University of Bedfordshire

Unit Title & Code: Intercultural Business Competencies MAR038-6

Assignment Number and Title: Assignment One – Portfolio
Assignment Type: Portfolio
Course Instructor: Michael Evans & Codrin Chiru

A Report on Working in International Teams

Submitted By
Name : Md. Shaon Molla
Student ID : 1866650
Course : Intercultural Business Competencies
Program : International Business
Intake : March-2023

Submission Date: 23 June 2023

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 Executive Summery
Working in an international workforce helps the organisation grow different types of diversity
while also increasing in specific aspects. The following report highlights teamwork with
effective team development. It is critical in establishing trust, managing communication, and
enhancing productivity in an organisation. Furthermore, the research discussed how to
operate across cultures in foreign teams to make people feel appreciated and acknowledged in
a business. Finally, the paper described Kantor's four-wave model of servicing the framework
of structural balance and teamwork.

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Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………............. ..4

Task.……….……….………......................................................................................5

Working in teams and successful team building.…...…………………….………5-7

Working across cultures in international teams……...………………………........7-9

Theories in practice ……………………………………………………………10-11

Recommendations…………………………………...……………………………………..12

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….13

References………………………………………………………………………...………..14

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Introduction

The capacity to perform successfully and efficiently across diverse cultures is referred to as
intercultural business abilities. It is capable of acting and thinking correctly, as well as
communicating with individuals from various backgrounds. It is the set of skills that enables
the business environment to work and function efficiently. Other cultures that fulfil people's
relationships and handle operations effectively aid in understanding a new culture. The
present report will investigate the concept of culture shock and its influence on human
conduct. The ideas will be used to explain behaviour, attitudes, and values in intercultural
business. Furthermore, it will detail cross-cultural issues in the workplace in order to give a
solution from the international arena through the application of theories.

Figure 1: Intercultural business competence

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Task

Working in multinational teams provides a specific benefit and becomes important for
employees to operate more efficiently and productively in teams. Working with
multinational teams becomes more important, as does allocating particular tasks properly. It
is regarded as an appropriate tool for controlling the increasingly complicated process.
Ideally, each team member has a role to play in the project, while the project is coordinated
and monitored by the team's management.

Working in teams and successful team building

In today's world, success in a global organization is critical, and most businesses rely on a
globally distributed staff. This enables them to form teams that offer the greatest functional
expertise from across the world, combining a rich and prospective market with local
understanding. The benefits of international variety and bringing individuals from various
cultures together are easily drawn. The work experience of those individuals differs,
resulting in a variety of viewpoints on the organizational and strategic difficulty. An
individual can develop successful behavior and knowledge by working with a team, which
consists of different people who have changed their skills, behavior, and knowledge.

The team that collaborates has a clear understanding of each other's strengths and
shortcomings, which is the most important truth. The most crucial reality is that a
collaborative team clearly understands each other's advantages and disadvantages. However,
it is essential for people to work efficiently together across geographic boundaries across job
hierarchies with expanding fluidity and business functions. Successful cooperation is
essential for employee engagement and well-being at a time when they must contend with
problems associated to millennial employees' loyalty posts and a highly competitive global
job market. Working in teams provides a variety of advantages and emphasizes the
significance of team building, which is closely related to high-performing teams.

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 Figure 2: Working in a team

For instance, Intercontinental Hotel Group PLC (IGH) encourages teamwork at their
company since they think it helps a lot of people perform more effectively. It is important to
recognize individual performance by assessing how individuals do tasks as a team,
including their ability to not only perform but also sustain long-term interpersonal
relationships at some point in time. Working in a team offers several advantages, including
improved organizational performance and increased staff morale. Several organizations
have various linear and flatter structures. In contrast, this company has been removing
layers of administration, putting people in situations where they immediately take on new
tasks and are held accountable for the results via successful cooperation.

Hotel Intercontinental thinks that the number of sales units may be used to determine service
excellence. The hotel inspires everyone collaboration in the workplace, but individual
responsibility is also something that the company values in the delivery of teamwork. Every
team member is accountable for their own role-play and fulfilling service standards within
specific objectives. The organization assigns monetary value to each team member based on
their contribution to the organization's profitability. Successful team building is only
possible when it is viewed as a great benefit to the organization, but it may be exceedingly
difficult to sustain. The Global team has several problems, including inadequate
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communication, technology, and the culture barrier of working across time zones. The
following are some suggestions for working in a team and developing a successful
multinational team:

Be aware of cultural differences: When employees work on a multinational team,

numerous different cultures emerge. These can be especially noticeable in communication
methods and viewpoints. Intercultural worker training can aid in the analysis and resolution
of these discrepancies.

Accepting diversity: There are several benefits to working with a varied team, including
distinct critical approaches, problem-solving talents, and thinking skills. It also provides a
variety of perspectives with complete access to them. Many companies might take the step
of encouraging their teams to embrace diversity and to establish a new environment in
which employees or staff feel comfortable sharing their ideas in a positive manner.

Highlight the team members' shared vision and values: At the same time, it is critical to
recognize team differences. The similarities unite the team. A set of values and a clear
vision will assist team members in being all ears and making sound judgements for the
organization's productivity as well as successfully managing disputes among coworkers.

Working across cultures in international teams

Making a team with cultural diversity becomes difficult for the organisation. It is a globalised
workforce globe, with numerous companies and teams ensuring diverse offices, continents,
and time zones. The mobility of labour across borders considers cultural variety, making it a
normal element of business. Running teams is a different activity these days than it was
previously due to the advent of cross-cultural teams. Language difficulties and distant team
members are two of the issues that companies, managers, and leaders confront while coping
with cultural diversity. High-performing companies have an open mindset and welcome
cultural diversity. It is critical for managers to make cultural diversity successful in order to
achieve peak performance, and they should employ several techniques to build their cross-
cultural team. Working across diverse cultures in a multinational team requires distinct
techniques to achieve organisational success and maximise profit. These techniques should be

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accepted by all members so that no member is discriminated against because of their culture.
These methods are listed below.

Recognising and respecting cultural differences: This is the first step towards respecting
and recognising people from all backgrounds. They must address the presence of team
members from diverse cultural backgrounds, and these disparities must be handled in order to
maximise team members' effectiveness. Cultural diversity manifests itself in a variety of
ways, including behavioural differences, cultural disparities, language obstacles, and
variances in daily customs and values. It is critical to become aware of these disparities and
to take steps to interact with one another. 
Create team norms: When cultural disparities are discovered in the company, it is critical to
develop norms for team members. It is the most important factor in getting everyone to
contribute to the development of rules. Participation has the potential to strengthen its norms
and make everyone feel committed to upholding them. The organisation must be flexible
while adjusting the many standards, and it must examine on a regular basis; if it is discovered
that they are not working properly, they must improve the team with ease of association and
should improve their team performance. 
Avoid artificial divides: The experts warn against speaking a new language until everyone is
fluent in it. When it comes to infirm political matters, it is prudent of them to stay
circumspect and avoid hurting the sentiments of the nations of origin, particularly when it
comes to war, foreign intervention, regime changes, or ethnic conflict. It is critical that
coworkers coordinate and strive to be nonpartisan, and that they refrain from discussing
debates that practically charge topics. When an organisation has a multicultural staff, it is
important to focus on working well and building relationships rather than creating and
building themes that may cause stress in the workplace. 

Furthermore, developing cultural competence becomes critical. Perhaps it has been seen that
persons with cultural competency are able to successfully collaborate with their coworkers,
clients, suppliers, and various stakeholders from many cultures. People who appear to have
this competence may interact seamlessly with multicultural teams and encourage them to
accomplish business objectives across geographical boundaries. As a result, they may appear
to be having a good time. They rarely become dissatisfied with the global work culture and
frequently gain new types of energy from worldwide relationships. Many people are

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developing cultural competency nowadays because the majority of employees come from
diverse origins and follow a variety of norms and laws. 

Figure 3: Working across cultures

It is critical to build this cultural competence in order for people to feel at ease in an
organisation, and they should strive to find the way the cultural pace utilising the trial-and-
error technique. If they are assured of their cultural diversity knowledge and talents, they may
easily change obstacles into new chances. Most companies are structuring conversations,
interventions, and workshops by including various learning strategies that can resonate with
different types of learning by rousing the cognitive, behavioural, and emotional levels.
Managers and professionals take on the job of making various people and staff feel at ease
and working successfully in their organizations. The intervention's fundamental strength is an
interactive experience in which newcomers generally come forward and participate in
learning from and sharing with one another their expertise and experiences. This enables
them to become more energetic in their usual work.

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Theories in practice:

There are several ideas that may be utilised to better understand the team. Kantor's four-way
system, which is used to recognise people with diverse habits and roles build a working team
together, is one idea that may be employed in this. It also assists the individual in
comprehending the dynamics of a team. It provides compelling insight into how teams and
individuals can operate more effectively together. It takes many different mindsets and
behaviour to build the team drone, and it takes on the perspective of collaborative conduct.
This paradigm is required for the team to function well. Kantor's four behavioural models are
movers, followers, opposes, and bystanders.

Figure 4: Kantor's four-way model

1. Mover: It is believed that there is no movement without movers, and on the positive
side, it guarantees that activities and ideas are begun by establishing various goals and
objectives for the team. The team may be moved forward and attain achievements
with the support of movers. There are also bad aspects to the mover, such as how it
might perceive people as resources to be used to achieve their goals, and how it can
become too controlling while concentrating too much on action-based decisions.

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 Limiting fears as the root cause of failing or falling short. It gets too tough to trust one
another.

2. Follower: It has been determined that there will be no completion if there are no
followers. The advantage mentioned in this stage is that they are skilled at adding
something as well as generating fresh ideas. They frequently facilitate advances and
talks while being gifted at fostering unity. The negative side includes giving up
authority in order to get along, and there are occasions when other team members lose
themselves in order to prevent a conflict. This causes the team members to remain
mute in the face of all the concerns about other people's rules and work. In many
respects, the greatest constraint is a fear of rejection.

3. Opposer: This stage's reasoning is that there is no correction without opponents. The
positive aspect involves questioning diverse and new ideas in order to explore and
promote the team member's movement. Following encouragement, individuals might
offer feedback to coworkers in order to determine the stage of work. They are the
members who regularly reply to the aforesaid viewpoints in a harsh and arrogant
manner. The constraint of this function is that they are alright if they detect any flaws
in the work of others.

4. Bystander: It is determined that there is no viewpoint if there is no onlooker. The

silver side is that there is a silent voice of support for what is right and wrong. Their
primary function is to provide a diversity of viewpoints in order to build and support
the ideas. They typically get perspective, participate in unemotional calm, and have
clarity in their job. The negative side consists of being disconnected and uncommitted
to moving forward in order to stand up for oneself. They have frequently had team
members that had bad luck and had to stay chilly and aloof. The fundamental
restriction of security and value is connected to being logical, critical, and analytical
with their capacities.

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Recommendations

Although the majority of IHG workers say the company's culture is favourable but few
people still believe that the company should be more active to introduce their cultural
platform with permanent as well as temporary employees, cultural diversity friendly company
are seen more successful. The majority of IHG employees say the company's environment is
pleasant. The company should have a solid global recruitment network and offer attractive
incentives to immigrant workers in order to persuade them to migrate to the company's
location and become permanent in-house employees. The company should have a good
online presence.

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Conclusion:

The preceding research is based on intercultural business abilities with regard to working in
multinational teams. Furthermore, the aforementioned analysis concludes that working with
teams plays a significant part in developing the success of the business and adds to its
growth. It has been established that different cultures should be treated equally by foreign
teams. Discrimination should not be encountered by persons of diverse cultural backgrounds.
Finally, Kantor’s four-way theory explained the healthy team conduct with the roles.

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References

I. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01443571111126319/full/html

II. https://breo.beds.ac.uk/ultra/courses/_61983425_1/outline/file/_8079702_1

III. https://competendo.net/en/4_Player_Model

IV. https://www.andycleff.com/2021/04/stretch-team-communication-muscles-kantor-

four-player-model/

V. 10 Powerful Reasons Highlighting The Importance Of Team Building

(vantagecircle.com)

VI. Global Teams That Work (hbr.org)

VII. https://iclondon-theo2.com/

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