Intercultural Synergy in Professional Team
Alexander Thomas, Ulrich Zeutschel, Hora Tjitra
Regensburg University, GERMANY
funded by Volkswagen Foundation
SYNERGY is not for FREE
1) Objective
The Synergy-Project, conducted from April 1995 to April 1998 with a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation, investigates the conditions and modes, as well as the means of facilitating effective cooperation of professionals from different cultural backgrounds in work groups and project teams.
Its particular focus are intercultural synergy effects, which may come about in the interplay of culture specific attitudes, values, patterns of thinking and behavior in goal directed, mutually compensating and enhancing ways.
2) Interview with the expert
In the project's exploratory phase, a total of 19 extensive interviews were conducted in order to assess experiences from the world of practice. Interview partners were senior staff members in personnel and team development at SIEMENS and BMW, coordinators and leaders of international teams at BMW, DASA, and the European Investment Bank, as well as independent trainers and consultants for international teams and task forces.
The survey results suggest three general conclusions:
- Effective intercultural team cooperation requires active facilitation – either by a member of the team itself and/or supported by an external coach.
- Intercultural synergy may be construed not only as a potential outcome of effective team cooperation, but also as a continuous process which is devel oped and maintained by self-referential capacities within the team.
- Culture specific strengths and styles of group interaction need to be realized more clearly as potential for effective and mutually enhancing cooperation by team coordinators, leaders and members of international teams.
3) Laboratory experiments
The study sample consisted of a total of 27 teams with German, U.S.-American and Indonesian students from a variety of disciplines at the Universities of Regensburg, Hamburg and Braunschweig. In a pilot study, 7 German/U.S.-American teams with four participants each worked in a bicultural setting for three sessions. The main study employed a two-phase design: Two training sessions with monocultural teams of three to four persons each served to familiarize participants with the simulation and were followed by two additional sessions in which bicultural teams of "experts" cooperated on the same task. The design thus permitted observation of culture specific characteristics of team work as well as of bicultural cooperation.
With regard to cooperation in German-Indonesian teams the following sources of potential synergy were identified:
- The knowledge gathered by Indonesian training groups regarding additional simulation variables and possible management interventions may form a produc tive alliance with the larger body of background knowledge about cause-and-effect relations and internal mechanisms of the simulation which German participants bring into the bicultural expert groups.
- The extensive prognoses and advance planning of business developments by Geman team members may productively supplement the capability of Indonesian partici pants to cope more flexibly and quickly with unexpected situations.
- The strongly structured work of German training teams with clear division of tasks and standardized procedures may be combined with the Indonesian style to freely share information and to deliberate decisions within the group, in order to ensure efficient task completion with sustained social motivation and a sufficient degree of coordination and information exchange.
- The efforts of Indonesian team members to reconfirm decisions with the others and to accept compromises if necessary may modify the inclination of Germans to make individual decisions within their defined field of responsibility, so as to initiate broader identification with group resolutions, especially for weighty decisions with longterm implications. In return, the German tendency to reach consensus by persistent arguing and persuasion may contribute to qualify the quick "technical" negotiation of agreements among Indonesian team members, especially when strategic decisions are to be taken.
- The German claim to equal rights for all team members facilitates broad input of ideas and personal initiative in the "divergent" early phase of working on a com plex problem, while the Indonesian style of accepting unequal distribution of power proves helpful for quick coordination and implementation of decisions in later, "convergent" phases of problem solving.
- As the German inclination to approach conflicts within the group directly is diametrically opposed to the Indionesian ideal of preserving group harmony, success ful integration of their divergent styles of conflict resolution is highly unlikely. Mutual sensitivity for and understanding of the respective styles of dealing with conflicts, however, may contribute to avoid a great deal of friction and frustration in bicultural cooperation.
Observations in the German and U.S.-American training groups as well as in the bicultural expert teams suggest the following areas of potentially synergetic cooperation:
- The analytic efforts towards understanding of complex causal relationships on the part of German simulation participants may effectively combine with the U.S.-American action orientation in testing and implementing problem solving steps.
- The greater readiness of U.S.-American team members to accept proposals and to quickly negotiate compromises may be a productive complement of the German inclination for critical analysis and detailed argumentation.
- The striving for safe and optimal decisions with longterm validity on the German side may be supplemented towards greater efficiency by the U.S.-American strategy of improvisation and systematic shortterm evaluation.
- The U.S.-American cultural standards of considerate, constructive criticism and conscious acknowledgement of productive contributions and attained "milestones" may enter a beneficial alliance with the German propensity for frank and direct emphasis on critical shortcomings – although the merging of these styles will not be easily accomplished due to divergent value perspectives!
