The effect of cultural diversity on group processes in work teams

Bachelorarbeit von Verena Vinci

Introduction:

As more and more people immigrate and organizations globalize lead to the fact that people with different cultural roots have to collaborate with one another and to work together in a local workplace. Furthermore, competitive challenges and the importance of flexibility and adjustment on the part of companies there can be witnessed in a great expansion of work teams. Therefore, a commonplace practice concerning the culturally diverse composition of work groups can be recognized as is the case in organizations like Unilever, ABB, the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, IBM and Reckitt Benckiser, only to mention a few.

Organizations have to develop effective multicultural teams, which means that organizations have to think more clearly about cross-cultural issues and more fully understand and value the benefits of cultural diversity in teams. Furthermore due to the continued growth of culturally diverse work teams, the understanding the effect cultural diversity has on team processes is both appropriate and pressing. This fact is very important as the team effectiveness depends on the processes.

Due to being involved in such a multicultural working environment by having different student jobs at an internationally operating company called Reckitt Benckiser, practical insight was gained into the trend ‘multicultural teams’. This insight and the growing trend of using multicultural teams in today’s organizations make it interesting to deepen the phenomenon within the dissertation. The author is interested in gaining knowledge of which effects cultural diversity has on team processes.

Academic objectives of dissertation:

This study follows Earley & Gardner’s and Watson’s perception of multicultural teams that implies that those teams consist of two or more members that have different nationalities and therefore different cultural backgrounds.

This dissertation aims to provide a deeper understanding of the effects cultural diversity has on team processes and which consequences this can have on team effectiveness.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the main negative and positive effects cultural diversity has on team processes. Existing researcher’s views about this issue are shown and confronted. The main objective of this study is to investigate three group processes – task conflict, cohesion and trust. Hypothesis will be developed concerning these three issues in order to test them in practice.

Reckitt Benckiser, was chosen as it is one of the companies that follows a really culturally diverse workplace and is very focussed on teamwork. An experiment with a multicultural team and a mononational team at the company Reckitt Benckiser should provide to what extent the hypotheses are confirmed or not and therefore how cultural diversity affects task conflict, cohesion and trust based. Moreover, the dissertation aims to try and find answers why there could or could not be a confirmation of the theory with help of individual and group interviews with the multicultural team.

Outline of chapters:

This paper is composed of six chapters.

The second chapter presents the most essential literature concerning the effects cultural diversity has on team processes. The literature review is divided into two parts. The first part reviews the ‘optimistic view’ which contains researchers that see the effects positively. On the other hand the second part presents the ‘pessimistic view” where researchers concentrate on the negative aspects cultural diversity has on group processes in work teams.

The third chapter outlines the method used in this dissertation. It includes the research purpose and philosophy followed by the approach and the research strategy. This chapter on the one hand justifies the method used and on the other hand also represents its limitations.

In chapter four the findings from the questionnaire of the experiment conducted at the company Reckitt Benckiser are presented.

Chapter five provides an evaluation of the correlation between the variables cultural diversity and task conflict, cohesion, and trust based on the experiment. These findings are compared with the developed hypotheses of the theoretical part of the dissertation and afterwards analysed.

The final chapter of this work presents first of all a conclusion. Nevertheless suggestions for further research are recommended in the area of multicultural teams.

Table of Contents:

Text Sample:

Chapter 3.7.1, Limitation of using experiments:

According to the present experiment the following limitations are the most significant ones.

By a true experiment’s very nature like in the present research, only a small number of involved people is possible. As a result the findings can hardly be generalized to a wider population. In contrast to natural and physical sciences where e.g. one molecule of water is exactly the same concerning behaviour and characteristics, the problem of generalisability occurs when research concerns human beings, as they are heterogeneous.

Furthermore, the experimenter may influence the behaviour of the participants of the experiments. People’s behaviour is often affected by their perception concerning the experimenter’s presence. All intentional or non- intentional cues on the part of the experimenter indicating how people should behave can affect peoples’ behaviour in the experimental setting. This phenomenon is called the ‘experimenter effects”. But also the fact that they are involved in an experiment can influence the sensitivity to any experimenter’s cues.

Limitation of using interviews:

There even are some disadvantages using interviews. Interviews are very time-consuming and expensive as the interviewer has to travel to and from the location of the interview and the transcription of tapes. But it is not only time consuming for the interviewer, it is also time consuming for the interviewee and this could lead to a reduction of willing participants.

Using semi-structured interviews there are three problem areas that can arise.

The first problem concerns the reliability due to the lack of standardisation. However this issue is minimized as the researcher uses the semi-structured interview to get a first impression and to underline the findings from the questionnaire. Therefore the questionnaire balances this limitation. The second issue can be interviewer bias. Tone or non-verbal behaviour can influence the interviewee’s responses when the interviewer tries to impose his own opinion. Moreover bias might occur by not being in a position for developing trust with the interviewee, but this issue is minimized due to the fact that the interviewer is a co-worker of the company. Besides, there can also arise issues when the researcher is not objective when interpreting and evaluating data. As a result the researcher has to have know-how and experience to limit negative impacts.

Furthermore, there is a drawback concerning generalisability. The researcher can hardly interview a sample that is representative of the population.

Regarding the focus group, the researcher as a moderator, has to be conscious of group dynamics. Every team member has to have equal chances to participate in the discussion and the moderator has to pay attention that no member takes over the discussion. Therefore, the researcher must encourage the participants to respond and find a balance that no one is embarrassed.

The present researcher is aware of the above mentioned limitations so that the research of the issue is conducted in an objective way in order to obtain reliable findings.

Ethical issues:

In order to ensure the ethical issues, the interviews will be submitted in accordance with the ethical requirements for research and consultancy in the University and NBS guidelines. The organization and all interviewees are informed by the researcher about the research and collection of data. They have all agreed to participate in and encourage the study.