OEC Project Group 14

Group 14
by Praharsh H
Submission date: 11-Mar-2020 3087&

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ORGANISATIONAL EFFECTIVNESS AND CHANGE
Live Project
Effective Organisation with no Boundaries - An exploratory study on Cross-

Culture Management
GROUP 14
Name Roll No.
Abhay Kumar Mishra 301
Divyanshu Kumar Verma 319
Naman Goyal 331
Praharsh Hathi 337
Pratik Mishra 338
1
Table of Contents
Acknowledgement .................................................................................................................... 3
Statement of Purpose ............................................................................................................... 4
Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 4
Background .............................................................................................................................. 5
Relevance .................................................................................................................................. 5
Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 6
Qualcomm- Case study ............................................................................................................ 7
Results: ...................................................................................................................................... 9
Conclusion and Inferences : .................................................................................................. 10
Questionnaire ......................................................................................................................... 12
2
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Mr Rajendraprasad Nelurouth and Mr Nagarjun Alavala for sharing the details
about the company policies and internal actions being taken towards creating more synergies across
teams consisting of members spanning from diverse origin and geographies. We also got to
understand the latest trends about managing human resource during such cross culture
communications.
We sincerely thank Professor Sunita Singh Sengupta (Dean, FMS) for giving us the opportunity, to
learn about the importance of effective cross culture management in multinational organisations.
Details
1) Rajendraprasad Nelurouth
Sr. Staff Manager- nprasad@qti.qualcomm.com
2) Nagarjun Alavala
Lead Engineer: nalavala@qti.qualcomm.com
3
Statement of Purpose
Cross-cultural management is the study of organisation in a multi-culture setup. It includes factors

that drive the employees of a particular country, customers of a country and policy maker of the
enterprise. It looks at how people from differing cultural background communicate and how they
endeavour to communicate across cultures. According to Sylvie Chevrier, “There are three kind of
cross-cultural practices that emerge from various businesses: (1) to draw upon individual tolerance
and self-control, (2) to enter into a trial-and-error process coupled with relationship development and
(3) to capitalize on transnational corporate or professional cultures.” The synergy realised by
collaborating diverse ideas is unparalleled and making more businesses go global to stay profitable.
Introduction
Globalization and division of labor across geographies have led to people from different cultural
backgrounds come together and work for an organization. Opening up of markets means that
organizations originating in one country have their offices across geographies. This has forced
companies to come up with policies that promote collectivism amongst people from different ethnic
and cultural backgrounds. Guaranteeing equal opportunities to everyone has also evolved as one of
the top priorities for organizations. People from different cultures and geographies tend to have
different values and aspirations, so it becomes important for organizations to streamline their
ambitions in one direction for the collective good. All this change in the scenario has given rise to the
subject of cross-cultural management. Cross-cultural management is the study of the organization in
such multi-culture setups. It includes factors that drive the employees of a particular country,
customers of a country and policymaker of the enterprise. It looks at how people from differing
cultural backgrounds communicate and how they endeavour to communicate across cultures. Cross-
culture researches have shown that societal cultures impact the organizational culture by 25-40%
making it all the more important for us to understand it. Similar researches have also shown that
cross-cultural teams have a broader view of the world and bring in more ideas to the table making
them an indispensable part of modern-day organizations.
According to Sylvie Chevrier, “There are three kinds of cross-cultural practices that emerge from
various businesses: (1) to draw upon individual tolerance and self-control, (2) to enter into a trial-
and-error process coupled with relationship development and (3) to capitalize on 0transnational
corporate or professional cultures.” The idea of studying the cross-cultural dimensions in
organizations is directly linked to the belief that it gives the organizations a competitive edge. The
synergy realized by collaborating diverse ideas is unparalleled and making more businesses go global
to stay profitable.
4
Background
Our study is focussed around Qualcomm, a semiconductor and electronics equipment manufacturer
based out of the USA. Qualcomm is a truly global organization by operations as it has more than
41000 employees working at 224 different locations worldwide. Qualcomm has distributed its
operation globally in such a manner that different functions are performed at different locations,
making it important for two culturally different teams to stay in function in tandem.
Qualcomm has majorly focussed its effort at engaging talents from emerging economies in order to
meet the requirements through a cheaper workforce and countries like India meet the bill perfectly.
The organization has been hiring aggressively in India of late and this rapid expanse has led to an
increase in friction due to cultural differences.
Relevance
With the advent of smarter technology, geographical boundaries are becoming just a mark on map.
The amount of information transacted per day continue to rise and will keep on increasing. The
changes in economic relationship, political system, and mindset of general public have broken the
old barriers and allowed businesses to grow from individual-country capitalism to global-capitalism.
The need for cross-cultural communication is also emphasised by the amount of the increase in
foreign exchange students. It is unavoidable that different culture will meet, conflict and blend
together. People from diverse background find it really difficult to mingle with people with other
background thereby hampering the productivity of the organisation. As cited in a lot of research
findings, America, known for individualistic culture, and Asian countries, firm believer of
interdependent culture, are two sides which an organisation has to deal with to reap benefits from
both markets. The effective strategy to make the work harmonious, productive and motivating for
everyone is by communicating the vision to all stakeholder in a way that they understand.
In a world where operating efficiencies will get saturated, it comes to how effectively are the
organisations using their human resource to make a mark in the world. It is now a well-established
fact that difference between operating profit between organisations can be attributed to effective
cultures. So, studying the strategies for communication between culture of the same organisation is
important and forms an important determinant of growth of an organisation.
5
Methodology
In the detailed analysis in the project, we will be taking the following steps.
We will start with the work culture of organization and would look in various values and ideologies
that are common across all the centers of the organization. This would involve information about the
organization in the form of secondary research which includes the website, newspaper articles and
public declaration by senior leaders and primary research by interviewing employees, ex-employees
and third-party sources. A detailed discussion with HR department will be done to understand the
past, current and future organizational trends in the company. This will give insights as to what
organization is doing to achieve its objective and how have the past strategies have been impactful.
The primary research would be of utmost importance as we’ll follow a 2-step approach. Firstly, we’ll
interview employees of the organization in an informal way to understand their perspective and have
an overall ground reality. Secondly, an online survey which will be done to reach out to a bigger
audience and analyze the data to bring out the pattern in it. The questions will be related to the various
issues people face while communicating to their counterparts in another part of the world and what
the organization is doing to make the workplace more effective. The overall theme will be to judge
the team collaboration across the globe and methods employed to make it match the business
objectives of the organization. A gap analysis will be done to figure out various challenges and
roadblocks that organization face due to cross-culture. A few suggestions based on successful
methods employed in other organizations will be provided.
We studied the response of a group of Male and Female employees currently working in various
corporations in Hyderabad. We used a questionnaire from American Institute of Certified Public
Accountants. The sampling done was random and stratified.
It included respondents from both Male and Female gender, various age groups ranging from 24-
35years of age, married as well as single, graduates and postgraduates with income ranging from
8LPA-50LPA and work-ex ranging between a few months to a decade. The study was then carried
out and results and inferences were stated.
6
Qualcomm- Case study
Building trust among employees is the most important component for high-functioning teams. When
the backgrounds are diverse, communication styles vary from one culture to another. While a
universal employee messaging system may help, this is not the end-all solution. Qualcomm follows
these methods to make communication frictionless.
1. Get to Know Each Team Member

It is essential that the management of a company, or even the team leader, takes the time to get to
know team members. Informal sessions going by the name Q-Time are organised in every team bi-
weekly to learn about the story and journey of each employee. The platform encourages them to use
the skills and knowledge they have to help the group. Many multicultural teams have individuals with
unique skills that are beneficial to everyone when uncovered. Doing this makes team members feel
valued and motivated to work towards the common objective.
2. Take Steps to Retain a Culturally Diverse Staff

Some global cosmopolitans feel poorly managed and misunderstood. As a result, they may not remain
loyal to a certain organization. However, if the management provides opportunities for the individual
to receive recognition for their multicultural skills, or even recognize them, they can avoid this
outcome. Take some time to give the individual that lets them feel appreciated and intellectually
stimulated.
3. Get to Know the Team’s Cultural Differences

As mentioned before, getting to know the team members is important. However, it is also essential
to take some time to get to know any other differences present. A great way Qualcomm counteracts
miscommunication is by implementing employee self-service software, Q-Me. With this, your team
members can easily know what is going on with each person. The software can manage several
aspects of the team, including scheduled time off, questions with the work being done, and more.
4. Create Clear Norms and Maintain Them

When you have a multicultural team, you also have several different work styles in play. Managers
in Qualcomm are the ones who establish norms. They do it in a way that is not imposing but take into
consideration what works best for the team. They often include practices from other cultures.
5. Address Conflict Immediately

Regardless of the team or members, conflict is inevitable. This is even truer with a multicultural team.
If tension does come up, it is made sure to address it right away. This helps ensure a small, manageable
conflict doesn’t turn into something that’s impossible to manage. When they do this, they serve as a
cultural bridge to minimize the effects of conflict.
6. Become aware of yourself

One of the biggest challenges to cross cultural management is to keep your own biases in check. This
may not come naturally, but there are multiple approaches to reach it. When a team member reacts in
7
a way you do not expect, to what would be a normal communication according to your perspective,
take a moment to step back and ask yourself why that happened. Even better, ask the team member
directly, if you are comfortable enough to do so. Listen attentively to what they say: sometimes how
a message is perceived is more important than the message itself.
Another approach is to rely on a third party who may be more “culturally fluent” than yourself to
keep you in check. It could be another team member, a mentor outside the organization or someone
else entirely. Most importantly, it needs to be someone whom you trust to analyse your patterns and
point out to you where the blind spots may be.
There are countless benefits offered by cross-cultural teams in the workplace. While making these
teams “work” may seem like an insurmountable challenge, this isn’t necessarily the case. There are
countless ways to predict and prevent serious issues. One of the biggest, miscommunication, is simple
to manage by using employee self-service software. This technology can help prevent issues between
team members and ensure the team works together for the betterment of the company. In the long
run, everyone is happier, and more work is done. Qualcomm in particular is focused on changing
their culture when it comes to internal communications and collaboration. The company wants to
break down corporate silos, improve search and discovery, and give employees easier access to
colleagues and expertise. An important part of the journey is to equip people with modern tools for
collaboration—namely, Office 365 cloud services, which Qualcomm has deployed across the entire
organization.
For example, the company uses Yammer, an enterprise social network platform that helps people start
conversations, share knowledge, and build communities. Qualcomm has been successful in building
collaborative digital communities across more than 2,000 groups that span a range of functions, like
Corporate & Legal Affairs and HR to subject matter groups, social groups, and business strategy
groups.
The company’s globally distributed employees sometimes struggle with a lack of human connection
due to new, virtual ways of working. But with Yammer, Qualcomm has found that colleagues feel
better connected. The global sales force, one of the more remote populations who use Yammer, stays
engaged with their teams and the company. Sales reps take pictures of their in-store snack displays
and broadcast their innovative shelf setups to inspire other in-store reps. In addition, cross-functional
communications that include the whole organization are now more frequent, natural, and interactive.
For example, in quarterly conference calls for various regions and functions, Qualcomm has opened
up “First Creator” to colleagues all around the world. With hundreds of questions and comments, and
the most senior members of the leadership team interacting with junior colleagues out in the markets
in real time, everyone feels like they are at a virtual cocktail party.
Qualcomm uses a three-tier framework for everyone at the company, which includes enabling teams
to create and co-author content on a shared online drive; publication on a revamped intranet, dubbed
Qualcomm Qonnect; and archiving as a corporate record in a brand-new digital records centre (DRC),
also housed on the intranet. Now, employees often start their day on the home page, catching up on
enterprise communications, videos, and stories, and reviewing their own regional news feeds.
8
Results:
The result of survey has been summarized in the pie charts below. The questions have been condensed
to 4 categories and scores have been allocated based on survey results. Here, red shows strong
disagreement with the statement and green shows strong agreement, with orange yellow and blue
denoting states in between.
9
Conclusion and Inferences:
The survey results show us that the organization's value cross cultural teams a lot due to various
reasons. Few of the most important ones that we could identify were that they enable organizations
to increase efficiency and bring a larger pool of ideas with themselves. Qualcomm as an organisation
shows commitment to the cause of uplifting cultural differences in the workplace as is evident from
the survey, with majority of people stating that they are happy with the steps taken by their employer
to ensure inclusivity. A major chunk of the employees feels that there exists a proper channel to raise
their voices in case anyone faces persecution of any kind within the organization. People have also
stated that the organization provides enough training and communicates their ideas of inclusivity very
well in the recruitment and training period. The organization has also made sure to uphold the values
of gender diversity and it is evident from the fact that a significant chunk of their employees feel that
the organization has the right gender balance. We also figured out that the attrition rate of the
organization is fairly low (approx. 8%) which is lower than the average attrition rate for the IT and
electronics industry. We feel that it is due to the fact that most of the employees feel satisfied by the
steps taken by the organization to ensure equality for all in every meaning of the word.
Finally, we would like to conclude our study by stating that though our research tried to include all
the factors that might influence the functioning of teams, we feel that the correlation between cultural
proximity of stakeholders and decision makers should also be studied apart from the study of
relationships within the team. Also, though we were able to observe the reason for low attrition rates
of the organization, it would be interesting to extend this study and examine how the dimension of
cross-culture impacts productivity, providing competitive advantage.
10
References
1. https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE23yPb
2. https://mitrefinch.com/blog/7-effective-ways-successful-cross-cultural-management/
3. https://thriveglobal.com/stories/cross-cultural-management-explained/
4. Cross-Cultural Management and Organizational Performance: A Content Analysis

Perspective Article in International Journal of Business and Management · March 2013
5. Cross-Cultural Management Research: The Ostrich and the Trend April 1983 - The
Academy of Management Review by Nancy Adler
6. Methodological Issues in Cross-Cultural Management Research: Problems, Solutions, and

Proposals - Lrong Lim & Peter Firkola
11
Questionnaire
Attitudes toward diversity and inclusion and corporate culture
1. I see strong leadership support of the firm’s value of diversity and inclusion.
A)Strongly Disagree B)Disagree C)Neither Agree or Disagree
D)Agree E)Strongly Agree
2. Employees who are different from most others are treated fairly within our firm.
A) Strongly Disagree B)Disagree C)Neither Agree or Disagree
3. Our firm is committed to diversity and inclusion.

4. People of all cultures and backgrounds are respected and valued here.
5. I feel included and respected within the firm.

6. I am comfortable talking about my background and cultural experiences with my

colleagues.
7. Employees of different backgrounds interact well within our firm.

8. Management demonstrates a commitment to meeting the needs of employees with

disabilities.
9. Racial, ethnic, and gender-based jokes are not tolerated at this firm.
10. This firm provides an environment for the free and open expression of ideas, opinions and
beliefs.
12
Discrimination and harassment

1. If I had a concern about harassment or discrimination, I know where and how to report that
concern.
2. The firm’s policies and procedures discourage discrimination.

3. I believe this firm will take appropriate action in response to incidents of discrimination.
A)Strongly Disagree B)Disagree C)Neither Agree or Disagree D)Agree E)Strongly
Agree
Hiring and recruitment

1. There is cultural diversity among the people a job candidate will meet/ see on his/her first
visit to the firm.
2. Within the firm, everyone has access to equal employment opportunities regardless of their
difference.
Your immediate supervisor

1. My supervisor demonstrates commitment to and support of diversity.
2. My supervisor handles diversity matters appropriately.

13
Diversity training program
1. This firm has done a good job providing training programs that promote diversity and
inclusion.
2. The firm has done a good job providing training programs that promote understanding and
mitigation of unconscious bias.

Belonging
1. In my organization, I can be successful as my authentic self.

2. In my organization, I feel like I belong because I am:
A)Recognized for my accomplishments B) Feeling that my contributions in team

meetings are valued C) Feeling comfortable with being myself at work D)Transparent
communication about important company developments E) All of the above
F) None of the above
3. I can voice a contrary opinion without fear of negative consequences.

4. When I speak up at work, my opinion is valued.

5. I rarely feel like I am “the only one.”

6. I often worry I do not have things in common with others at my company.

14
7. I feel like my colleagues understand who I really am.
8. My company enables me to balance my work and personal life.

15
OEC Group 14
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Group 14

Submission date: 11-Mar-2020 30 87&

Effective Organisation with no Boundaries - An exploratory study on Cross-

Sr. Staff Manager- nprasad@qti.qualcomm.com

Lead Engineer: nalavala@qti.qualcomm.com

Cross-cultural management is the study of organisation in a multi-culture setup. It includes factors

1. Get to Know Each Team Member

2. Take Steps to Retain a Culturally Diverse Staff

3. Get to Know the Team’s Cultural Differences

4. Create Clear Norms and Maintain Them

5. Address Conflict Immediately

6. Become aware of yourself

4. Cross-Cultural Management and Organizational Performance: A Content Analysis

6. Methodological Issues in Cross-Cultural Management Research: Problems, Solutions, and

3. Our firm is committed to diversity and inclusion.

5. I feel included and respected within the firm.

6. I am comfortable talking about my background and cultural experiences with my

7. Employees of different backgrounds interact well within our firm.

8. Management demonstrates a commitment to meeting the needs of employees with

Discrimination and harassment

2. The firm’s policies and procedures discourage discrimination.

Hiring and recruitment

Your immediate supervisor

2. My supervisor handles diversity matters appropriately.

A)Strongly Disagree B)Disagree C)Neither Agree or Disagree

1. In my organization, I can be successful as my authentic self.

2. In my organization, I feel like I belong because I am:

A)Recognized for my accomplishments B) Feeling that my contributions in team

3. I can voice a contrary opinion without fear of negative consequences.

4. When I speak up at work, my opinion is valued.

5. I rarely feel like I am “the only one.”

6. I often worry I do not have things in common with others at my company.

8. My company enables me to balance my work and personal life.

Exclude quotes On Exclude matches < 10%

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Submission date: 11-Mar-2020 3087&