Globalization

Globalization is the hottest topic in recent years and a team with diverse membership becomes ordinary. Many multinational companies believe that a team’s effectiveness could be enhanced by having a diverse membership. A team’s effectiveness could be defined as a team’s abilities to executive each task and its performance for competition. And its diverse membership means the team is made up of people from different areas with different identities. In discussing a team’s effectiveness is enhanced by having a diverse membership, this article will involve the advantages of a diverse membership in a multinational team. The whole article would focus on several parts as follows: a diverse membership permits increased creativity; a diverse membership forces team members to have more communication which leads to a better understanding of others’ ideas, perspectives, meanings and needs; a diverse membership can lead to better solutions and decisions. Diverse membership is caused by workforce diversity. As the development of globalization, most of employees in multinational companies are no longer only from one country. There are several examples which reflect workforce diversity. It shows that in the USA 28percent of the population are ethnic minorities in 2005; but the ratio will reach 50percent by the end of 2050. In other words, this country’s workforce becomes much more diversified. And the same situation has happened in Canada, this ratio will be double in 2015 than the ratio in 1995. (Seyman, 2006, p302) Because of the diversity of today’s workforce, it leads to the diversity of culture in multinational companies. As a result, the diversity membership comes to the forefront of managers of multinational companies. The following part will explain how the diverse membership enhances the team’s effectiveness. First of all, a diverse membership permits increased creativity and innovation. It can help companies to get wider range of perspectives and more ideas for one task. The members in the team are from different areas with different background and skills, so they will have different opinions on the same issue. Such kind of membership would give a team more information about how to deal with the problems. More information and ideas from the team members are good for making decisions. Oya Aytemiz Seymen stated that members who belong to cultural groups would have different ideas about the world and human beings. And their attitudes toward the same issue are different from each other. That is because they lived in different culture and different areas which shape their own personalities. As a result, each person has his/her own opinions or behavior to the same issue. These things in turn influence on their ways to deal with the problems which are considered as the most appropriate and effective. (Seymen, 2006, p299) In other words, it supply team more ideas and innovation. And the creativity and innovation could help the team to gain competitive advantages during the development of globalization. Irvine and Ross Baker suggest that the organizations’ productivity and quality could be improved by a diverse membership. It is also said that diversity had the potential to help organizations to gain a competitive edge and encouraged greater commitment to the organization. (Iles & Hayers, 1997, p98) The diverse membership could be considered as an asset and a resource which could supply companies more new ideas, perspectives and plans. This kind of diversity can result in greater flexibility and openness of the team. (Iles & Hayers, 1997, p106) As Paul Iles and Paromjit Kaur Hayers mentioned, at the beginning of diverse teams, they would experienced difficulties. But this diverse membership could create more novel and higher quality ideas. And the team diversity in multinational companies would bring greater innovation and creativity. (Iles & Hayers, 1997, p106) Joseph J. Distefano and Martha L. Maznevski’s research has shown that multinational teams could provide greater potential for creating value. (Yates & Beech, 2006, p28) As what have discussed above, a diverse membership permits increased creativity which leads to a competitive edge. More novel ideas can give multicultural team a better understanding of the issue. That would also help the team to improve its performance and effectiveness. In others words, creativities and innovation does good for multicultural teams’ effectiveness. Secondly, a diverse membership forces team members to have more communication which leads to a better understanding of others’ ideas, perspectives, meanings and needs. As what have mentioned above, the members in a multicultural team are from different areas around the world, therefore, there are lots of different ideas. This kind of pluralism is produced by the diverse membership, and it can set up a long-term corporate competitive advantage. In order to manage these differences in multicultural teams, team members have to exchange their perspectives by communicating. Communications in multicultural teams could make the ones who feel ignored realize that they are part of the team. (Seyman, 2006, p302) And it can also make them to know the reasons of conflicts, and in turn helps team members to avoid conflicts with potential consumers in different markets when making marketing plans. Furthermore, communication helps multicultural teams to know the consumers’ needs in different areas and then make the proper market plans for different markets. As the development of globalization, the multinational companies focus on global market. All the market plans should be set down for the customer groups with different characteristics. The communication in the team will help team members to develop their skills and knowledge to understand the consumers’ needs. For instance, in order to improve the products and service in globe market, Maybelline has employed Afro-American, Spanish and Asian workers. All of these actions help Maybelline achieve 41percent market share of cosmetic market. (Seyman, 2006, p302) Communication in multicultural teams could also give team members a comprehensive understanding of the differences between others and themselves. Each member of multicultural team is different from others with regarded to their age, gender, language and capability. It can make the teams more flexible to accommodate different consumers and markets. The value of diversity is the increased creativity, innovation and flexibility. All kinds of experiences from team members can bring different ideas and information to teams. As a result, higher-quality outcomes are expected in multicultural teams. (Staples & Zhao, 2006, p390) In other words, communication in multicultural is extremely imperative in enhancing teams’ effectiveness. Communication helps team members a better understanding of others’ ideas, perspectives and needs, and all of these result in a better performance of teams. With regarded to above, a diverse membership not only force team members to have more communications but also make multicultural teams more capable to different markets. Therefore, a better performance of team could be expected by having a diverse membership. Finally, a diverse membership can lead to better solutions and decisions for the teams. It provides teams more information, ideas and possible solutions about dealing with problems and decision-making. The increased creativity which is brought by a diverse membership enables teams to get the most suitable solutions for the problems. Such kind of diversity leads to effective solutions and correct decisions. In other words, it enhances a team’s effectiveness by this kind of pluralism. It is asserted that the teams with a diverse membership have better performance than homogeneous groups at innovation, problem solving, creativity and decision-making. (Ayoko & Hartel, 2006, p351) In Milliken and Martin’s research on diversity, it is said that diversity was a double-edged sword. It provides the opportunity for innovation while increasing the possibility of failure. (Ayoko & Hartel, 2006, p347) Oluremi B. Ayoko and Charmine E.J. Hartel stated that the teams with a diverse membership might cause more conflict, less trust, lower cohesion and more communication difficulties. (Ayoko & Hartel, 2006, p347) In order to avoid the above situations, proper management of diversity is necessary. A team with a diverse membership would maintain different opinions on the same issue, various ways of thinking, more flexibility, recognizing of needs of different markets and richer potential human resource under the proper management of diversity.(Seyman, 2006, p302) As a result, less conflict, more trust, higher cohesion and less communication difficulties can be expected in multicultural teams. Paul Iles and Paromjit Kaur Hayers claimed that “A culturally diverse project team can make use of a diverse range of perspectives offered by its international team members and their differing technical expertise.” In other word, a team with a diverse membership would respond more effectively in settling problems and making decision. On the whole, a diverse membership with proper management would bring teams more effective ways to solve problems and better decision-making. With regarded to points above, a diverse membership can lead to better solutions and decisions. And these effective solutions and decision would help multicultural teams to achieve competitive edges in global competition. Therefore, a team’s effectiveness can be enhanced by having a diverse membership. From the above it can be seen that a multicultural team could benefit much things from its diverse membership. All these benefits with regarded to a diverse membership permits increased creativity; a diverse membership forces team members to have more communication which leads to a better understanding of others’ ideas, perspectives, meanings and needs; a diverse membership can lead to better solutions and decisions. Therefore, better performance, higher cohesion and more innovation could be expected in the teams. In other word, a team’s effectiveness is enhanced by having a diverse membership. By the development of globalization, managers can not avoid dealing with diversity in multicultural teams; as a result, the proper management is very crucial in the future. In order to gain a competitive edge in global market by having a diverse membership, managers have to deal with diversity properly. It asks managers to help team members to find their similarities and make use their differences. As a consequence, a team’s effectiveness would be enhanced by having a diverse membership. References Ayoko, OB & Hartel, EJC 2006, ‘Cultural diversity and leadership-a conceptual model of leader intervention in conflict events in culturally heterogeneous workgroups’, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, vol.13, no.4, pp345-360. Iles, P & Hayers, PK 1997, ‘Managing diversity in transnational project teams-A tentative model and case study’, Journal of Managerial Psychology, vol.12, no.2, pp95-117. Seymen, OA 2006, ‘The cultural diversity phenomenon in organizations and different approaches for effective cultural diversity management: a literary review”, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, vol.13, no.3, pp296-315. Staples, DS & Zhao, L 2006, ‘The Effects of Cultural Diversity in Virtual Teams Versus Face-to-Face Teams’, Group Decision and Negotiation, vol.15, pp389-406. Yates, K & Beech, R 2006, ‘Six crucial steps to effective global communication-Gaining a global perspective on a multinational strategy’, Strategic Communication Management, vol.10, no.5, pp26-29.