The Challenge of Multinational Team Development

Throughout the world the workforce is becoming increasingly multinational, with the USA in particular welcoming large numbers of immigrants, many of them highly skilled and educated. It is being questioned whether present HRD and OD techniques are suited to multicultural workforces at these higher organisational levels. In team development activities, major differences in values and behaviour often exist between team members from different cultural backgrounds. However, these differences — relationship to authority, attitudes to conflict and confrontation among them — can be neutralised or utilised.