Culturally Heterogeneous Teams and Team Effectiveness

Cultural diversity plays an increasingly important role in organizations. As the workforce becomes more culturally diverse, companies come across problems, but also see it as a resource to gain better market understanding. In order to benefit from the diverse knowledge, culturally heterogeneous teams are often composed. However, not all such teams manage to produce better results. Why are some teams able to benefit from their diversity, while others show disappointing results? The author Ramona R. Nissl produces answers to this question by looking at the factors that influence the effectiveness of culturally diverse teams. In her literature overview she identifies the following factors to have an impact on team effectiveness: task type, conflict type, team tenure, team composition as well as cultural diversity management and organizational culture. Furthermore, she interviewed 15 managers of European companies working in China to compare the literature findings with the experiences made by culturally diverse top management teams. This book addresses people working in diverse teams, HR managers and companies that wish to improve the performance of their culturally diverse teams.