Multicultural R&D Team Operations in High-Tech SMEs: Role of Team Task Environment and Individual Team Members' Personal Experiences

SEAN NAUGHTON, AHMAD ARSLAN, Lauri Haapanen, Petri Ahokangas

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (journal)peer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)
61 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper analyzes how team task environment and individual team members’ personal experiences influence multicultural research and development (R&D) team operations in small and medium sized enterprises. Based on qualitative data from multiple R&D team operations in five Finnish software firms, the findings revealed that team task environment is significantly influenced by the Nordic egalitarian organizational culture. The team task environment appears to be more dominant in multicultural R&D teams than anticipated in earlier research. To some extent, this mitigates the influences of culture on multicultural R&D team operations. However, results also show that individual team member personal experiences comprise of task specific as well as cultural (international) experiences emanating from being a member of a multicultural team. Together, these two components have a positive influence on R&D operations, yet intriguingly, task specific experiences resonate with task variability and task analyzability, while cultural experiences tend to influence task interdependence.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Business Research
Early online date17 Feb 2020
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 17 Feb 2020

Keywords

  • Multicultural R&D Team
  • Operations
  • Small & Medium Sized Enterprises
  • Team Task Environment
  • Team Members’ Personal Experiences
  • Team task environment
  • Small & medium sized enterprises
  • Team members’ personal experiences
  • Multicultural R&D team

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