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yeah so This research was really
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motivated by the idea that
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multinationals as we know it's a fact
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use lots and lots of teams right to get
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their work done but multinational teams
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struggle to really succeed um and we
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know that is a big problem um in these
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in lots of organizations so one of the
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big things they really struggle with is
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you've got people all around the world
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people don't share their information
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their knowledge enough with each other
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as much as they could right so we're
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trying to figure out why is that and
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what are some of the problems that these
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teams face and how can they be overcome
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so the particular focus of this study is
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on the fact that these teams are so
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diverse right so when you've got a
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multinational team it has people we talk
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about four different kinds of diversity
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we've got people from different
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Geographic locations all different
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countries around the world we've got
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people of different nationalities we've
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got people who work in different parts
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of their organizations right different
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um parts of the organizational structure
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we call them structural differences so
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people who work in different divisions
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or business units or functional areas
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and people are demographically diverse
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some people are older than others some
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people have been in the organization
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longer than other so lots of different
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kinds of differences so the question
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that we focus on in this um particular
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research is which of these differences
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actually matter for sharing knowledge in
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these teams and moreover which of them
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matter most um so that's the real focus
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of the study that's the research
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question and to address it what we did
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is we um collected survey data original
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survey data from U more than 2,000
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members of around 289 teams so almost
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200 0 teams in one very very large
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multinational it's a very well-known
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multinational organization more than
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100,000 employees around the world and
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we collected data on all the differences
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between the members of these teams and
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we um did a lot of research to
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understand which differences matter most
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um and also how might they be overcome
00:01:45
and in particular we looked at whether
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the people knew each other and had
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worked together before as one of the
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things that might help them to overcome
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those kinds of
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differences so again the the real
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question is which differences matter
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most so we're looking at these four
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kinds of differences Geographic uh um
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nationality based structural differences
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working different parts of the
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organizational structure and demographic
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differences and what we found was that
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two of these kinds of differences
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mattered much more than the other two
00:02:13
and in particular Geographic differences
00:02:15
really mattered so working in different
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countries um and uh structural
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differences mattered so working in
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different parts of the organizational
00:02:22
structure and when I say they mattered
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it means they created barriers to
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knowledge seeking within this team for
00:02:27
people going and asking each other for
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help or for information related to their
00:02:30
work nationality differences um and
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demographic differences also mattered
00:02:35
they also created barriers between the
00:02:36
team members but not so big so the ones
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that were really big were the geographic
00:02:40
differences and the structural
00:02:41
differences and they created the
00:02:42
greatest barriers but the good news was
00:02:44
that if you'd work together before in a
00:02:45
team so we're looking at sort of the
00:02:47
diads of pairs of people within the team
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if you'd work together before you could
00:02:50
get over some to some extent those
00:02:52
Geographic and structural barriers so
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those were the key findings
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I think probably the most striking
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finding and it kind of emerged really
00:03:04
early on as we were looking at at the
00:03:05
data here um was the importance of
00:03:07
structural differences organizational
00:03:09
structure so when you think about uh
00:03:12
multinational teams you know there's a
00:03:13
lot of attention on the fact that people
00:03:14
work in different parts of the world and
00:03:15
their different nationalities um but you
00:03:18
know we know that this is true we just
00:03:20
don't think about it multinational teams
00:03:21
so much these people are also coming
00:03:23
from different parts of the organization
00:03:24
usually and we found this was a really
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strong to some extent the strongest um
00:03:29
barrier so the fact that people worked
00:03:30
in different divisions in the
00:03:31
organization or different functional
00:03:32
areas or different business units again
00:03:34
it was a huge complex organization those
00:03:36
were really problematic um for those
00:03:39
those kinds of uh differences were
00:03:41
really problematic for the members of
00:03:42
those teams and I think that was the
00:03:43
most surprising to us given that the
00:03:44
focus is usually on the nationality and
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the geographic
00:03:50
stuff I think part of it is um
00:03:53
recognizing the real variety of
00:03:55
differences that there are right and I
00:03:57
think you know we tend to focus a lot on
00:03:58
specific ones like we know that the fact
00:04:00
that we're in different time zones is
00:04:01
really a big problem right and that's
00:04:02
part of different Geographic locations
00:04:05
um we know that the fact that people
00:04:06
speak different languages is a big deal
00:04:07
right and so managers tend to focus on
00:04:09
some of these most obvious things that
00:04:10
are really Salient when you're when
00:04:12
you're internationally um dispersed um
00:04:15
but the structural stuff for example
00:04:17
which we found to be you know
00:04:18
surprisingly important um we don't think
00:04:20
about as much in in a global team so I
00:04:22
think for managers it's being really
00:04:23
aware that there's a very wide variety
00:04:25
of differences that you need to pay
00:04:26
attention to and monitor if you really
00:04:27
want people to be sharing knowledge as
00:04:29
much as they could be um inside the
00:04:30
teams again on the plus side um for
00:04:33
managers though if you've got people who
00:04:35
worked together before that can help
00:04:36
right so when managers are composing
00:04:38
their teams it suggests that really
00:04:40
paying attention to that we know there's
00:04:42
lots of good things about people um
00:04:44
having worked together in the past but
00:04:46
often we don't put people that worked
00:04:47
together in the past because we're
00:04:47
trying to you know get the best team for
00:04:49
that particular project we tend to
00:04:50
downplay that criteria but I think
00:04:52
managers um you know could benefit a lot
00:04:54
the research suggested they could
00:04:55
benefit a lot from really paying
00:04:56
attention to trying to get people um who
00:04:58
know each other a little bit already
00:05:04
I think probably the uh most important
00:05:08
one and there is one in particular I
00:05:10
think is that nationality is not so
00:05:12
important in our findings um at least
00:05:16
then again it's not that nationality
00:05:17
differences don't matter also
00:05:18
nationality being where you were born
00:05:20
where you come from as well as your
00:05:21
native language right and they do create
00:05:24
those kinds of differences we come from
00:05:25
different countries originally that
00:05:27
creates a barrier to knowledge seeking
00:05:28
between us but what we is a much less
00:05:30
important barrier than the fact that we
00:05:32
may be in different countries um so if
00:05:34
we're in the same country and we're
00:05:35
different nationalities it's actually
00:05:36
not a very big deal if we're in
00:05:37
different countries even if we're the
00:05:39
same nationality that's a big deal um so
00:05:42
you know there's a lot of attention
00:05:43
again on multinational teams we tend to
00:05:45
focus a lot on these kind of
00:05:46
crosscultural differences and and and
00:05:48
nationality based differences in fact
00:05:49
our research suggests if you compare
00:05:51
them to other kinds of differences they
00:05:53
they matter but not as much as some of
00:05:54
this other stuff in terms of geography
00:05:56
or organizational structure seems to
00:05:57
matter more
00:06:02
so most of the research in this area is
00:06:04
a lot of research on teams um there and
00:06:07
there's some research not as much
00:06:08
obviously on multinational teams most of
00:06:10
the research tends to focus on one or
00:06:12
two kinds of differences right so most
00:06:14
of that research will say nationality
00:06:16
differences matter look we find it
00:06:17
matters or Geographic differences a lot
00:06:19
of research on geographically dispersed
00:06:21
teams right that matters but um I'm not
00:06:24
aware of any studies really that have
00:06:25
pulled together as many different kinds
00:06:27
of differences and said well if you look
00:06:28
at them all together we agree they all
00:06:30
matter we find they all do matter and
00:06:32
actually create barriers within teams um
00:06:34
but look some of them matter quite a bit
00:06:36
more than others when you're able to
00:06:37
compare them side by side so I think
00:06:39
that's one of the things that's probably
00:06:40
most distinctive in terms of what our
00:06:42
study has been able to do uh the other
00:06:44
aspect of it is that we have a large
00:06:45
sample of teams um that we're able to
00:06:47
compare so around 290 teams 20,000 you
00:06:50
know team members and we're looking at
00:06:52
all the individual uh you know the pairs
00:06:54
within those teams so that's a much
00:06:56
larger and richer data set with lots of
00:06:59
different differ is going on in there
00:07:00
than then the prior research has has
00:07:03
often
00:07:07
tackled uh so my co-author Jonathan
00:07:09
Cummings and I um both do a lot of
00:07:11
research related to uh teams in large
00:07:14
complex organizations like large
00:07:15
multinationals um and collaboration more
00:07:18
generally across these kinds of
00:07:20
organizations uh so you know one of the
00:07:22
things that I'm most interested in is
00:07:23
what are the conditions that enable
00:07:25
teams to be more effective right and in
00:07:27
this case particularly multinational
00:07:29
teams
00:07:30
so certainly thinking about uh you know
00:07:33
teams do have these kinds of differences
00:07:34
usually we can't make those go away
00:07:36
right so what are the conditions that
00:07:38
can help those teams to be more
00:07:40
successful and not just in terms of
00:07:42
being able to share knowledge
00:07:43
effectively but also you know what makes
00:07:45
them more Innovative um what makes them
00:07:47
you know more efficient or more able to
00:07:49
implement um their their projects or
00:07:50
their programs successfully so that's
00:07:52
where the main focus is of this work
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going forward
00:07:58
[Music]
