I was assigned to a virtual team of American multinational corporation Nike which is engaged in the design, development and worldwide marketing and selling of footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories and services. The task given to twelve of us is to assess the feasibility of Nike making inexpensive shoes that can be sold in Brazil. What makes the task more difficult is that the members of the international group are the residents from the United States, England, China, India and Brazil. All of us speak English though some speak it better than others.
It is well known, that for successful communication within a multinational company regardless of their country, the knowledge of a foreign language is as important as the ability to understand one’s companion as a carrier of a foreign culture. The health of any business may well depend on the ability of each member of the team to bridge cultural gap: 1) we are to draw the path of developing virtual team into a real one; 2) we are to study the challenges we are going to face; 3) we are to decide how to overcome possible challenges.
The process of creating a task-focused team out of a group of taken at random people is a long one. Groups do not start off fully-formed. The model of a group development proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965 includes: “Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing”. During the first stage “forming” everybody is busy finding their place in the team, sizing each other up. During “storming” stage the team members begin to see themselves as part of a team though with different ideas. During “norming” stage team members give up their own ideas and agree with others in order to make the team function. “Performing” stage increases a focus on both the task, and on team relationships. In 1977, Tuckman added the fifth stage “adjourning”, which involves completing the task and breaking up the team.
Business is not conducted in an identical fashion from culture to culture. Due to different cultures it becomes possible to find new approaches to old problems and to overcome possible challenges. According to the given assignment we may assume that the communication of the team members will be limited mostly by telephone, fax and Internet as all of them live in five different countries. Thus, we may omit some factors affecting the process of cross cultural communications.
In case of our virtual team it is quite possible to assume that we shall face the so called “ethnocentrism”. Most often American and English businessmen during the initial team building phase might belief that they are somewhat superior to other members of the group especially those from Asia. This belief is deceptive because every member of the group considers his behavior logical and …