Challenges In Managing Global Teams

Objectives and scope of research

Question:

Discuss about the Challenges Management Global Teams.

Managing human resource of the global enterprises becomes a challenging task for the HR managers if they fail to consider some important factors related to the HR. Cultural difference is the common factor of a global team and hence, needs the knowledge regarding different cultural beliefs and languages for managing employees successfully. Further challenges include lack of face-to-face communication, setting up meetings with the global teams, evaluating performance and others (Tarique & Schuler 2010).

Hence, in this research proposal, the objective and scope of the research are going to be developed on the research topic that ‘challenges management global teams’. Moreover, the literature review will be summarised, research questions will be developed, methodologies will be selected, potential research limitations will be highlighted and a time schedule of the research will be developed.

The key objectives of the project are:

• To recognise the challenges experienced by the global management teams across the world
• To develop novel global management strategies for eradicating the challenges faced by the global management teams and confirming the growth of the firm in the international market
• To organise the subcontract of innovation

With the increasing rate of globalisation, companies have also become globalised and face significant issues in managing their global teams (Scullion & Collings 2011). Therefore, the research involves identifying the ways of eliminating the challenges and managing the global teams effectively. It denotes a huge scope of the research in terms of helping the multinational companies to solve their HR management related issues.

The management of human resource of the global companies faces a variety of challenges due to various reasons. First, the global companies face issues in managing the global teams due to domestic diversity, development of new technologies, globalisation, and deviations in the economy. Therefore, it has become necessary to incorporate necessary changes in the organisational procedure and practices to keep the company and its global teams updated and competitive within the changing business environment (Stone & Deadrick 2015).

Although, globalisation has provided the opportunity of business expansion to all the companies; however, it has increased the challenges of maintaining an effective communication with the international teams of employees (Meyer, Mudambi & Narula 2011). The HR managers are responsible for bringing into line the contracts with the capabilities of the employees for making necessary changes in at subsidiary level. Otherwise, misalignment can affect the business deeds negatively (Friesl & Silberzahn 2017). The globalisation has increased the difficulty of maintaining a good connection between the headquarters of the MNCs with their subsidiaries operating in host countries. The agency theory can be helpful in minimising the problems through the application of static bilateral, static multilateral and other aspects of the theory. It is often seen that the regional headquarters replace the regional management mandates (Hoenen & Kostova 2015)

Challenges faced by HR managers of global companies

Challenges related to the role of communally accountable-investment and mainstreaming micro finance are also significant in this context. Managing the local employees in an unproductive manner enhances the difficulty. The MNEs operate in different countries have employees, who come from the different cultural background. Hence, it increases the difficulty for the HR managers to develop such a strategy that can solve all the issues pertaining to language, beliefs, and political and social conditions (Allen, Lee & Reiche 2015). Further, the MNEs also face issues in developing effective corporate social responsibility policies due to the difference in the social needs, and cultures of the hosting nations. In this context, the instrumental theory can provide the guideline to solve the issues and fulfil the CSR activities properly for enhancing organisational reputation (Lopez & Fornes 2015).

Not understanding the legal requirements of different countries can be a significant challenge for the MNEs, as it may affect the profitability of the firm negatively and thus, discourages the investors. Hence, acquiring knowledge on the legal duties of different countries and developing flexible rules and laws for each of them are the biggest challenges faced by the HR managers (Gashu 2016). Moreover, adopting the latest technology for carrying out business operations in the host countries also appears as a challenge for the MNEs. This is because, without adopting the advanced technology, it is not possible to operate productively and competitively in the overseas (Narula & Driffield 2015).

MNCs also face issues in managing the talent of the global teams. Here, the challenge lies in incorporating appropriate information and communication technology for the preparation of the strategy to manage talent in the global context (Ruël & Lake 2014). The communication problem is highly evident in the management of global teams and it is the biggest challenge faced by the MNEs. The employees with different languages than the parent company face difficulty in maintaining an effective communication. Especially, when sent to a different country, the hurdle increases, as they have to deal with the people from different cultural background with different languages (Klitmøller, Schneider & Jonsen 2015).  

Another important challenge faced by the MNEs is the outsourcing of innovation, which is linked with the transaction cost of the research and development to the host nation, due to the differences in the characteristics. It affects the sovereignty of the innovation at the overseas (Yeo et al. 2017).

Although, a lot of journals and articles on the challenges management global teams are analysed; however, considerable gaps remained due to lack of literature available on some specific challenges. For example, there is a very little information available on the challenges regarding cross-cultural management and outsourcing of innovation. It enhances the opportunity of conducting further research on the same topic for obtaining in-depth information on these two areas. The present findings of the research could not provide detailed knowledge on these two important issues that could have increased the research quality. It opens up the scope of future research.

Methodologies

The research hypotheses can be as follows:

• Developing effective strategies may help the MNEs to manage the challenges of global teams effectively
• Developing effective strategies may not help the MNEs to manage the challenges of global teams effectively

The main research questions derived from the research objectives are as follows:

• What are the key challenges faced by the multinational companies in managing their global teams?
• What are the strategies for solving the issues faced by the MNCs in global team management and ensuring their growth?
• How can the outsourcing of invention be managed?

In order to collect all the necessary data on the challenges management global teams, the researcher decided to gather and use the combination of qualitative and quantitative research. This will help to acquire in-depth information on the research topic and thus, will facilitate to enhance the quality of the research.

Qualitative research- Primarily, qualitative research is exploratory research, which helps to gain knowledge regarding the underlying motivations, reasons, and opinions about a specific phenomenon. It facilitates obtaining insight into the research problem and thus, helps to develop hypotheses of the potential qualitative research. The main steps of a qualitative research include identifying the research problem, developing research questions, doing a literature review, selecting a qualitative research technique, selecting sample size, collecting data, analysing data and preparing the final report  (Maxwell 2012).

For collecting the qualitative data, the researcher will use the interview method that will be carried out with the 4 managers of multinational companies. These sample size of 4 managers will be selected through non-probability sampling technique.

Sampling refers to the process of selecting a subset of people from a population for assessing the characteristics of the population. The non-probability sampling is a time-effective and cost-effective technique that reflects the descriptive comments about the selected sample. A sample can be easily replaced with another sample in this sampling technique. Therefore, this will be used in the present research (Kogan & Herzog 2012).

In order to ensure the reliability of the data, the interview will be done twice in a gap of 7 days. If same answers are received then it will be proved that the collected data is reliable. Further, the validity of the data can be analysed by applying it in resolving the problems in real.

Quantitative research- This research focuses on measuring the objectives and the mathematical and statistical evaluation of data that is collected through surveys and questionnaires using computational tools. The main steps of this research contain generating and defining the problem; reviewing relevant literature; carrying out field work; developing the conceptual framework; making hypotheses; selecting research design, selecting sample size; collecting data; selecting data analysis technique; analysing data and interpreting the findings (Hoy & Adams 2015). All these steps will be followed for gaining better outcome on the challenges management global teams.

Research instrument that will be used for the research is survey and questionnaire. A questionnaire will be developed that will include only multiple choice questions on the challenges management global teams. The survey will be conducted with 50 employees of multinational corporations work in the overseas subsidiaries. The sample size of 50 will be selected using simple-random sampling.

Research limitations

Simple random sampling is the easiest way of collecting the sample, as the chance of being selected of each sample remains equal. It is a fair and error-free technique of collecting sample (Rossi, Wright & Anderson 2013).

For ensuring the validity of the data, before the final survey, a pilot testing will be carried out and the results will be compared. The consistency of the research result will ensure the reliability of the data.

The research may face some limitations such as time and resource constraints while carrying out the research on the challenge management of global teams. Due to lack of time, the researcher may not be able to identify and analyse more literature on the concerned research topic, which may provide a more detailed knowledge about the research topic. Further, due to lack of resources, the researcher may not gather in-depth information that may also affect the research quality. Apart from that, the researcher may also face the issue in convincing the respondents to participate in the research, as there is no direct benefit to them for participating in the survey and the interview.

Activities	Week 1 to 3	Week 4 to 6	Week 7 to 9	Week 10 to 12	Week 13 to 14
Research topic selecting
Identifying the research problem
Conducting the literature review
Preparing research questions
Selection of research methodology
Data collection
Data analysis
Preparation and submission of the final report

Table 1: Time schedule

(Source: Self-made)

Conclusion

It can be inferred that market competition has made it essential for companies to expand their businesses globally, which creates the concern of managing the global teams effectively. The global teams include employees from different cultural background and due to lack of face-to-face communication with the management, it becomes difficult to identify and solve their problems properly. Hence, to manage the HR teams in international nations successfully, it is required to hire talented and skilled HR manager in every country, who can ensure growth and development of the employees.

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