Reference no: EM132365161

Assessment

The virtual team: creating and managing communication across the globe Jane Wilson has recently been appointed the Marketing Director of Sunshine 100, a Brisbane-based company specialising in responsible foods with R & D offices in New York, Shanghai and Mumbai, and sales offices in Melbourne, London, Cape Town, Dubai and Sao Paulo. When she was given the opportunity to manage a team of eight spread across six continents, Jane was confident that, with a little planning, she could manage perfectly and deliver on time as she had always done.

Project and Team Background

Jane's work at Sunshine 100 was originally in the role of Director of Social Media. Now she had been promoted to Marketing Director. The company has expanded to China with the launch of the company's new line of wholesome baby foods. The professional nutritionists and dieticians led by Dr Jeremy Jones have asked Jane to start working on a world-wide marketing campaign to promote ‘KidsEats' a recently launched initiative with a focus on working directly with schools as well as children's organisations to educate primary aged school children about healthy foods and healthy eating.

International virtual teams are a relatively new form of working at Sunshine 100 and one the CEO is keen to develop further. Following Jane's appointment the CEO, Paul Morgan, made it clear to her this was a very appealing form of work especially as there was greater opportunity to interact with colleagues around the world, use the best and lowest-cost global talent and significantly reduce travel costs thus offsetting the company's flight carbon footprint.

From past experience Jane also knew that virtual teams can be hard to get right. In her previous role as Director of Social Media nearly half her staff working remotely admitted to feeling confused and overwhelmed by collaboration technology. She also discovered that most people she spoke to considered virtual communication less productive than face-to-face interaction.

Jane started reading literature about what makes an effective virtual team and discovered that successful virtual team players all have a few things in common: good communication skills, high emotional intelligence, an ability to work independently, and the resilience to recover from the hitches and delays that inevitably arise (Ferrazi 2014). She was particularly interested to learn that awareness of and sensitivity to other cultures is also important in global groups and it is the quality of cross-cultural communication at the team level that determines the effectiveness of the multicultural team (Matveev & Nelson 2004).

Moreover, she also learned from her readings that teams incorporating diverse nationalities can experience problems later on when the pressures of work kicks in. Problems such as defining trust and how trust is earned, preferred language for business meetings, protocols for feedback, and even rules for addressing people and interruptions.

Next steps

This morning, Jane received an email from Paul with a list of people who had been chosen for the new team (Exhibit 1). These people had already been notified of the ‘KidsEats' project and were waiting for Jane to initiate the discussion and get the first virtual meet under way. Jane was impressed by the expertise of the team Paul had assembled. She was confident that with the help of all these people, ‘KidsEats' would become a world-wide phenomenon promoting the fundamental value of Sunshine 100: ‘Together, may we create a healthier life by starting with the food we eat'.

However, her three immediate concerns were:

1. How to manage all the differences in communications styles, world views, customs, rules and roles that each team member would bring to the table;

2. Specific cross-cultural competencies needed for an effective global team; and

3. Key task and process issues to be addressed in the new team to minimise future problems and conflict.

For the first time in her career, Jane had to think about time differences to schedule a meeting. How would the communication between the team work? What to write in her first email?

The first thing Jane did was place her new team on the world map and also put the appropriate current time next to each (Exhibit 2). She thought it would be a good idea if each team member assessed their own personal communication style (Exhibit 3) and shared style and communication preferences in the first meeting. In addition, Jane felt it would be useful if each team member considered the context of their respective national culture in terms of the styles in which different countries communicate. How many ‘high-context' and ‘low context' cultures do we have, she wondered? ‘I'm sure this will be useful when it comes to avoiding miscommunication and misinterpretation between all the different national cultures of our teams members' mulled Jane to herself. To help her new team understand the challenges of communicating cross-culturally Jane started to map out a framework relating national culture orientations, cross-cultural communication competence and multicultural team performance (Exhibit 4).

Finally, Jane sat back in her chair and began to ponder what should be in her first email, the specific cross-cultural competencies that could be applied to both the individual and also to the teams interactions, as well as the key task and process issues to be addressed to minimise future problems and conflict.

Exercise

1. Week 6 tutorial: the class will be divided into groups of eight with each student given a role to play on this newly created virtual team. Please get into character of that team member as you decide the impact of your assigned national culture on communication and team performance (for example, negotiation, relationship management, role of language, social power and conflict resolution).

2. Complete the Communication Styles: A Self-Assessment Exercise (Exhibit 3) and consider the key contextual features of your assigned national culture. Bring the results of both to the Week 9 tutorial.

3. Week 9 tutorial class: the first telephone conference call role-play. Allocated time per team 10 minutes. After the role-play, the class should discuss what went well during the conference call and what the problems were. Discuss initial concerns, strategies and expectations for the call.

4. Answer the following four (4) questions associated with the case. This forms the 1,000 word written part of the assessment task. Use seven (7) sources to support your claims and build your argument.

i. Prepare a common email for Jane to send to all the team announcing the first telephone conference call. Identify the agenda for the meeting. What key messages should Jane include in her first email? Use the memo format for the email.

ii. Discus how best Jane can manage all the differences in communication styles, world views, customs, rules and roles that each team member will bring to the table.

iii. Identify the specific cross-cultural communication competencies that can be applied both to individual as well as to team interactions.

iv. Evaluate the key task and process issues to be addressed in the new team to minimise future problems and conflict.

5. Refer to the Assessment 3 Marking Criteria Guide and Marking Rubric located on the Blackboard under Assessment Tasks and Submissions.

Attachment:- assessment case study.rar