Barriers And Challenges To Managing Global Teams

Project Scope

Discuss About The Barriers Global Workers Utilizing Software?

More and more organizations over the world have taken the strategy to develop a geographically dispersed workforce so that they can successfully build a global economy. They mainly initiate it by building teams which are capable of providing the best functional expertise from all over the world. This is however combined with the deep local knowledge and idea of the promising markets (Reiche, Mendenhall and Stahl 2016). The main benefit of maintaining such a team is that it helps to maintain an international diversity which thereby helps in bringing people from different cultures that aligns with varied work experiences as well as different perspectives on organizational and strategic challenges. These mainly help the multinational companies to compete successfully in the modern business environment. However a large number of challenges are faced by the managers working in such organizations as they lead the global teams. It often becomes difficult for managers to successfully create work groups when all the workers is local and share the same office space as they might not be able to adapt the working style of the mother organization that is based in a different country. again, it is also seen that different team members come from a variety of countries and different functional backgrounds and work in different locations, there might be deterioration in communication, misunderstanding can happen and also cooperation can degenerate leading to distrust (Johnston 2014). The present report will mainly look over the challenges which a particular organization may face when handling global teams. The knowledge would help budding professional to be knowledgeable and hence act accordingly to decrease the chances of the effects of improper team management.

• Collect information about the factors that affect the productivity of the organization which harbors diverse workforce in different overseas branches of the organization.
• Describe the factors that lead to facing challenges by the managers when they try to manage the global teams
• Issues faced by the workers of the different teams of the different branches of the organization in different nations among themselves which act as challenges for the employers affecting the productivity.

It has been seen that organizations who manage global teams have a competitive advantage over other companies who do not expand internationally. These helps in expansion of the productivity level of the organization and also help to increase the number of clients or consumers. More the exposure of the organization to different nations more will be the reputation of the organization and the brand value will eventually increase due to greater expansion of fame. Different geographical regions have their own traditions and cultures which have specific ways of handling matters (Morgan et al. 2014). When these suggestions are incorporated in the organizations, it often results in innovative strategies which help in the overcoming of different issues which were seen previously in the organization. Moreover, such branches of the organization in different nations help the mother origination by inputting their own advices which can thereby increase their sale within that particular nation. However, the maintenance of such global teams are not as easy as it seem as there are many different types of challenges that rise form handling such teams. It becomes very important for the senior management to take up important steps to overcome the challenges which if not done properly results in huge loss of productivity (Erez et al. 2013). A professional should develop knowledge about the challenges so that proper innovative strategies can be provided accordingly.

Literature Review

One of the most important challenges that are faced by managers all over the world is allocating group meetings following the time zones. Often managers who handle global teams are seen to complain that they face huge issues when they try to plan a meeting for global team members who are spread all over the globe. It often becomes unethical for the managers to advance team members to stay back in work for more hours or com early to work so that they can catch up with a meeting held globally (Babar & Lescher 2014). Therefore missing of such meetings often result in loss of valuable information which if shared verbally or visually would have made better productivity or quick completion of projects in comparison to sharing this information through mails. Keeping proper information about correct navigation of time ones to communicate with all individuals properly is indeed difficult and needs to be properly handled so that proper communication among every team members irrespective of their time zones can be ensured (Story et al. 2014). They can pick up smart software like that of the TimeandDate.com which comprises of a world clock system which shows the right time at any place of the world. it also has a tool called meeting planner too which helps them setting a meeting and at the same time present in app system. Therefore managers have to develop flexible minds so that they can use different apps to overcome the challenges and fix proper meetings.

Researchers are also of the opinion that there are many managers who do not pay importance to the regional national and religious holidays. Surveys conducted among many workers in multinational companies have stated that their organization do not respect the cultures and traditions of the people working there and this is evident from the fact that the mother organization do not provide national and religious holidays to the workers (Boutellier et al. 2013). Moreover, on the other hand managers who handle global teams complain that different members of the team have their own preferences and thereby handling such vast number of workers all over the companies in many nations becomes a tedious job. This rationale of the managers often creates issues s workers develop negative feelings about the company where they think that companies do not pay respect to their cultures and traditions. This creates poor job satisfaction and even may lead to increased turnovers. Therefore every mother organization should instill a team of managers who will be individually looking over the respective cultures for each of the organization sectors under the brands so that proper maintenance of national and religious holidays, importance of the cultural factors are provided so that workers feel accepted in the organization which will increase their self determination and dedication for achieving objectives. Providing importance to everyone ‘c culture by accepting their traditions, not neglecting their beliefs or believing in their ideals will inevitable help in maintaining a multicultural work environment among the global teams where each will respect others and bring positive results (Crampton and Hinds 2014). Often workers who need to communicate among themselves oversees to handle a particular project may also develop issues as they might not be able to understand each other’s working styles and emotions. This might lead to miscommunications and grievances against each other. This will ultimately result in blame games and will affect the organization’s productivity. Therefore the managers will influence the team members working with overseas with members of other teams should read books and website articles, watch movies, communicate about informal things with them when not on work, and share their experiences and others. These will help them to gather information about their cultural preferences and inhibitions and accordingly they will modify their behavior so that no negative issues occur affecting productivity.

Another issue that may result act as a challenge which may be faced by employers or managers are lack of clarity and slow decision making. Often in order to modify a particular aspect of the organization including working style, introduction of new schemes, providing solution to particular issues and others, decisions are needed to be taken which needs to be circulated so that it can be adopted in the workplace as this information needs to travel through different layers of communication technologies and to different hierarchies of the different branches of the organization in different countries, it requires a huge time which mainly causes delay in placing the decision in action (Lilian 2014). Moreover, as a particular decision has to travel though various hierarchies in the organizations in different branches before it gets finalized, it also results in slow decision making which continues to affect the productivity. Moreover as it travels form one person to another person who are not in direct contact, different individuals perceive them differently which ultimately results in lack of clarity. Researchers are of the opinion that sharing a common software platform with all the team members, managers as well as the employers will help in properly communicating with each other (Pirkkalein and Powlaski 2014). The different opinions, suggestions, decisions and advices of the managers as well as the employers would reach everyone if they follow the software properly and communicate through a definite portal if they face any issues or have concerns regarding any information. They can access it according to their own time frame or can also track progress and follow comments of different team members. A geographically cloud based software would be of great help to resolve such challenges.

Researchers have also stated that another challenged faced by stakeholders during management of global teams is absence of face to face communication. Different team members working in the different branches all over the world often need to communicate with each other over different aspects of their assignments, tasks, duties and suggestion as well as decisions. However often issues are faced by different managers, employees and other staffs when they try to communicate overseas. They do not have the option to sit for face to face communication which hampers the affectivity for the communications. Communications over mails and letters often affect the real essence of different suggestions, discussion and urgency of many situations. They also fail to invite argumentative discussion over a particular topic as two ways communication takes much time in absence of face to face communication (Colombo et al. 2014). Moreover, often face to face communication prevents any sort of miscommunications, correct delivery of instructions with proper professional tomes which might becomes harsh though letters as that does not allow facial expressions (Carter et al. 2015). Therefore many matters may get intensified leading to conflicts if not solved in face to face meetings of communications leading to grudges. These hamper the easy flow of work. However, many researchers have collected that which shows that organizations are therefore allowing virtual meetings over the internet with the help of proper software based technologies. Web conferences should be conducted in a scheduled manner so that all the members of the different branches of the organizations in the different nations can come together to discuss their concerns and have a face to face meetings.

Another important issue that affects productivity of global teams is the rising social distance between the different members of different teams in different branches of the organization in the overseas nations. Many researchers state that often informal talks in the recess timings or even during taking breaks including both formal and informal discussion as bout professional and personal life makes people release pressure and they also develop a feeling of empathy for each other (Nahavandi 2016). However, there is no such scope for workers who are separated by geographical boundaries as dispersed team members lack regular face time and therefore they have increased social distance and lack the sense of empathy for each other.  Under such situations, managers should take effective steps for allowing them to meet virtually and discuss issues and concerns informally so that they can deal with social distance strategically (Laudon 2016).

Another challenge which also needs to be noted in such a scenario is that the employer has to spend a huge amount of money for training purposes. For making different employees working in different nations under the organization have to align themselves with the requirements and objectives of the organization (Busse, aboneh and Tefera 2014). They also have to develop idea about the expectations of the organization so that they have proper clarity in their job role. For this they have to spend huge amount of money respectively for all the global teams of the organizations. It is extremely important and hence the employer should strategically plan the training programs in a way which would result in les flow of resources at the same time of giving adequate training for the staffs (Eisenherdt et al. 2016).

Conclusion:

Each and every multinational company often builds up global teams with the aim for expansion of the business, to increase the productivity, develop their brand value and ta the same time increase their reputation. However, while doing so, they often face certain challenges in managing their global teams which requires urgent attention. These often include issues in managing the different employees coming from different cultures and tradition who have different sets of cultural preferences and inhibitions. Moreover, as meetings do not happen in face to face methods, social distance cannot be reduced. Direct meetings can also not be conducted due to differences in time zones. Moreover, it also results in slow decision making and decreased clarity which affects productivity of the organization. Moreover, it is also seen that huge amount of resources are needed to train such diverse workforce. All these are extremely important for the management teams as well as employers to tackle properly so that a harmonious relationship is maintained among the important stakeholders of the employees, managers and the employers. Proper evidence based strategies would be required by the management teams and employers to include in actions so that a smooth workflow can be maintained.

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