Research Request: Effectiveness of Multi-Cultural Teams -- an important workplace issue

[BeckyXia]

The workplace is becoming more culturally diverse every minute due to globalization and migration. It is increasingly likely that people have to work in culturally diverse teams. It is important to find out the factors that impact on team effectiveness in multicultural teams.

As a student in the Master of Psychology (Organisational) program at UNSW, I am offering your organisation the opportunity to participate in the research of multicultural team effecitiveness. By participating, your organisation will receive an evaluation of the effectiveness of your multi-cultural work teams and the assessment of whether your employees can effectively work with people from different cultures.

I am currently conducting field research for my master's thesis. The topic is multi-cultural team effectiveness. My supervisor is Professor Stephen Bochner. My research aim is to investigate whether people high on a number of personality traits can work better in a team with team members from different cultures. The personality traits that will be investigated include cultural empathy, flexibility, open-mindedness, emotional stability and social initiative. These culturally related personality traits have been shown to predict expatriates' personal and professional adjustment to foreign cultures.

The study only requires the completion of an online questionnaire, in which the first part measures personality and the second part measures perceived team effectiveness. It takes less than 15 minutes to complete. A hard copy of the quesionnaire can be sent to you upon request.

I am recruiting work teams which satisfy the following criteria to participate:
• Consisted of team members from various different cultures;
• Team members have worked together on a regular basis over a relatively long period of time (three months or above);
• Consisted of four or more members.

While ensuring confidentiality, I will present the final findings to your organisation in the form of a written report. I can also present the results for each participating work team to relevant managers or team leaders. Thus, by participating in this research your organisation will benefit in the following ways:
• The findings of this research can potentially help your organisation to identify training needs for employees who work in multi-cultural teams.
• The findings may also raise managers and team leaders' awareness of existing cultural issues in their teams, and thus help them manage their teams better.
• The results of the team effectiveness measure can help team leaders or managers to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their teams and thus help them manage their teams more effectively;
• The results of the personality measure can help your organisation identify employees with expatriate potential.

Finally, we will ensure complete confidentiality of the data we collect. Your organisation will not be identified by name in the thesis. Likewise, we will be happy to discuss with you any further requirements that you might have regarding the confidentiality of research results.

If you are interested, please contact me via e-mail ( becky.xia*gmail.com) .