Introduction
In the contemporary world, businesses and large organisations have become global entities by adopting universal business and leadership laws. For example, in the United Kingdom (UK), every large corporation has subsidiary businesses outside the UK boundaries, as it has been the global trend for every business seeking international competitive advantage. Consequently, this trend has led to multicultural teams in the workplace, which often operate under a centralised leadership.
Multicultural teamwork is challenging to leaders who are supposed to understand the cultural adversities and prioritise them in the decision-making processes in order to avoid reluctance and other negative behaviours from any team regarding its cultural violation.
However, multicultural teamwork has many advantages to both the business and individual members as it gives room for bigger markets and new product variations amongst other benefits, but various problems often outdo the feasible benefits and especially those emerging from cultural differences and prejudice. This paper looks into personal characters in the creative industry where multicultural teamwork practice is common.
Global Leadership and People Management
In a global business environment, leadership and people management goes hand in hand in the execution of leadership roles. Different studies have shown that global leadership calls for different leadership structures that conform to various cultural values of people falling under the command of a certain leader.
For instance, a large corporation such as Wal-Mart chain stores, which operate in various countries across different cultures, have different management structures conforming to every dominant cultural value in every country. However, the biggest cultural adversity emerges from religious values where Islamic countries have different leadership values that differ from other countries where other religious values are dominant.
Managing Multicultural Teams
Managing multicultural teams is a complex task that often calls for complex leadership strategies. The practice of multicultural leadership started during the era of civilisation when exploration of new opportunities across the world was at hike. For instance, colonists exercised multicultural leadership over their colonies and the same strategy has been adopted by large organisations such as the United Nations and the Commonwealth Nations, among others.
These organisations have a centralised form of leadership that takes into account the different cultural values of their subordinates. In addition, global businesses have adopted the same management strategies although various challenges arise due to the pressing urge to focus on profit maximisation.
The most common management strategy of the multicultural team environment in the global phenomenon is often very different between the political and business leadership and management structure. The political structure is easier to manage than the business structure as politics take charge of the followers as opposed to business leadership that should conform to the wants of the clients. Hence, it is easier for political leadership to lead a multicultural team than is the case for a business leadership.
Looking into the business leadership, the centralised management, which is normally at the headquarters, often plays the role of overseeing the business progress over the subsidiaries, whereas the leadership takes place at the subsidiary level.
For instance, the newly established Wal-Mart store in the United Arab Emirate (UAE) will have its own unique leadership structure from other stores due to religious culture in the region, and hence the overall leadership will take place at the subsidiary level, while the US-based headquarters oversees the business progress for decision-making purposes.
Main Characteristics of a Multicultural Team
Multicultural teams possess various characteristics, but looking at it from the business perspective, it is clear that the most dominant characteristics are due to difficulties in language and accent variations, differences in cultural values and beliefs, different attitudes towards management hierarchy, and conflict in the decision making process norms.
To begin with, language and accent variations, according to Cheng et al. (2012), the generally accepted business language in the world of business is normally English, but many countries have other first languages.
This aspect makes it difficult for a majority of citizens to communicate fluently in English, as they have to learn the language in their adulthood. Hence, managing multicultural team in any organisation or business is made difficult by language problems that some people go through, thus forcing leaders to use various languages so as to accommodate the disadvantaged individuals.
Secondly, the element of differences in cultural values and beliefs is another major characteristic in the multicultural team environment. People have their norms and values that are strongly attached to their cultural values. It is very difficult for business managers and organisational leaders that operate within the multicultural team phenomenon to attain effective leadership as opposed to those operating within the single-cultural phenomenon.
Multicultural environment requires one to respect various cultures in leadership in order to avoid prejudice and offending some individuals on cultural backgrounds, whereas in a single-cultural environment, cultural values do not present as dominant factors in the leadership.
Thirdly, the aspect of different attitudes towards management hierarchy is also a dominant characteristic in a multicultural team environment. Various forms of organisational leadership structures in the world are based on either cultural or political environment. For instance, socialist political environments have organisational structures that allow leaders to have higher authority over their followers as opposed to the capitalist environments.
For instance, it is often very hard for a Chinese worker to enjoy the freedom of speech enjoyed by an American worker due to their different political backgrounds.
Hence, it would be more difficult for a Chinese organisation to apply authoritative leadership over its American employees than is the case of an American organisation managing its Chinese employees. However, in the contemporary world, international organisations have adopted common leadership structures so as to accommodate cultural diversities, but not fully practical in some cultures in various parts of the world.
Lastly, conflict in the decision-making process norms is also a dominant characteristic in a multicultural team environment. Culture has a strong impact on human values, as it is the backbone of human behavioural system. In the decision-making process, decision-makers take into account the moral influences that some decisions would impose on their culture.
However, various conflicting issues exist in a multicultural team environment, as what seems morally right to a certain culture might be immoral to the other. Hence, decision-makers go through numerous challenges as they manoeuvre around the cultural factor in the decision-making processes.
However, to overcome this challenge, leaders have to prioritise the organisational affairs and thus convince their followers about the procedures taken before arriving at some decisions. Hence, the multicultural team phenomenon poses a threat of high time consumption in the decision-making process when decision-makers try to accommodate various cultural parties in the process.
Similar Personal Characteristics in the Creative Industry
Creative industry underscores any industry where business operations and products vary according to the creativity of stakeholders. For instance, the music and film industry falls within the creative industry where talents demand the suitability of the majority stakeholders in the industry.
For instance, looking into the film industry, major developments of the industry were achieved in the twentieth century with the development s in technology and breaking cultural norms in the industry. Before the Second World War, the film industry was uniquely subject to the definitions of the cultural background of the stakeholders, and thus it was hard for any culture to imitate the work of another culture. For instance, Chinese films during the era of Bruce Lee were very different from those produced by the Americans at the same time.
However, immediately after the end of the Second World War, the film industry changed rapidly from a single-culture affair to a multicultural affair. Studies have shown the creative industry to be the leading industry in uniting different cultures across the world with sports, film, and music industry being the most dominant. Beginning with sports industry, the majority of sports are multicultural teamwork where participants are governed by common rules of the game.
Hence, sports play a major role in bringing people of different cultures together and forcing different individuals to adopt similar personal characteristics in the industry. For instance, the majority of football players in the English Premier League belong to different cultures from countries across the world, but the sporting industry brings them together in the United Kingdom, where they adopt similar personal characteristics.
Secondly, the film industry also plays a major role in uniting different cultures and bringing forth similar personal characteristics in the industry. Looking into the film work of the early twentieth century, the industry was entirely a single-culture affair with a limited chance for actors to have different cultural backgrounds.
The major hindrance to multicultural teamwork in the film work seems to have been language problems and hostile political environment as the norms changed soon after the Second World War. In the modern world of film industry, we find major movie companies in various parts of the world to have adopted multicultural participants.
The most dominant being the Hollywood movie industry of the United States that often offers scholarship to movie actors from all over across the world. Studies show that movies produced in the United States have multicultural characteristics due to the various cultural backgrounds of the American citizens. Hence, the film industry, being a creative industry, has played a major role in bringing different cultures together and then making them have similar personal characteristics (Halverson, & Tirmizi 2008).
Thirdly, the music industry also plays a major role in uniting different cultures across the world. The music industry has been rated second most influential creative industry across the world. Music is often defined as a universal language where a listener does not need to understand the language in use in order to like a song; on the contrary, all one needs is to listen to the sound from instruments and tone variations.
Every culture across the world has music as part of cultural activities. Surprisingly, every culture likes adopting music from other cultures in an effort to run away from the monotony of the indigenous music.
Hence, music brings people of different cultures together as each culture tries to learn from the others, and thus similar personal characteristics are produced. In the American music industry, the most famous musicians belong to various cultures, but the industry brings their personal characters together when they perform collaborative music.
Different Personal Characteristics in the Creative Industry
Although, the creative industry has played a major role in bringing multicultural teamwork into an environment of common characteristics, in some cases, different personal characteristics persist. Reviewing the definition of the creative industry, clearly creativity and talent are the main ingredients of success of the industry. However, some cultures do not allow for multicultural practices in order to prevent their creativity.
For instance, some protection mechanisms protect the rights of ownership of various cultural creativity products in various countries across the world. In the sports industry, some sports are strongly attached to various cultures and they appear difficult for other cultures across the world to adopt them without the acceptance of the cultures owning the sport. This case is the same for the film industry where some cultures seem to have retained the old norm of the single-culture affair.
For instance, in the Indian film industry, the Hindu culture dominates the majority of the films. However, other cultures are being adopted in the industry as they focus more on attaining larger world markets.
Although the world markets may not welcome single-culture products very well, it is important to understand that many cultures would want to retain dominance in their products, as such products underscore their pride. Hence, different personal characteristics in the creative industry are necessary for protecting cultural creativity products, which underscore cultural pride.
In order to retain cultural products and creativity tools, personal characteristics play a major role in the exercise. Personal characteristics are used to welcome other cultures, in the case of multicultural teamwork, or discard them in the case of the single-cultural affair. The major personal characteristics include language and cultural values.
The cultural language in the creative industry is used to mark cultural ownership and pride in a given product. Hence, it is difficult for other cultures to imitate the product without the permission of the culture of origin of the product. In addition, some cultural values are used to mark ownership of a product, which include colour, shapes, and other elements.
For instance, the Chinese and the Japanese are fond of using various colours and shapes that are of great significance to their cultures and they are known to protect their products by using those colours and shapes in the branding whenever they do not want the involvement of other cultures (Daft 2007).
Conclusion
Managing multicultural teamwork is not an easy task for leaders and managers in business or political arena. Every individual has a strong attachment to the culture of belonging, and thus personal characteristics are often different whenever one does not need to adopt other cultural practices.
On the other hand, it is easy to achieve effective management over multicultural teamwork by implementing strategies that allow the participation of other cultures without violation of their moral rights. This aspect calls for the adoption of common language that unites people from across different cultures and values that respect the cultural diversity of the stakeholders like is the case of the creative industry that calls for the adoption of almost similar personal characteristics.
Reference List
Cheng, C., Chua, R., Morris, M. & Lee, L. 2012, ‘Finding the right mix: How the composition of self-managing multicultural teams’ cultural value orientation influences performance over time’, Journal of Organisational Behaviour, vol. 33 no. 3, pp. 389-411.
Daft, R. 2007, Management, 2nd edn, Cengage Learning, New York.
Halverson, C. B. & Tirmizi, S. A. 2008, Effective multicultural teams: Theory and practice, Springer, London.