Culture Issues in the Context of Multicultural Teams

Culture Issues in the Context of Multicultural Teams

Essay
Culture Issue in the Context of Multicultural Team

1. Introduction

“Despite popular beliefs to the contrary,
the single greatest barrier to business
success is the one erected by culture”
E.T. Hall and M.R. Hall

1.1 Reason for chosen topic
1.1.1 Personal interest
Being born in Russia and having lived there more than half of my life, I could not even image that so many cultural differences exist. Later, I had the chance to experience cultural differences by living for 4 years in Austria and for 1,5 years in Germany. Often, I have been exposed to working within intercultural teams and I have to say that besides I experienced this as a great enrichment overall, there were always also a lot of misunderstandings and problems resulting from the different cultural backgrounds of the team members. As a consequence, I got very interested in learning more about the cultural differences in general and also to understand what exactly makes up culture and thus, intercultural competence. I am keen to learn to interact successfully in a multicultural team. At the same time while studying the various theories and positions about this these topics, I regularly find myself disagreeing with some of the statements as they contradict with some of my personal professional experiences.
1.1.2 Scientific significance
The beginning of globalization has led to transitions in almost all areas of businesses. Companies are responding to the challenges of globalization by rethinking and reshaping their traditional ways of functioning. Teams are being put in place to work in an efficient and effective way. One consequence of the fact that more and more often people from diverse cultures are brought together in teams is that the traditional teamwork has undergone a fundamental transformation....

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