The term global management teams describes collections of managers from several countries who must rely on group collaboration if each member is to experience the optimum of success and goal achievement. Whirlpool International, for example, is a U.S - Dutch joint venture, with administrative headquarters in Comoro, Italy, where it is managed by a Swede and a six-person management team from Sweden, Italy, Holland, the United States, l3elgium, and Germany. To achieve the individual and collective goals of the team members, international teams must “provide the marts to communicate corporate culture, develop a global perspective, coordinate and integrate the global enterprise, and be responsive to local market needs.” The role and importance of international teams increases as the firm progresses in its scope of international activity.
Similarly, the manner in which multicultural interaction affects the firm's operations depends on its level of international involvement, its environment, and its strategy. In domestic firms, the effects of cross-cultural teams are limited to internal operations and some external contacts. In international firms that export products and produce some products overseas, multicultural teams and cultural diversity play important roles in the relationships between buyers, sellers, and other intermediaries at the boundary of the organization. For multinational firms, the role of multicultural teams again becomes internal to the company; the teams consist of culturally diverse managers and technical people located around the world and also working together within subsidiaries. The team's ability to work together effectively is crucial to the success of the company. In addition, technology facilitates effective and efficient teamwork around the world This was found by the Timberland U.K. sales conference planning team. In the past their large sales conferences were cumbersome to organize with their offices in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the U.K. Then the team started using the British Telecom Conference Call system for the arrangements, which saved them much travel and expense; the company
subsequently adopted the BT Conference Calls for the executive teams' country meetings.
There really was no point in travelling for two hour meetings. So we
would lock diaries for a coupe of hours over BT Conference Call.
For global organizations and alliances, we find the same cross-cultural interactions as in MNCs and, in addition, considerably more interaction with the external environment at all levels of the organization. Therefore, global teamwork is vital, as are the pockets of cross-cultural teamwork and interactions that take place at many boundaries. For the global company, worldwide competition and markets necessitate global teams for strategy development, both for the organization as a whole and for the local units to respond to their markets.
As shown in Exhibit 9-il, when a firm responds to its global environment with a global strategy and then organizes with a networked “global” structure (discussed in Chapter 8., various types of cross-border teams are necessary for global integration and local differentiation. These seclude headquarters - subsidiary teams and those coordinating alliances outside the organization. In joint ventures, in particular, multicultural teams work at all levels of strategic planning and implementation and on the production and assembly floor.
Increasingly advances in communication now facilitate virtual global teams, with people around the world conducting meetings and exchanging information via the Internet, enabling the organization to capitalize on 24-hour productivity. In this way, too, knowledge is shared across business units and across cultures. Virtual global teams are not without their challenges - including cultural misunderstandings, and the logistics of differences in time and space; group members must build their teams bearing in mind the group diversity and the need for careful communication.
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