Revised Instructions for an Individual Final Project
November 16, 2020
10 Pages
One of the criteria for evaluation of your performance in this course is a final project paper dealing with a contemporary international management topic. The research and writing of this paper will be done individually by each student.
Final Project Assignment – Managing a Global Virtual Team
Situation:
Michael Schomer has been newly appointed as the Senior Director of New Product Development in a New York-based multinational manufacturing company. He is informed by his CEO that the company is restructuring to rationalize some of its R&D, IT infrastructure support, product testing, and manufacturing functions by migrating them to other countries. Although there are several factors responsible for this decision, three main reasons provided by the management are the possibility of a 24/7 development cycle as a result of time zone difference, greater availability of talent outside of the U.S., and also lower costs associated with hiring employees elsewhere.
The company has some previous experience in international business, but it has been mainly engaged in only sourcing of materials and components and exporting finished equipment to some countries in Europe and Latin America. The company does not have any experience in working in global teams for new product development work.
The company has decided to locate the offshore R&D facility in Vancouver (Canada); carry out product testing in Shanghai (China), have an Information Technology infrastructure support facility in Cape Town (South Africa), and the final manufacturing facility in Guadalajara (Mexico). While each new location will employ local employees, several existing managers and expert engineers will also relocate from the United States to those four locations for a period of 1-2 years. The program manager for each of the four countries will be located in the U.S. and will report to Michael Robinson.
To be successful, the company will utilize a model in which they will follow the corporate values based on the U.S. culture but will also need to mold their business practices in accordance with the local cultural models in each foreign location. Therefore, they are considering assessing the cultural variability across the countries involved.
Based on what the CEO has learned from his/her industry peers, he/she does understand that the running of the global virtual team is not going to be easy. The company has no prior experience in this virtual mode of high-level product innovation, development, or manufacturing work. Therefore, Michael was chosen to investigate the idea and prepare a detailed project report which will guide the formation of the virtual teams and their successful operation.
Final project deliverables
Michael Schomer has chosen you as a cross-cultural consultant to investigate and present a report providing a comparative cultural assessment of the four countries (Canada, China, South Africa, and Mexico) with the United States.
The research and writing of this paper will be done by you individually. The project report should address the following outlines:
Part I: Executive Summary
Part II: This segment is worth 10% of the course grade.
Provide summarized comparison of national cultures of Canada, China, Mexico, South Africa, and the United States in light of the following four dimensions of national culture by Hofstede listed below. You should have four tables, one for each dimension, showing a comparison between the five countries. You can also add a bar chart comparison of each dimension. Discuss the most important cultural attributes for each dimension that may help your client’s understanding of cultural differences for all locations. Compare them with the United States. Discuss positive and negative cultural attributes in the context of the global teamwork. The four dimensions are:
o Power Distance Index (PDI)
o Individualism versus Collectivism (IDV)
o Masculinity versus Femininity (MAS)
o Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI)
Part III: This segment is worth 10% of the course grade.
In light of the above findings, provide proper explanations to the following questions. Do not be wordy. Provide clear and concise answers. Relate your responses to this case’s particular situation.
1. What are the rationale and drivers for the recent growth of global virtual teams? What justifications can be given for the company’s decision to migrate some product development, testing, IT infrastructure, and manufacturing work to another country? Why not keep every activity in the United States?
2. What are some of the most major opportunities and challenges for this global virtual team?
3. Since the other teams will be based in Germany, China, South Africa and India, what cross-cultural differences are likely to impact on the good performance of this global virtual team? How would they cause any positive or negative impact on the company’s overall business mission? What recommendations should be made for fully understanding and bridging these cultural differences?
4. Provide an example of a multinational firm that has expanded into any of those countries and how it dealt with any cross-cultural communication issues. If possible, you can interview a manager who works for a multinational firm involving operations in any of the four countries.
5. How would mutual “trust” be a significant potential issue among members of the global virtual team? How to positively address any trust-related issues?
6. Based on your findings and responses above, develop a communication protocol for all members of the global virtual team.
7. Provide guidelines for general best practices for sustaining a high performance global virtual team.
2. The Word document containing the final report should be submitted by you in the appropriate drop box in in Module 6. Your individual paper should be between 10 to 15 pages long (double spaced, 12-point font size), not including the cover page and references and appendices.
Citations and Works Cited
Be careful to cite your sources in your text and to properly list them in a Reference page in accordance with the APA 6th standards. Web addresses cited should be active. You should make an effort to use credible sources and not only some web sites for citations. To learn more about the credibility of sources, visit the Evaluating the Credibility of Your Sources website.