Multiculturism is a philosophy which appreciates ethnic diversity within a society and that encourages people to learn from the contribution of those of diverse ethnic backgrounds. Though culture is seen as ‘‘a richly rewarding area to pursue,’’ it is none- theless ‘‘a woefully complex maddeningly dynamic phenomenon’’ (Faure & Rubin, 1993, p. 228)(5). “Unity in diversity” is the perfect principle based on which any organisation succeeds. It is known fact that employees from various cultures contribute more effectively to organisations success than organisation working with single culture employees. But the authors of the article “Managing Multicultural Teams” (henceforth referred as core article) are of the opinion that cultural differences are sometimes capable of exacerbating challenges associated with effective team work. With the belief that multiculturism is timely need of 21st century, this essay strongly emphasises that multicultural teams often generate frustrating management dilemmas and works on solutions that a manger could implement to tackle this problem. A diverse or multicultural team by definition is not homogeneous. A homogeneous team tends to use the same words, meanings, expressions and speak the same language. They usually rely on same verbal and nonverbal cues to meanings. A classic example of this is Indians nod in a particular style. Western people find it difficult to interpret their nod while Indians are pretty comfortable with such style as they belong to same homogeneous group or team of people. On contrary a diverse team consists of people speaking different languages with different ascents. In such kind of team main problem is group cohesiveness where people tend to group up with people corresponding to their homogeneous teams. It is very difficult to create cohesiveness within such diverse teams. Sometimes advantages of diverse team, due to mismanagement of that team, can be overshadowed by cultural differences in that team and seriously hamper the output of the team in long run. (2)(3) Diverse teams, as per core article, may face problems due to four reasons – different communication styles, trouble with accents and fluency, differing attitudes towards hierarchy and conflicting norms for decision making. Communication styles in western countries are pretty direct and when they say no they mean no whilst in some regions like south Asian countries communication is pretty indirect. People just say yes to show that they understand and do not exactly mean yes. This can create havoc in such teams where employees are mix of both types of communication strategies. Similarly due to lack of understanding due to difference in accents it is difficult to communicate between team members. It is also observed that a team with open hierarchy is more successful than team with top down hierarchy. But employees used to either of working environments find it difficult to adjust when they are swapped into opposite work environments. For example a manager from top-down hierarchy environment is given a team of open hierarchy to manage. It might create frustrating dilemmas if the manager expects all of the team to change. In a team it is expected to delegate work amongst team members and team members do not end up interfering into each other’s work. If interference persists the consequences might be conflicting norms for decision making.
The above challenges are well analysed by the authors but further research reveals that there might be more challenges faced by multicultural teams. One such challenge would be linking pay to performance. It is understood that employees from different cultural backgrounds might have different beliefs in their ability to influence results.(4) For example, in a sales and marketing team with people from different cultures, not all people have the same ability to influence people. If an employee is performing better due to good cultural understanding he would expect greater pay. This dilemma is often balance by paying performance bonuses which are directly influenced by outputs which eliminate the multicultural factor from the situation. This factor can be evaluated more on the research conducted by Prof. Terence. With the above mentioned challenges it is clear that multicultural teams if not managed properly can often produce management dilemmas. A multicultural team is like a fruit salad bowl in which if a single bad fruit spoils all other fruits eventually in that bowl. If corrective actions are taken at right time the same multicultural team can come up with great outputs. The author of core article describe that the manager can utilise these corrective measures by implementing to 4 different strategies – Adaptation, Structural Intervention, Managerial Intervention and Exit. The above strategies can be explained by a real life example. This example illustrates how efficiently managers can manage multicultural teams. Couple of years back I had worked on offshore platforms for six months. They were owned by Oil and Natural Gas Company (ONGC) in India. There are around 22-23 oil and gas exploration platform under “Bombay High” sector. Though the onshore management is almost Indian, offshore sites have a great mix of people from different cultures. The mechanical parts are maintained by Germans, deep sea divers are Russians, people drilling oil and gas wells are Arabians, and some experts from western countries and Australia also work there for different purposes. In the above mentioned environment where people with different cultural backgrounds work in confined spaces for months, clashes are bound to happen. But the risk of clashes is so huge that the consequences can be very fatal. Hence people initially find it difficult to stay there but later adapt themselves to people and surroundings and focus on completing the work as soon as possible. This is the adaptation strategy. Sometimes over longer tenures people get sick of each other and their mental situation can get unstable. Similar cultural groups gang up and start bullying isolated people and start dominating everyone. To tackle these issues they reorganised regional structures frequently. This helped people be in same region i.e. Bombay High and still on different platforms with different people and different bosses. This is structural intervention strategy to avoid clashes. Every platform has minimum 20 unmanned oil and gas wells. Hence every platform with so much diverse teams has an offshore installation manager (OIM) to report to who has the final authority to take any decision. Resources are limited on offshore sites and take time to get new. Few times I observed that the divers and drillers would not be in sync and used to have clashes. OIM had to intervene in teams involving multicultural members and allot responsibilities. This cleared off cultural issues and everyone had to perform to get the desired output and complete the job. This strategy is managerial intervention.
Finally if any rigour or team member would be very adamant on his view or techniques and was not able to cope up with set procedures or other team mates then he was asked to exit. This strategy should be used as last option when everything fails. But this strategy can create negative effects too as in if the employee goes and sells the trade secrets to competitors then it might hamper our organisations business.
Further research helps define more strategies for managers to restrict such multicultural management dilemmas and increase their team accomplishments. The steps include balancing task and relationship, using project phasing and building on team strengths, setting project norms and managing time across cultures.(7)(8)
While working in international environments, managers can pre-prepare the employees using stereotypes. Though every individual is different and would react differently to a situation, stereotypes can help the member get accustomed to cultural values and work culture in particular culture. This gives added advantage to the team as the team is prepared to face the challenges and instead of getting into dilemma they combine to serve a single goal. This also is valid when managers are eyeing to expand business globally. In conclusion therefore, “Multicultural teams often create frustrating management dilemmas” is a true statement. Most important challenges faced by multicultural teams are cohesiveness between team members, different communication styles, trouble with accents and fluency, differing attitudes towards hierarchy, conflicting norms for decision making and linking pay to performance. Such challenges can be tackled with proper planning of project, adaptation, structural intervention, managerial intervention, exit and stereotyping.

References:
Managing multicultural teams, Jeanne Brett
Leadership and organisational vision in managing a multiethnic and multicultural project team, D.Michael.Miller, Ronald Fields, Ashish Kumar, Rudy Ortiz, 2002, EBSCO Publishing.
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Faure, G. O., & Rubin, J. (1993). Lessons for theory and research. In G. Faure & J. Rubin (Eds.), Culture and negotiation: the resolution of water disputes (pp. 209–231). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
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