pre module assessment obw 17aug2012 v3

7/31/2019 Pre Module Assessment OBW 17Aug2012 V3

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Are multinational teams more successful?

BRIEF SUMMARY

Haas and Nuesch (2012) conducted a study about the impact of national diversity on teamperformance. The authors stated that ever increasing globalization in the last decades has

created and made multinational organizations and its teams more generic and inevitable due

to tougher competition and more complex environment. Therefore teamwork in particular in

diverse teams, has become so vital in organizations for better output and a better bonding

among employees. This led to the subject of management of national diversity becoming

more popular in practice while getting the most priority in the corporate agenda.

As individuals in diverse groups have greater access to outside information networks, ability

to generate more ideas and broader perspectives, and bring new and different knowledge and

information to the group, heterogeneous groups are likely to be more creative, and generate

higher quality decisions than homogeneous groups. At the same time it was predicted that

team diversity might lead to stereotyping and friction within a group, which could in return

lead to increased conflict, and decreased communication and collaboration, thereby

hampering team performance.

The authors found that even though several empirical studies to analysis both that racial and

national diversity had been conducted in the past, the outcome of those studies was however

unsatisfactory. This urged the authors to experiment further about the performance effects of

national diversity among co-workers.

The experiment on the effects of national diversity on team performance was then carried out

using game-level information on team composition and team performance in the GermanBundesliga by applying panel econometrics to 4284 German soccer team observations in

2142 games. The result of this study revealed evidence for a negative relationship between

national diversity and team performance which implied increased team diversity decreases

team effectiveness and therefore performance-oriented work teams should maintain a low

level of national diversity in order to achieve its well-defined tasks.


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diversity was identified as the main independent (explanatory variable) with its dependent

variables/team performance indicators namely points awarded, goal difference, and expert

evaluation. The sample size utilized was quite sufficient to perform the research effectively

(in total 4284 team observations in 2142 games).

FINDINGS / RESULT AND LMITATIONS

The findings were well structured and reported objectively. The table of result was well

organized but, due to the difficulty of the statistical methods used, an average reader would

find it difficult to interpret the outcome.

The research well fitted into a theoretical context as well as the conclusions was well

justified. The study did advance the related field of study and the identified limitations

created room for further researches to be derived from.

CONCULSION & IMPLEICATIONS

The implications of key study finding was clearly stated and justified. It was argued that

national diversity is in favorable towards the enhanced team performance when the team task

is not clear and team effectiveness is required in achieving overall success. On the other hand

the study suggested when the team is assigned with a clear task, performance-oriented work

teams should have low national diversity in order to increase team performance.

LESSONS LEARNT AND RECOMMANDATION

If the organizational environment facilitates or even supports communications among team

members, Kochanet al. (2003) state that (national) diversity can be beneficial to a groups

performance outcome. This study revealed the fact that though the language was considered

to be playing a secondary role as team task in professional soccer requires little verbal

communication (60% of total communication), still the non-verbal communication mightplay a vital role in team effort.

This was a very in-depth research project, particularly for a journal article, which was well

written and structured. The researchers would have provided a short review of literature to

develop the situation. The article did get a little complicated in the reporting of data due to

the complicated statistical methods being used. Overall, it was a very significant, valuable

contribution to the field of research and I will readily recommend it to my colleagues and

friends.


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BIBILOGRAPHY

HAAS, H. and NESCH, S. (2012):Are multinational teams moresuccessful?, The

International Journal of Human Resource Management, 23:15, 3105-3113

REFERENCES

Kochan, Thomas, Katerina Bezrukova, Robin Ely, Susan Jackson, Aparna Joshi, Karen Jehn,

Jonathan Leonard, David Levine, and David Thomas (2003): The Effects Of Diversity On

Business Performance, Report Of The Diversity Research Network, Human Resource

Management , 42, 3-21.

pre module assessment obw 17aug2012 v3

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