Transnational Teams (Essay Sample)

Transnational Teams
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Transnational Teams
How would you determine team composition in a multinational team?
A multinational team is a collection of personnel from different geographical locations in a company, bringing together marketing, human resources, finance executives, and information technology. All these personnel work together to achieve company goals and objectives. Multinational teams consist of people from different social and professional cultures who work together for a common goal. Determining team composition in multinational teams is challenging, and it gets more complicated when the multinational components are added into the mix (Sheard & Kakabadse, 2002). Team composition in a multinational organization refers to employing people from different cultural backgrounds across the globe advised by the extent of the organization’s activities; with a sole mandate of ensuring decisions implementation that embody an international agenda QUOTE ""  ADDIN PROCITE ÿ\11\05‘\19\02\00\00\00\00\01\00\00T\00\00\00@C:\5CMy Documents\5CRES_CURR\5CREFERENC\5CDatabase\5CMaster References.pdt! Maznevski & Chudoba, forthcoming\00!\00 . Global teams’ internal dynamics are determined through complexity often seen in their communications configuration, composition, and task, which are the only characteristics global teams share. The correlation of these characteristics to global teams is pegged on complex dynamics they employ when delivering service to clients and desire to place foundations for efficiency in the organization. Moreover, while all organizational teams struggle to blend internal dynamics and external activities QUOTE "(Ancona, 1990; Ancona & Caldwell, 1992)"  ADDIN PROCITE ÿ\11\05‘\19\02\00\00\00'(Ancona, 1990; Ancona & Caldwell, 1992)\00'\00i\00\00\00@C:\5CMy Documents\5CRES_CURR\5CREFERENC\5CDatabase\5CMaster References.pdt\0CAncona, 1990\00\0C\00  QUOTE ""  ADDIN PROCITE ÿ\11\05‘\19\02\00\00\00\00\01\00\00U\00\00\00@C:\5CMy Documents\5CRES_CURR\5CREFERENC\5CDatabase\5CMaster References.pdt\18 Ancona & Caldwell, 1992\00\18\00 , these three characteristics complicate how the team coordinates the external activities and links them with internal dynamics.
How will you address the diversity of cultures within the team?
Culture offers a set of values and assumptions that are mutually shared by a group of people and which in essence guide their interaction. Culture thus consists of a shared and commonly held assumption of general beliefs and values that define a people’s way of life. These beliefs and values are taught to people at a tender age and so unobtrusively such that people are usually unaware of their influence. In management, culture has several important implications and how to address such concerns should be a priority for purposes of efficiency. First to be addressed is its role in guiding the expectations and priorities of a team: What is the best organizational structure or budgeting procedure, who should be responsible when something goes wrong and how should activities be organized are some of the amicable paradigms that my address the diversity factor. In a way, the answer to all these questions have to be guided by a set of values and norms often unspecified but shared by a group of people. Second is the awareness of the boundary that culture creates. People from a given culture can usually recognize who is in the culture and who is not, and the boundary should be made to create a source of identity and safety, not fear and prejudice. Finally, the subject of cultural diversity should offer a sense of strength - a link between the individual and group or the organizational itself. Even if individual preferences differ from the norm, individuals have to be inducted to play along in the culture in order to facilitate meaningful interaction (Sheard & Kakabadse, 2002).
Because the team will operate in a virtual existence, what structure and support will this team need to foster productivity?
Three areas need to be addressed to maximize productivity for virtual teams, first is whether the task is relevant for success of a virtual team. Ebrahim, Ahmed, and Taha (2009) observe that virtual teams are well suited for research and development tasks that use worldwide knowledge pools to complete the task. In addition, virtual teams have shown efficiency by reaching out to multifaceted abilities by various employees from diverse backgrounds, this show that virtual teams are least suited for single-site manufacturing applications. Second, the organization must be prepared to support a virtual team. According to Ebrahim, Ahmed, and Taha (2009), organizations need to plan proactively how to best structure their virtual teams and set them up for success. Organizations must be willing to establish security policies, invest in the needed technologies, provide procedures, be willing to embrace cultural diversity and set attainable goals to enable virtual teams to deliver. Companies that are not willing to acquire the needed technologies and allocate resources limit their success to foster productivity.
How will you measure the team’s success?
The team’s success can only be rated after a given period of exposure, take some time say a month to evaluate your team, whether you are an executive, manager, or team member. Ask yourself the following questions to determine if your team is reaching out to success:
Does your organization invest in developing their teams?
Are the team’s results a reflection of the team’s optimum productivity?
Is there a synchrony between the team members’ communication and working style with the team leader’s style of management?
Does understanding exist among team members?
The moment institutions begin to allocate funds for team development, the personnel will be excited and motivated in their duties (Sheard &...