The ability to develop effective transnational teams is essential in light of the increasing proliferation of foreign subsidiaries, joint ventures, and other trans national alliances. As noted by David Doltish of Honeywell Bull Inc. (HBI), an international computer firm, effective international teamwork is essential because cross-cultural “double-talk, double agendas, double priorities, and double interests can present crippling business risks when your storefront stretches for 6000 miles.”7 HBI represents a joint venture of NBC (Japan), Campaigner de Machines Bull (France, and Honeywell (U.S.). To coordinate this joint venture, HBI considered it important to have transnational teams for front-end involvement in strategic planning, engineering, design, production, and marketing. Doltish notes that HBI's primary corporate question is how to integrate a diverse pool of cultural values, traditions, and norms in order to be competitive.
The effectiveness of global teams and their ability to integrate with organizational goals depends on the synergy it can attain despite the problems and setbacks that result from the workings of an intercultural group. The advantages of synergy are confirmed by Moran in a survey of managers from two multinational organizations. He found that the respondents could more quickly generate the advantages of cultural diversity in their organizations than the disadvantages. The advantages they listed included a greater opportunity for global competition (by being able to share experiences, technology, and a pool of international managers) and a greater opportunity for cross-cultural understanding and exposure to different viewpoints. The disadvantages they listed included problems resulting from differences in language, communication, and varying managerial styles; complex decision-making processes; fewer promotional opportunities; personality conflicts, often resulting from stereotyping and prejudice; and greater complexity in the workplace.
How can management find out how well its international teams are performing and what areas need to be improved? The following criteria for evaluating the success of such teams is proposed by Indrei Ration of the Intercultural Managernent Association in Paris:
• Do members work together with a common purpose? Is this purpose some thing that is spelled out and felt by all to be worth fighting for?
• Has the team developed a common language or procedure? Does it have a common way of doing things, a process for holding meetings?
Does the team build on what works, learning to identify the positive actions
before being overwhelmed by the negatives?
• Does the team attempt to spell out things within the limits of the cultural differences involved, delimiting the mystery level by directness and openness regardless of the cultural origins of participants?
• Do the members recognize the impact of their own cultural programming on individual and group behavior? Do they deal with, not avoid, their differences in order to create synergy?
Does the team have fun? (Within successful multicultural groups, the cultural differences become a source of continuing surprise, discovery, and
amusement rather than irritation or frustration.)
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