Business research – Assignment 2

Challenges in Managing Global Team

1. Introduction

In recent years, a tendency within companies is seen to engage virtual team for engaging and connecting geographically dispersed employees. It actually helps in lowering the associated cost with global collaboration and enhances speed. This non-traditional team shifts the traditional approach of a team, in which they used to engage, form and manage a team. However, this kind of team may offer several benefits but pose threats as well (Boutellier & Von Zedtwitz, 2013). In order to be in the superior position in global market, organizations are continuously trying to develop an effective workforce, engage skilled employees, form a global team and monitor their performance. Developing global mindset is necessary for the team to run its operations towards accomplishing organizational goals. This research work includes several others aspects as well like Virtual Team Leadership, a cost-benefit approach for virtual and Face-to-face communication.

2. Project Objective

While conducting this project, the researcher will come across several suppositions and those suppositions are presented in an objective format. The objectives are:

• To determine the benefit of using global team
• To understand continuous quest for tapping opportunities inherent in global business
• To find out associated flaws in managing geographically dispersed team
• To resolve these risks by cultivating trust within team members

3. Project Scope

Due to increase global business, many organizations are focusing on building cross-national borders and recruit employees from various countries. Employees with various ethnic and racial backgrounds need to work together but mitigating cultural diversity. Most of the organizations of these days are focusing on providing best quality service and products to service users; therefore, they are trying to generate a skilled team by recruiting efficient workers from different regions. This research project is loaded with scope and opportunities because “Managing Global Team” has become one of the buzzing topics in today’s business world. Competitive advantages of every global team depend on the ability of management to coordinate with a key resource of the organization- employees. In this research work, several mechanisms for managing culturally diverse team like Cultural Intelligence are going to be analyzed. This cultural collaboration is indeed quite necessary for the leaders to understand cross-cultural collaboration. A number of researchescan be conducted on this matter in order to have the deepest insight.

4. Literature Review

This section is entitled to present contradictory views of scholars on this proposed matter in order to have clear insight. Several researchers have seen this matter from different points of view and the purpose of this assignment is to present challenges faced while managing a global team. At the end of the paper, this risk work comes with best practices to solve those problems. A literature review is considered as a secondary analysis of journals and articles for managing a global team, in which concepts are not presented in summarized manner; rather, concepts are arranged systematically.

4.0 Definition of Global Team

Before going deep into the challenges of managing a global team, it is a sole responsibility to determine the definition of a global team. From the review of past decade literature, it is evident that the term “Global Team” is often confused with Multicultural Team, Multinational Team, Distributed Team, and Multicultural Team. While defining this particular term, Reiche, & Stahl, (2016) stated that it is necessary to separate the term global team from these phenomena. When a company is determined to have footfall in the global market, they have to engage employees from different countries as well as from host country. Maintaining proper coordination and alignment among employees is the sole responsibility of leaders. Leaders have to maintain coordination and communication within the geographically dispersed team.

4.1 Global Team Challenges

With the help of this literature, several communication challenges in managing global team can be identified. Lack of face-to-face communication, nonverbal cues, use of technology for communication may create hazard and stress among team members.

• Lack of Clarity: In case of Global Team, Moran & Moran, (2014) depicted that employees have to work with the people of different language, ethnic group, and region. It will be quite difficult for them to communicate with others; lack of communication often leaves confusion behind. In order to satisfy the need of customers, organizations recruit an employee from the various geographic background. Different native language means key messages are ruined in translation. Team members start focusing on translation; rather than delivering key messages. Poor connection and lack of clarity in the conference call may often leave the employees in confusion.
• Improper decision making: When working on an international level, management has to understand that there are only a few common ‘Awake” hours; therefore, scheduling meeting is one of the toughest jobs.
• Conflict in corporate culture: As per stated by Eseryel & Eseryel, (2013) organizational culture depends on two aspects one is constant interaction and another is organizational structure. If an organization possess hierarchical organizational culture then it will be quite difficult for the employees to depict their problems in front of managers. Corporate culture can be conflict free if leaders are able to maintain proper communication and team bonding.
• Geographical separation: Lack of mutual knowledge towards each other may be the reason for cultural conflict. Culturally diversified employees to work for common goals then there is a definite chance of contradiction (Kardes & Cavusgil, 2013). Even sharing knowledge can be difficult for them to embed into one team. From the analysis of cultural Taxonomies by Hofstede, it is clear that cultural differences such as Individualism-collectivism, time orientation, and low-high context have been playing an influential in managing the multicultural

4.2 The negative impact of Computer-Mediated Communication

The computer-mediated team delivers myriad advantages to the organization; however, it consists of several disadvantages and those disadvantages are deep-rooted. This has numbers of logistical and technological challenges such as the process is quite time-consuming. According to Majchrzak & Ba, (2014), CMC often encounter software challenges and scheduling problems. Lack of non-verbal cues and implicit knowledge transfer creates difficulty in the entire communication process. It is evident that virtual team often make incorrect assumptions when someone does not a response to their email or misunderstand the meaning of written language. Coordination challenge can also be found in establishing mission and vision in the virtual team due to lack of flexibility in time management.

4.3 Solution to these issues

Several mechanisms are induced to manage cultural diversity and virtuality. Scholars have identified that mechanism to manage cultural diversity and if structural features are at the place then there is no chance of cultural diversity. Along with that, it is necessary to develop a Psychologically Safe Communication Climate for the employees. On the other hand, Saarinen (2016) argued that TMS is another mechanism for facilitating knowledge sharing within Global Virtual Team. With the help of TMS, all the members from the diversified geographic background can able to share a common map of knowledge distribution. Besides, Perceived Proximity is known as another tool for reflecting the psychological closeness of one employee towards virtual coworkers.

International Human Resource Managers and leaders are entitled to foster an organizational culture for generating trust and collaborative behavior among team members.

Research Gap: Managing global team is a burgeoning unit but previously, more of the scholars had been depicted about the problems of managing global team due to lack of communication clarity and technological advancement. However, from the analysis of recent research, it has been seen that Global Managing system may have some issues but investing in cultural training and communication strategy can solve these issues. Previously, it is believed that there is no absolute solution to this issues but later, leaders invented several solutions to this problem.

5. Research Questions

Primary Question:

What are those disadvantages faced by leaders while managing global virtual Team?

Secondary Question:

• How can culturally diverse team affect international organizational performance?
• How does team building from distance and virtual leadership can be helpful in developing a mindset of a virtual team?

6. Design and Methodology

In this section, the process of data collection is going to be described. In order to have complete knowledge on this matter, the researcher will take help of both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods.

6.0 Qualitative

In case of qualitative data collection methods, the researcher will focus on the analysis of secondary data like books, journals, and articles written by various scholars. In total, five peers reviewed will be chosen for analysis. Those journals should not be older than five years from now and copyright of those journals should be checked. For the analysis of those journals, Theoretical Discussion and Thematic Analysis method will be selected. Interpretivism Research philosophy perfectly complements quantitative data collection method that interprets secondary data. Exploratory Research Design is going to be selected as with the help of Qualitative Data Analysis, a new concept on this matter can be explored. Inductive Research Approach is the best possible approach for analyzing qualitative data. The secondary data will be used for the qualitative approach to be taken.

6.1 Quantitative

The overall assessments regarding challenges in managing Global Team, the researcher is entitled to formulate outcome with the help of overall process. The research will take help of quantitative data collection method as well for formulating outcome and for this researcher will going to raise Close ended questionnaire, in which researcher will generate 5 sets of questions with 5 questions. In total, 10 companies with global footfall and 10 companies planning to reach the global market will be chosen for analysis. From each company 3 managers will be selected for asking the question; therefore, total 60 respondents will take active participation in this research process. The researcher is going to take help of Positivism Research Philosophy in order to analyze the positive statistical result. Descriptive Research Design will be followed by a systematic review of the research. Therefore, two respective methods will be entailed for ascertaining this research work. The deductive Research approach is going to be nominated as it perfectly goes with Primary Quantitative Data Collection Method. For collecting quantitative data, the researcher will select Likert Scaling method. Statistical tools like graphs and tables will be picked for analyzing raw, mathematical data.

Multitude variables such as Age, Nationality, Gender, Religion, Ethnicity, Political Ties, Occupation and Religion are chosen for better and in-depth analysis. These variables are quite necessary to determine individual identity. For instance, North-Americans believe that maintaining eye contact can bring confident in one person; on the other hand, it is believed by other countries that eye contact can be threatening.

7. Research Limitations

While conducting the research, it is needful to take care of several obligations. This research is focusing on challenges in managing a global virtual team; the topic is considered as the last one because there is no specific organization, industry or country. Therefore, research is going to be conducted in a vast area. For getting an outcome, research will take help of both qualitative and quantitative data analysis.

• In case of collecting secondary data, it is seen that most of the research works put emphasis on challenges but none has depicted solution to these issues.
• While collecting primary data, respondents do not show any concern for this topic.
• No particular case study has been found on this topic.
• This research is entitled to finish with time and money; researcher does not have many resources to cover all the aspects of research.
• Research is only limited to 20 countries and 60 members; vast analysis is necessary for covering the entire

8. Time scheduling

Activities	Duration (Days)
Starting the project	3
Select journals for literature review	12
Primary and secondary data collection	26
Analyze articles and journals for secondary data	20
Select respondents from various companies with and without global footfalls	10
generate a close-ended questionnaire	7
Ask questions	19
Analysis of Quantitative Data	23
Analyze Qualitative Data	17
Conclusion	2

9. Conclusion

Traditionally, a company’s sphere only influences local community but in the era of technological development, even start-up companies like to have their footfalls in the global market by stretching across the entire globe. This “Going Global” comes with several benefits; working at Oracle and SAP, one organization can handle the team in California, India, Shanghai, and Paris (Moran & Moran, 2014). Taking existing employees to other nation may affect their morale; therefore, recruiting global or virtual team is effective in all way. However, the purpose of this assignment is to depict the challenges faced by companies while managing a global team. Peer-reviewed journals and articles are adopted for understanding challenges in managing a global team.

10. Reference

Boutellier, R., Gassmann, O., & Von Zedtwitz, M. 2013. Managing global innovation: uncovering the secrets of future competitiveness. Springer Science & Business Media.

Eseryel, U. Y., & Eseryel, D. 2013.Action-embedded transformational leadership in self-managing global information systems development teams. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 22(2), 103-120.

Kardes, I., Ozturk, A., Cavusgil, S. T., & Cavusgil, E. 2013.Managing global megaprojects: Complexity and risk management. International Business Review, 22(6), 905-917.

Majchrzak, A., Rice, R. E., King, N., Malhotra, A., & Ba, S. 2014. Computer-mediated inter-organizational knowledge-sharing: Insights from a virtual team innovating using a collaborative tool.

Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. 2014. Managing cultural differences. Routledge.

Reiche, B. S., Mendenhall, M. E., & Stahl, G. K. (Eds.).2016. Readings and cases in international human resource management. Taylor & Francis.

Saarinen, J. 2016. Managing global virtual teams.