Cross Cultural Management

You are an international/global team working in a project to develop residential and commercial properties that support eco living in Malaysia. Your team consists of designers from Korea, Malaysia, Sweden and Spain.

1. Using David & Ekelund (2004) framework on working in international/global teams, discuss 3 issues that the team will encounter in their course of working together. Provide specific examples.

1st issue

The team will encounter conflict in leadership styles. The team member might not agree with what the leader’s management styles as each of them come from different background and they have their own preferred leadership stlye. For example, the Korean’s leader will expect that their instructions will be obeyed and in their country, this expectation of obedience is usually fullfilled. On the other hand, in Spain, leadership is not just about holding a position or spouting what the leader believe. It is about leaders releasing people to do what they need to do in the most beneficial way. Hence, when both Korean and Spainish work together, they might face conflict with which type of leadership styles they want to follow. This might effect the team member’s job satisfaction and thus lower their productivity. Besides that, with the different types of leadership styles, they might also face with conflict in decision making as some of them expect their leader to make decision for them and some of them expect the leader to give them the freedom to do what they want and how they want to do it.

2nd issue

The team will also encounter conflict in decision-making process. In Malaysia, their decision making styles is based on hierachy, a top-down decision making where the top management will do the decision making. While in Sweden, they value consensus, as this is the only way of decision making. Their middle manager or even those in lower