Goga Antonio, AB

The value of intercultural competence for performance of

multicultural teams
Authors: Alexei V. Matveev, Richard G. Milter, 2004, Team Performance Management, Vol.10 Iss: 5 pp. 104- 111
Source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/13527590410556827 (Emerald database)

“In this article, we present an analysis of the performance of multicultural teams from an intercultural
communication perspective.”

“Multicultural teams are defined as task-oriented groups consisting of people of different nationalities and
cultures.”

“Many, if not all, of the multicultural team challenges can be explained by the diverse cultural backgrounds of team
members. The most common causes of the challenges facing multicultural teams are cultural diversity and
relational, communication, and cultural orientation differences. […] Five of the most typical challenges are:

(1) Managing cultural diversity, differences, and conflicts.

(2) Handling geographic distances, dispersion, and despair.
(3) Dealing with coordination and control issues.
(4) Maintaining communication richness.
(5) Developing and maintaining teamness.”

“In this study we use the intercultural competence model (IC model). The IC
model is based on the assumption that intercultural competence requires three
components: sufficient cultural knowledge, skilled actions, and suitable
motivation or personality orientation of a member of a multicultural team. “

“The interviews with American and Russian executives and managers yielded some valuable outcomes. […]
Managers from both cultures identified characteristics of high-performance multicultural teams as clarity of team
goals, complementary skills and experience of team members, clear responsibilities of team roles, high degree of
commitment, cooperative team climate, high degree of motivation, cultural sensitivity, and access to technology.”

“Both the American and Russian managers identified the skills component to be of the highest relative importance
for multicultural teams. The American managers viewed the skills component as the most important and the
cultural knowledge component as the second most important when working on multicultural teams. […] The results
suggest that the Russian managers placed the personality orientation component as the second highest in relative
importance and identified it almost as important as the skills component.”

“We believe that as the workforce in various countries becomes increasingly culturally diverse, there will be an
increasing need to facilitate training that targets such new complexities as intercultural competence.”

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Goga Antonio, AB

I should start reviewing this article by saying a few words about the authors. Alexei V. Matveev is Assistant
Professor of Management at the Department of Business, College of Staten Island, The City University of New
York, Staten Island, New York, USA. Richard G. Milter is Associate Professor of Management at the College of
Business, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, USA.

Regarding the methodology, the authors applied a qualitative method to solicit information on cross-cultural
communication competence and multicultural team performance from 40 executives and managers of medium and
large multinational companies in the US and the Russian Federation. They held semi-structured interviews with
each manager and asked similar questions in their respective native languages.

Considering the fact that managers working in multinational companies carry out their organizational goals through
multicultural teams, I submit to the authors’ point of view saying that performance of multicultural teams can be
examined from an intercultural communication perspective.

In my opinion, today’s executives, managers, management consultants, and educators interested in improving
multicultural team performance need to know about intercultural competence and how it affects team performance.
This article provides a working definition of high-performance multicultural teams and outlines the challenges
multicultural teams face. These definitions along with extensive interview data and detailed self-reports of
American and Russian managers working in multicultural teams emphasize the high importance of intercultural
competence in improving the performance of these teams. This article also serves to highlight the characteristics of
high-performance multicultural teams, the common challenges of multicultural teams, and the sources of these
challenges.

In terms of strengths and weaknesses of the article, I believe that among the good parts are:
(1) There are figures (schemes) to complete the written text and help to understand it;
(2) The research was conducted in large international companies, where there are many teams of people who come
from different cultures;
(3) When they render the survey results, the authors give exact figures. For example: “A total of 96 percent of the
managers interviewed believe that being interculturally competent is critical when working on a multicultural
team.”

I think that the last section of the article, called “Recommendations for managers on multicultural teams”,
represents another strength of this study because it may help the managers to improve the design of organizational
development strategies and training approaches.

With regards to the bibliography of this article, I have to say that it is well structured (in alphabetical order of
surnames of the authors), extremely diverse and complete. The document contains references to 38 other
documents belonging to famous scientists around the world.

Moving from content to form, I think the choice of the authors (Matveev and Milter) to structure the text into two
columns was a smart one, as in this way the article is easy to read and follow. Also, the main sections of the article
are clearly defined and have a logical sequence.

As a conclusion, I have to say that I really enjoyed reading this article and learning some theoretical aspects about
the concept of intercultural competence (IC) and the problems that arise in teams consisting of people from
different cultures. Finding out how to deal with this constraints and how to manage a multicultural team to become
a high-performance multicultural team was of great interest to me because it may help me in the future. Although it
is not an easy task, nowadays, intercultural communication is an essential part of our lives.