Melting Pot or Tossed Salad? Implications for Designing Effective Multicultural Workgroups

Zusammenfassung

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The literature on the functioning and effectiveness of diversity-based workgroups tends to take the single perspective of exploring the effects of cultural or demographic or functional diversity on workgroup performance. This conceptual article develops a coupling framework for the analysis of the functioning of multicultural workgroups by integrating several lines of research and by reformulating their traditional conceptualization, outlining implications for their design. Applying the concept of loosely coupled systems to multicultural workgroup functioning provides the conceptual link necessary for a solution of the dilemma of multicultural workgroups. Workgroup processes are usually differentiated in task processes that relate directly to a group's work on its tasks and in social processes that relate to the interpersonal or social aspects of transactions taking place between individual group members. To design effective workgroups composed of people with differing cultural values requires special consideration of the contingencies under which the workgroups will perform so as to fully realize their potential.

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Auszug

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Melting Pot or Tossed Salad? Implications for Designing Effective Multicultural Workgroups

Introduction

The increase in the internationalization of companies has increased the complexity these companies face. As organizations expand their activities across borders, the number of institutions influencing their operations or claiming jurisdiction over their activities has increased and their corporate environments have become increasingly multifaceted and diverse. International companies face global competitors, multiple countries and governments, different cultures and languages, all placing heightened demands on coordination and control of international business activities (e.g., Lane/Maznevski/Mendenhall 2004).

One way for organizations to cope with this complexity is to establish workgroups or teams that are composed of people differing in relevant dimensions such as culture to match the diversity of the environment the organizations try to deal with (e.g., Weick/Van Orden 1990, Webber/Donahue 2001, Gluesing/Gibson 2004). Workgroups composed of people with different cultural backgrounds hold a great potential for more innovative and higher quality solutions to international business problems, yet it is these same cultural differences that pose the greatest challenges for organizations.

In diversity-based workgroups, culturally imprinted differing perspectives, interpretations and approaches to work have to be integrated, a process that requires some degree of consensus on workable solutions. This is a result multicultural workgroups often fail to reach (e.g., Maznevski/Peterson 1997, Adler 2002). Multicultural workgroups are thus confronted with the so-called "diversity/consensus dilemma" (Argote/McGrath 1993, p. 336) or "accuracy-cohesion-trade off" (Weick 1987, p. 23), the contradictory outcomes demanded of such groups. In addition, the scope of international business problems requiring multicultural workgroups to focus on complex analyses and decisions containing high risk and having a wide spectrum of consequences (e.g., Elron 1997, Hambrick et al. 1998, DiStefano/Maznevski 2000) is increasing. Establishing a thorough conceptual understanding of the implications of the multicultural composition of such workgroups and developing a group design that accommodates the contradictory demands such groups are supposed to meet seems increasingly necessary.

The findings of previous research on the direct effects of cultural diversity on workgroup functioning are mixed. Research has shown that group situation attributes such as types of tasks (e.g., Jackson 1996, Gluesing/Gibson 2004), or group management characteristics (e.g., Hambrick et al. 1998) exert substantial but differing influences on group processes and outcomes. In addition, there exists a lack of systematic theoretical and empirical evaluations of multicultural group work in multinational companies (e.g., Williams/O'Reilly 1998, Smith 1999). Such evaluations would outline factors or mechanisms with which a solution or at least a successful approach to the "diversity/consensus dilemma" could be achieved. This article proposes a conceptual framework based on a contingency perspective as a contribution to the resolution of this "diversity/consensus dilemma." Here the theoretical concept of loosely-tightly coupled systems - a concep...

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