Business Case Studies, Executive Interviews, Donald Chand on Multicultural Teams

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Executive Interviews: Interview with Donald Chand on Multicultural Teams
March 2007 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary


Donald Chand
Professor of Information
Process Management at Bentely College.


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  • What can be effective strategies for managing these challenges? How do you build and solidify a multicultural team?
    Our research is showing that firms need to complement their formal controls based on best practices, upto date technologies and rigorous project management techniques with somewhat informal controls that facilitate virtual socialization, finding common grounds, recognizing social clues in work communications and reciprocating in a timely manner. While companies have emphasized knowledge management (often through technological and processoriented interventions), more attention needs to be given to relationship

    management (achieved through an awareness of social relationships opportunities throughout the workday). In other words, management needs to invest in the social side of work. Of course, how you do it virtually is the ultimate challenge, and what we have been focusing on in our research.

  • From your research, is there any evidence to suggest that a particular type of managers (may be based on nationalities, type of personality, educational background, etc.) would be better suitable for managing multicultural teams?
    During our Interviews of managers and workers in US, Ireland and India, we both felt that in every group we could identify people who will be effective in working in global virtual teams and can be groomed for leadership. Some of the key characteristics of these people were that (1) they were comfortable in engaging in small talk, (2) were aware of some of the pop culture of their team members, and (3) were usually the spokesperson for the group. We also observed that successful leaders in this global phenomenon were social brokers, comfortable in traveling abroad and skilled in performing everyday ethnography. It is not always the person who is the most technologically sound or professionally trained, but the person who ismost at ease at engaging in and facilitating social interactions with and between team members.

  • What's your advice to managers managingmulticultural teams?
    We have created a training programto help workers and managers with virtual workplace community development, relationship management, and globally distributed collaboration. In this program, we instruct and emphasize the following:

  1. While national cultural differences might matter, it is important to understand how they matter in the daily interactions between virtual teammembers.Thismeans develop an awareness of the everyday elements that impactwork(whatwe call doing Everyday Ethnography).
  2. Identify the "best practices" within your own organization, including those who are adept at facilitating social relationships face to face and virtually. Then you can integrate these practices more explicitly in your organization.
  3. For a team to be truly collaborative, they must be equal members. This means that projects should not just be managed from on one site or another. Team members must be accountable to one another, and distributed sites need to have the opportunity to innovate and evolve up the organization's value chain.

1. Multicultural Teams Case Studies
2. ICMR Case Collection
3. Case Study Volumes


The Interview was conducted by Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary, Consulting Editor, Effective Executive and Dean, IBSCDC, Hyderabad.

This Interview was originally published in Effective Executive, IUP, March 2007.

Copyright © March 2007, IBSCDC No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or distributed, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or medium electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the permission of IBSCDC.

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