Multicultural Team Effectiveness: Emotional Intelligence as Success Factor

Lucia Patricia Schellwies, B.A. was born in 1989 in Sindelfingen. The author studied International Business Management and obtained her Bachelor's degree from the European Business College in Stuttgart, Germany in 2014. During her study she spent one year in the USA and studied at National University of San Diego, CA where she completed a semester abroad. Furthermore she was able to gain work experience in the international business sector, as she completed two practical semesters, in Spain, and the USA. Studying and working abroad, as well as her interest in cultural differences combined with psychological aspects motivated her to refer to the subject of this book.

Text Sample:
Chapter 4.2 The Character of a Multicultural Team (MCT):
Chapter 4.2.1Definition of a Team:
A team can be defined as "an interdependent collection of individuals who work together towards a common goal and who share responsibility for specific outcomes of their organization". (Sundstrom et al. 1990, p. 120).
A team is always a group (of individuals) but a group is not necessarily a team.
According to Mabey and Caird (1994, p. 7-9) the main characteristics for what is considered a team are as follows:
A team refers to two or more individuals who contribute their respective competences within interdependent roles towards the accomplishment of a common goal.
There is the team identity, which is distinct from the individual members' identities along with established methods of communicating within the team and with external teams. The organized and purposeful structure is explicit, tank as well as goal orientated and the effectiveness of the team is reviewed periodically.
Chapter 4.2.2 Types of Diversity in Teams:
A distinction can be made in relation to the criteria diversity. "Team members can have very similar or quite different backgrounds". (Adler and Gundersen, 2007 p. 132); they distinguish: Homogeneous teams including all members that have a similar cultural background, in contrast to heterogeneous teams the members are generally perceiving, interpreting and evaluating more similarly. In Token teams one single member has a culturally differing background whereby that particular person is the so-called "token". Bicultural teams consist of members who represent two distinct cultures, such as a fifty-fifty partnership between two different cultures, and finally Multicultural teams whereas the members are coming from three or more cultural backgrounds.
In multicultural team settings there are two important aspects playing a major role.
The influencing factors in the collaboration with members of different cultural backgrounds are culture and emotions.
Chapter 4.3 The Concept of Culture:
Chapter 4.3.1 What exactly is Culture?
No fixed universal understanding does exist; there is little consensus. Over the last century researchers on culture such as anthropologists, psychologists and others have attempted to describe culture from various perspectives. To some culture is learned behavior while by others it is just seen as an abstraction from behavior and not as behavior at all. For example the American Psychologist Harry Triandis describes culture as a "by human made part of the environment" (1989, p. 306); and Hofstede, Dutch social psychologist (1991, p. 5), defines culture as the collective programming of the mind. However, most of the theorists roughly agree on definitions as, culture, a collection of values, norms and beliefs shared by a group of people and consequently guiding their thinking and actions.
The above attempts to define culture and citations as, "cultures are like underground rivers that run through our lives and relationships, giving us messages that shape our perceptions, attributions, judgments, and ideas of self and other" (LeBaron, 2003, p.1), strongly suggest that there is more to it than common sense characteristics as language, religion, dress codes or national dishes, thus there is way more to culture than we might notice in the first place.
Furthermore, culture it is a pattern of responses developed within a particular group of people, aroused from interactions between its members. Those responses are considered the correct way to perceive, feel, think and behave, including observable actions as the way people greet or say good-bye to each other. No matter if social habits, specific behavior or attitudes, those patterns are automatically passed on to all hands of a culture through transmission and learning.
Culture is, the unwritten rules of a society, determines what is right; what is wrong, what is inappropriate and what is considered important or unimportant; including