MULTICULTURAL TEAMWORK AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE - An exploratory case study of a Swedish workplace
Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore and understand the processes of collaboration and communication among culturally diverse teams and investigate the outcomes of this association, as perceived from the team members’ and managers’ perspectives. Understanding the origins of those events could be instrumental for organizations to help them distinguish more complicated aspects of struggles in multicultural cooperation.
Theory: The theoretical framework consists of two components. Firstly, the Intercultural Competence (IC) model by Matveev & Milter (2004) will be followed as a guide to investigate competencies and differences in the participants' answers. Secondly, the pyramid model of Intercultural Competence by Deardorff (2006) will be used to interpret this study’s results and the factors of internal and external outcomes of IC will be taken into account as the goal is to include individual perceptions of multicultural collaboration and cultural competence.
Method: A qualitative study was carried out based on 13 open-ended, semi-structured interviews with an exploratory and interpretative approach. The interviews were 13 consisting of 9 team members of culturally diverse teams, their 3 managers in charge, and 1 HR informant. Results from an internal employee survey conducted by the company in 2022 were used as secondary data.
Results: By following the purpose of this study, challenges and opportunities in daily communication and collaboration among team members were presented. The perceptions of interviewees revealed correlations between personality attitudes, cultural knowledge, and individual skills. The outcomes of this association showed that many of the desired internal and external outcomes exist in the case company’s work environment.
Degree
Student essay
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Date
2024-01-23Author
Rafailidou, Christina
Keywords
Multicultural communication/collaboration, diversity management, cross-cultural leadership, intercultural competence, adaptation, personality traits
Language
eng