An Investigation of the Efficiency of Synergistic Multicultural Teams

Abstract

The current globalized environment has increased the prevalence of multicultural teams in the workplace. Efforts to attend to the potential challenges associated with the usage of these teams have ranged widely with little research looking into team creation strategies. To address this need, this research investigates whether a particular approach, the Kolbe guidelines for team creation, can be used to predict multicultural teams' efficiency. Six teams of 4 were created and asked to build a paper bridge spanning as far as possible while using the least resources. Though complete data was only available for 5 of those teams, the results indicated a potential for the Kolbe guidelines to predict performance in addition to the potential mediating role of teamwork processes for the relationship between team members prior knowledge of each other and objective performance. This study will inform the next research effort analyzing the resilience of synergistic multicultural teams.