Multicultural R&D team operations in high-tech SMEs: Role of team task environment and individual team members’ personal experiences

Ahmad Arslan, Lauri Haapanen, Petri Ahokangas and Sean Naughton

Journal of Business Research, 2021, vol. 128, issue C, 661-672

Abstract: This paper analyzes how team task environment and individual team members’ personal experiences influence multicultural research and development (R&D) team operations in small and medium sized enterprises. Based on qualitative data from multiple R&D team operations in five Finnish software firms, the findings revealed that team task environment is significantly influenced by the Nordic egalitarian organizational culture. The team task environment appears to be more dominant in multicultural R&D teams than anticipated in earlier research. To some extent, this mitigates the influences of culture on multicultural R&D team operations. However, results also show that individual team member personal experiences comprise of task specific as well as cultural (international) experiences emanating from being a member of a multicultural team. Together, these two components have a positive influence on R&D operations, yet intriguingly, task specific experiences resonate with task variability and task analyzability, while cultural experiences tend to influence task interdependence.

Keywords: Multicultural R&D team; Operations; Small & medium sized enterprises; Team task environment; Team members’ personal experiences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296320300849
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:128:y:2021:i:c:p:661-672

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.02.003

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().