Title :
National and cultural diversity in global innovation teams creativity and innovation as a function of cultural team composition
Author :
Bouncken, Ricarda B. ; Winkler, Viviane A.
Author_Institution :
Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Univ. of Greifswald, Greifswald
Abstract :
As global companies use teams to pursue innovations research has paid increasing attention to team functioning. For global innovations firms often rely on multi-cultural innovation teams (MCITs) with members from different national backgrounds to gain easy and fast access to consumer and market knowledge. We conducted a two year longitudinal study on five MCITs at a large consumer good company, BLUE. In 105 interviews we found cultural differences and the cultural composition of the team to be the source of 36 percent of the reported difficulties. We focus on diversity of communication styles and values as well as their effect on team work quality dimensions which are linked to the innovativeness of teams. We derive a model stressing differences between diversity in communication styles and cultural values.
Keywords :
innovation management; team working; BLUE; communication styles; consumer good company; cultural diversity; cultural team composition; global innovation teams creativity; multicultural innovation teams; national diversity; Africa; Cities and towns; Cultural differences; Global communication; Globalization; Impedance; Logistics; Production; Teamwork; Technological innovation;
Conference_Titel :
Management of Engineering & Technology, 2008. PICMET 2008. Portland International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Cape Town
Print_ISBN :
978-1-890843-17-5
Electronic_ISBN :
978-1-890843-18-2
DOI :
10.1109/PICMET.2008.4599795