him these dimension are important for cross culture. In context high and
low context are the two elements that helps them to understand the rule or take it as granted.

Time is further divided into two parts which is Monochromic time and Polychromic time. In
monochromic time it is said that team should perform one specific task at single time and
develop their diversified workforce in greater sense, polychromic time means human can
interact with multiple employee at the same time of working with diversified employee.
Some other theories are GLOBE Project’s Nine Dimensions of Culture theory which is
implemented in various companies. Its nine dimensions are assertiveness, future orientation,
gender differentiation, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, institutional collectivism and
performance and human orientation (Agostinetto and Bugno, 2020).
CONCLUSION
From the above file it is being concluded that intercultural business competence is one
of the vital concept which is needed to be learnt by the individual. This will helps them to
apply knowledge and skills in real world organisation in more effective and efficient manner.
This is because organization hires and selected diversified human resource in their
organisation so that they can perform different task and responsibilities in very smooth
manner. These people poses different background but still try to build effective team with
their skills and experience. In intercultural team it is very vital for the mangers to manage
team so conflict can be reduced and work can be done. It is also concluded that organisation
need to adopt various theories according to the requirement of their team in order to develop
individual to adopt cultural changes. Therefore, the above information covers all such areas
which help in better understanding the concept of intercultural business competencies.
RECOMMENDATION
From the above gathered data it is being suggested that organisation need to give
more emphasis on their human resource so to develop successful team. This is because
learning cultural differences will help them to improve their skills and knowledge in wider
way according to the current requirement. It is also recommended to analyse the concept of
working in teams and successful team-building so that inter cultural team can be build with
great sense.

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