Effective Multicultural Teams: Theory and Practice

Multicultural and multinational teams have become an important strategic and structural element of organizational work in our globalized world today. These teams are demonstrating their importance from the factory floors to the boardrooms of contemporary organizations. The emergence of multicultural teams is evident across a variety of organizations in the private, public, and civil society sectors. These developments have led to an increasing interest in the theory and practice of multicultural teams. Management educational and training programs are giving increasing attention to these developments. At the same time, there is emerging interest in research about and study of multicultural teams. This book emerged from our teaching, research, and consulting with multic- tural and diverse teams in multiple sectors over the last several years. In particular, we have developed and refined our ideas about the concepts in this book from teaching an advanced course called Effective Multicultural Teams in the Graduate Program at the School for International Training (SIT) in Vermont. We have learned from the rich background of students who are from, and have worked in, six con- nents, and who are, or plan to be, working in the public, educational, not-for-profit, and for-profit sectors. Additionally, we have engaged with a variety of teams through our consulting and training, providing consultation to teams in a variety of sectors and continents as they struggled to become more effective.