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Developing Global Teams in a Turbulent Environment

Teaching "On the Fly" and Promoting "Learning in Working"

By Julia Gluesing

Introduction
Organizing on a global scale has brought multicultural teams into the forefront as a particular kind of group that has the potential to be the basic structural foundation of the international and transnational or global organization. In the 1990s, globalization, particularly global business, is dramatically increasing the level of cross-cultural contact, even in primarily domestic firms. Without leaving their U.S. companies or their own communities, individuals work for foreign-owned businesses, sell to foreign clients, buy materials and components from foreign companies abroad and attend meetings with their colleagues from other parts of the world.

The impact of cultural complexity varies with the type of environment and overall business strategy of a firm. Adler (1991) notes that as firms move from domestic to international to multinational and, finally, to truly global organizations and alliances, the importance of cultural diversity increases significantly. The impact of international multiculturalism increases from "nice to know" to an "imperative for survival" as company operations become globalized.

Weick and Van Orden (1990) have proposed a research and teaching agenda for organizing on a global scale, with multicultural teams as one of the major components. They focus their agenda on the premise that globalization involves two basic themes: making sense of a "turbulent" global marketplace, and creating processes that will keep resources moving wherever they are needed.

Sensemaking in global organizations often occurs in teams, with particular attention to the creation of the necessary diversity or "requisite variety" to cope with the interactive complexity of the global environment. Weick and Van Orden believe that the creation of diverse teams is one of the most important mechanisms available to global organizations to process and manage environmental complexity. However, they caution that the creation of a group with diversity is no guarantee that the group will be able to cope with complexity. Weick has theorized about the collapse of sensemaking in teams, asking why, in turbulent environments, such organizations unravel, and how they can be made more resilient to disruptions in sense-making. He suggests that "improvisation, virtual role systems, the attitude of wisdom, and norms of respectful interaction all contribute to resilience in teams who work in turbulent situations" (1993:628).

The structure and process of global organizations within the framework of multicultural teams involve a qualitative difference in the way work is accomplished. Brannen (1998) has documented how cultural is enacted and negotiated over time in diverse work places. Boyacigiller et al (1996) advocate a multiple cultures perspective to conceptualize the cultural context of international business. Given an uncertain and nonroutine environment, where multiple culture intersect, incremental decision making and small wins become absolutely crucial because they create what little order there is around these issues. Global teams that establish a "compact vision" and create "pockets of order" will facilitate learning in nonroutine settings. Since people generally have greatly reduced analytical power when they are faced with nonroutine and indeterminate situations, small actions, and small wins within the team can create a completed outcome, with feedback that allows people to see the effects of the action and learn whether or not they should repeat it. The small wins help people understand more about uncertain settings.

The implication for teaching culture in multicultural teams is a change in focus from "teaching more on a large scale is teaching better," to "teaching differently on a smaller scale is teaching better." The teaching challenge is to create teaching opportunities within the natural flow of work that convey both concepts and skills in compact ways appropriate to the situation and to the readiness and skill levels of the members, and that can be carried by team members to other global teaming contexts.

The Teaching Challenge in Global Automotive Product Development Teams
A major automotive company headquartered in the U.S. Midwest is initiating several new vehicle programs that will be developed by cross-cultural teams of company personnel spanning four continents: Europe, North America and South America and Asia

The company's global products range from small sport utility vehicles to midsize cars, to trucks that are built on common platforms and customized for local markets. The company is targeting markets primarily in South American, Europe and Asia, and not necessarily in the U.S.

The success of the vehicle programs requires extensive cross-cultural collaboration in the development of global products that will integrate differing, and often conflicting market requirements, and engineering and manufacturing practices. There are national cultural differences, as well as organizational and professional cultural differences, that must be articulated, understood, and negotiated for the program to be successful. Divergent viewpoints about market needs, power struggles for control of product design and management, and conflicting approaches to product development processes are major issues that can heavily impact the ultimate success of the program and of the companies ability to achieve its business objectives. It is critical for the company to take action to help vehicle program team members unify around a common product goal, especially in a competitive global marketplace with accelerating product development timelines for local markets that a majority of people will on the team will never visit or experience.

The overall educational challenge is to design a development program for creating a global mindset among product development team members to help them work together synergistically to engineer, manufacture and a global vehicle platform that can be customized for diverse local markets. The specific teaching challenges include:

The complexity of multiple cultures in the global team work setting, primarily national and regional, organizational, occupational cultures

Temporary and continually changing make-up of team membership

Changing "host culture" when the team leadership moves from one organization and one national culture to another,

and the membership changes dramatically

Large size of team (15 – 400) with multiple networked subteams

Different cultural adaptability and competence levels of team members, based on past experiences and acquired skills

Geographically dispersed team

Quickly changing conditional context as company business strategy adapts to new marketplace challenges.

Approach to Teaching "On the Fly" and Promoting "Learning in Working"

Previous research (Gluesing, 1998) indicates that when global teaming is successful, it follows a path that begins with a general business strategy directed at managing the connection between the company as a whole, and the customers in the marketplace. The strategy leads to a specific team mission and the selection of a leader who buys into and is committed to that mission. It is at this point that the teaming process begins. A team leader is selected, who, if successful, possesses the specific set of skills both knowledge-based and interpersonal to balance power and build connections in a global team that will be formed to address the team mission and objectives.

The global teaming process takes place in four phases grouped in the center of the model: 1) breaking down to open up, 2) negotiating teaming, 3) strengthening teaming, and 4) teaming in an emerging "composite" culture.

The first phase, breaking down to open up, occurs when the team members (carriers of their own cultural identities brought to the teaming situation) break down cultural boundaries and turn from knowledge of and focus on differences, to opening up to similarities. They begin to focus on what they have in common within the teaming context.

Negotiating teaming is the second phase when members begin to develop shared assumptions about their mission, some agreement about common objectives and about how they will work together, and what they can each contribute to the achievement of their common objectives.

Strengthening teaming is the third phase when the team members begin to work synergistically among themselves to achieve their objectives, and the team has become a viable system within the existing structures and conditions.

The fourth and final phase is when the team members form shared assumptions and practices, teaming in an emerging "composite" culture. They compose together a new cultural identity that they internalize. The "composite" culture guides their interactions and actions inside the team. This composite culture becomes a source of experiences and skills that can strengthen the probability of their team's success, and the potential for successful global teaming in the future. When the team is large and team membership fluctuates over time, a team may not ever develop a shared "composite" culture, but may continue to be composed of several networked cultural groups who learn to work together across boundaries.

The phases of the global teaming process occur irregularly in nonlinear fashion. Reversals and modifications of assumptions commonly occur. The phases are overlapping and fluctuate as the team members double back or repeat stages when new members are added or new conditions warrant re-evaluation of previously negotiated working cultural norms.

An instructional design for teaching culture in global vehicle programs rests follows this global teaming process model. To respond to constantly changing conditions, learning must take place quickly "on the fly" and must be grounded in daily practice to accomplish "learning in working" Teaching concepts and tools must be adapted to the skills of the team members who are present "in the moment." The approach to "learning on the fly" and "learning in working" is threefold:

1. Developing people to provide individuals with the knowledge and skills they need to work productively across multiple cultures in changing conditional contexts through the use of common frameworks adapted to specific work situations.

2. Establishing cross-cultural global teaming processes to facilitate communication and minimize misunderstanding in specific situations as they occur.

3. Building and using strategies and tools to assess individual and team readiness and progress and to facilitate a working team culture as business is conducted.

Teaching culture in global teams focuses on the following primary learning objectives:

To develop a global mindset among managers, team leaders and team members (drawing on multiple cultural frameworks for sense-making) – create an understanding of what culture is, and an awareness of one's own and the others' cultural axioms, values, and patterns of behavior.

To illustrate the implications of cultural background for workplace practices, particularly in a global teaming context that requires cooperation, collaboration and communication across both multiple cultures and geographic locations.

To accelerate the learning curve for understanding and practicing effective global teaming strategies and skills -- "learning in working" that will facilitate the creation of working cultures in the product development teams responsible for the design, development and testing, and prototyping of new vehicles.

Teaching frameworks of culture emphasize the dynamic and systemic aspects of culture. Flexible strategies and tools include the teaching of basic core cultural axioms rooted in historical context to provide basic culture-specific knowledge as a starting point for intercultural negotiation. Global teaming exercises include sample cross-cultural conversations for mini role-plays and simulation exercises are introduced whenever the opportunity presents itself and the participants are ready. These exercises help members learn and take on each other's cultural frameworks as they engineer and produce a product. Examples drawn directly from the experiences of team members provide the basis for teaching tool development. These tools illustrate cross-cultural differences in creativity, in product development, in the use of knowledge and in the approach to dealing with uncertainty, ambiguity, and problem-solving that team members encounter on a daily basis. Concepts are introduced through observation followed by facilitation "on the spot" to help team members recognize when cross-cultural misunderstanding might be occurring and then apply strategies to help them create shared understanding.

Strategies and tools help not only to broaden participants' frames of reference and give them experience seeing and doing things from multiple cultural perspectives, but also to learn a set of work practices different from their own. Team members learn skills to "negotiate" working culture in a global teaming context as they do their work.

Teaching culture "on the fly" is an experimental approach to learning in the work context for global team members. While "small wins" and "pockets of order" are created, there still remains much work to be done to match teaching culture with how it is enacted in global teaming contexts. Several key questions to be answered through further research and collaboration among educators:

How can learning be shared quickly when it is "spontaneous" and "tacit"?

How can we measure "learning in working" and do we need to?

How can new communication technologies be used better to help teach?

How can "teams of teachers" better contribute to teaching culture in global teams?

How can we learn more about global teaming strategies that work "on the fly" when backgrounds, and competencies vary widely?

References

1991: International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, 2^nd ed. Boston: PWS-Kent.
Boyacigiller, N. A., M. J. Kleinberg, M. E. Phillips, & S. A. Sackmann
1996: Conceptualizing Culture in International Cross-Cultural Management Research. In Handbook of International Management Research, B. J. Punnett and O. Shenkar eds. Pp 157-192. New York: Blackwell Publishers, Inc.
Brannen, M. Y.
1998: Negotiated Culture in Binational Contexts: A Model of Culture Change Based on a Japanese American Organizational Experience. Anthropology of Work Review, 18(2, 3), pp 6 – 17
Gluesing, J..G.
1998: Building Connections and Balancing Power in Global Teams: Toward a Reconceptualization of Culture as Composite. Anthropology of Work Review, 18(2, 3), pp 18 -- 29
Weick, K. E., & P. W. Van Orden
1990: Organizing on a Global Scale Human Resource Management, 29(1):49-61