Global Teams

Martine Cardel Gertsen and Mette Zølner

Chapter 14 in Global Collaboration: Intercultural Experiences and Learning, 2012, pp 221-236 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract As indicated in the quotations above, this chapter discusses what has so far been a success story. We explore a case of geographically dispersed teams with a view to furthering our understanding of the factors that have enabled a successful start. While extant literature tends to focus on cultural differences as obstacles to be overcome in order to increase performance, practitioners look for means to achieve potential synergies (Stahl et al ., 2010). We look at a case of teams providing financial services to the multinational company (MNC) Techbi1 (see also Chapter 9) on a global scale. The teams are permanent and consist of local employees at an off-shore centre in India and their managers, some of which work at the headquarters in Denmark and some of which work at the centre in Bangalore. Thus, the teams span across culturally distant countries and the organizational units of headquarters and a subsidiary. According to the traditional view in research literature, such circumstances are likely to lay difficult odds for the teams (e.g., Martins et al., 2003; Watson & Kumar, 1992). But in the present case, the teams in the shared services centre have been considered successful by Techbi during the centre’s five years of operation – to the extent that the MNC plans to expand the centre considerably over the next three years. Moreover, team members at the centre and managers at headquarters provide similar and predominantly positive descriptions of the teams’ functioning, strategies and results.

Keywords: Team Member; Team Leader; Corporate Culture; Local Employee; Shared Service (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:pal:palchp:978-1-137-02606-4_14

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781137026064

DOI: 10.1057/9781137026064_14

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().