When groups consist of multiple nationalities: towards a new understanding f the implications

Organization Studies, Spring, 1998 by Donald C. Hambrick, Sue Canney Davison, Scott A. Snell, Charles C. Snow

In today's major corporations, task groups consisting of multiple nationalities abound, and the clear trend is towards even more of them in the future. Multinational groups (MNGs) of many types are evident: the management team of an international joint venture, a group developing a product for multiple-country markets, a group responsible for formulating an integrated European strategy, a task force charged with developing recommendations for rationalizing worldwide manufacturing, and, increasingly, even the top management team of the firm itself.

Considerable research has been done on topics peripherally related to multinational groups, resulting in a large body of literature on global organizational design (e.g. Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989), cross-cultural management (e.g. Redding 1992; Roberts and Boyacigiller 1984), cross-cultural interpersonal interaction (e.g. Gudykunst 1991), and heterogeneous task groups (e.g. Hoffman and Maier 1961; Triandis et al. 1965; Jackson 1992; Milliken and Martins 1996). These streams of research have been substantial, both in quantity and in the theoretical advances in their respective domains. Surprisingly, however, very little empirical research or systematic conceptual work has directly addressed the important and timely phenomenon of multinational groups. With some exceptions (noted below), our investigation has uncovered only a few works that deal pointedly or in depth with the specific issues that arise when a task group consists of individuals of diverse national backgrounds.

When we first launched our research programme on MNGs, we discussed it with a group of senior executives from major multinational corporations. The comments of two executives, both from European-based companies, symbolize the complexity and subtlety of the issues involved. One executive said: 'I don't see why this is an important topic to study. Our company puts people of different nationalities together all the time. It's how we do business; there's nothing particularly special about such groups. What's the big issue?'

The second executive responded: 'Wait a minute. In my company, we are having great difficulties with such groups. We've had strategic plans suffer and careers derail because of complications arising from multinational groups. Just last month we killed a global product development project because the team had taken so long that the competition had already sewn up the market.'

It seems that some MNGs are not particularly noteworthy or problematic and may be barely discernible in their functioning from single-nationality groups. Other MNGs are nettlesome and create organizational challenges that derive specifically from their diversity. In the light of the rapidly increasing use of MNGs, an assessment of the factors that account for such wide variance appears to be very important.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a conceptual understanding of the implications of multinational composition for group functioning. In particular, we build our framework on three key observations about MNGs:

1. Nationality affects a person in numerous interconnected ways, ranging from the deeply underlying to the readily apparent: values, cognitive schema, demeanour, and language. These nationality-derived qualities, in turn, affect a person's behavior, as well as how the person is perceived in an MNG.

2. An MNG's chances of being effective depend on a variety of factors. However, prominent among these is the combination of (a) the magnitude and type of nationality-derived diversity among members, and (b) the nature of the group's task. That is, some types of nationality-derived diversity serve as endowments for the group, while other types of diversity create great difficulties. Whether diversity is an asset or a liability, in turn, depends on what the group is trying to accomplish.

3. In contemporary global corporations, multinational groups serve useful purposes in addition to conducting their particular work tasks. Namely, MNGs often exist as a necessary by-product of a concerted global human resource system, in which superior talent from around the world is sought, motivated, and developed.

Our conceptual framework moves across units of analysis, focusing first on the individual group member's characteristics as a reflection of his or her nationality, then on the effects of multinational diversity on the group's functioning and performance, and finally on the association between corporate policies and the use of MNGs.

We do not attempt to set forth prescriptions for the design or management of MNGs. We are engaged in a large, multi-phase field research project which should eventually yield important normative conclusions (some of which we have reported in Snow et al. 1996). Here, our objective is to lay a conceptual foundation for our own and others' research on multinational groups, and we close the paper with a proposed research agenda.

The Group Member's Behaviour as a Reflection of Nationality: A Preliminary Perspective