Managing Multicultural Teams in a VUCA Business Environment

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to understand the existing HR practices towards Global integration of businesses. Today we operate in a flat world where geographical barriers do not exist for businesses to function. The entire world has become a level playing field for enterprises of all shapes and sizes. In the context of “Make in India” where the Indian government is looking at a huge influx of FDI towards the manufacturing and services sector, we observe that invariably companies will have cross-cultural teams to work with. The influence of national culture on HRM practices is known to exist and has also been demonstrated by many researchers. This paper attempts to determine the extent of cross-cultural teams that exist in companies, the challenges of working with multicultural teams, the  readiness of companies to handle multicultural teams and the extent  to which HR has the  capability to cater  to a global workforce ,  time dimension of working with teams across geographies, measures  that the HR is taking to increase the cultural competency of its human capital and the extent of focused efforts to increase diversity and inclusion within the organization. This paper also touches upon the HR strategies and interventions that companies have planned/ are planning to implement to manage multicultural teams.  All the above aspects have been viewed with the lens of increasing convergence of businesses across the globe with seamless interaction of people and management practices. Survey method has been adopted, covering 23 companies in Bangalore.  The instrument for the survey has been administered to one senior HR from each company (Manager and above cadre). The items in the instrument are of  Likert  scale and the responses have been critically analyzed to arrive at conclusions. It has been found that there is both convergence and divergence approaches, ie. both ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ approaches  to HR practices in the organizations surveyed, with respect to the parent organizations, but the differences are more prominent in the softer areas of HRM where relationships are involved.