Comparative Study : The Perception of Team Collective Consciousness and Diversity in Functional MNTs of a global software support organization

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the perception of team collective consciousness and diversity in functional multinational teams by means of comparison between the teams and different locations. With cooperation from a global software company, interviews were conducted with members of functional MNTs in two local offices at a global support organization which has applied for a matrix structure. In order to compare different nations, the Japanese office was chosen since the Japanese culture is considered to be typically collectivistic. The German office was also selected since the German culture is generally held to be an individualistic culture. In the Japanese office six functional MNTs and in the German office eight functional MNTs were chosen for data collection. First this paper reviewed the existing literature related to team diversity. Secondly, it explored similarities and differences between functional MNTs in each local office. Thirdly, it investigated similarities and differences of functional MNTs between the Japanese and German offices. From the results of this study, functional MNT leaders were found to play an important role in building team collective consciousness by coordinating social activities to mediate members' values of individualism and collectivism in the teams. In addition, nationalities and technical skills were commonly regarded as diversity in functional MNTs regardless of locations whereas physical distance and gender were considered only in the German office as diversity in functional MNTs. Some aspects of diversity have affected both tasks and team collective consciousness and therefore these aspects are likely to be categorized into both task-related diversity and social-oriented diversity. These results have many implications: first, that different aspects of diversity are likely to affect tasks and team collective consciousness; secondly, that the functional MNT leaders are likely to facilitate team collective consciousness that will eventually bring cooperation into their functional team and high effectiveness into cross-functional project teams for problem solving; and thirdly, it may be important to recognize members' perceptions of diversity of functional MNTs for managing and leveraging diversity in order to make cross-functional project teams effective.