Overview

One goal is to improve teamwork and technology transfer for organizations and to help practitioners anticipate and shape the behavior and decision making of colleagues, customers, adversaries, and competitors.

The Problem
Organizations are often disappointed by the performance of multinational teams, the transfer of technology across national borders, and the costly mistakes of anticipating the actions and decisions of those from different nations. These are problems for global organizations and collaborations where Western technical and scientific personnel, corporate leadership, and military organizations often struggle when working with colleagues and technology from non-Western nations. It is also a local problem because organizations in the U.S. have foreign-born employees.

Multinational work teams with highly skilled members can have marginalized and disengaged members. The Westerners may take on the primary responsibilities and assign the more mundane tasks to the outsiders. This tactic can reduce the effectiveness of the team and present barriers to international cooperation and trade. This dysfunction is likely to get worse as more high-end positions are staffed with specialists from other regions of the world. As these specialists move up the corporate hierarchy, the problem of dysfunctional teamwork moves with them. It will also get worse as international technology trade increases.

Multinational understanding is also critical when organizations need to deliver information to customers, colleagues, or adversaries from different nations. To provide the intended meaning requires an accurate understanding of how the intended recipient will perceive a message. Cultural mismatches are prevented when the framer of the message can ‘see’ as the intended recipient does.