Trust in Diverse Teams: A Cross-cultural Perspective

Multicultural membership and diversity in teams are important to maintain effectiveness in organizations in a global business environment. Multicultural teams offer great potential in international collaboration just as top management teams are becoming increasingly diversified. However, maintaining team cohesiveness in multicultural teams to collaborate effectively presents a number of challenges. The present study employs the concept of trust to explore influences on team collaboration in high performing teams. The study is based on observation of teams in seven multinational corporations and interviews with managers from the US, Europe, China and Japan. The study presents a conceptual framework - a ‘trust buffer’ – which enables analysis and exemplification of the dynamics and challenges of teams as drivers of change. Each team has strategically important tasks, unique capacities and deal with change in particular ways: Each team is analyzed in relation to its global (HQ) mandate, local (national) stakeholders and organizational context. It is found that communication energy, resources and team mandate underscore the sense of trust in high performing teams. Diversity is understood as nationalities, gender, functional expertise and international experience. The study contributes insights to diverse teams through a processual study of micro-processes in global organizational contexts crossing multicultural boundaries.