Multicultural teams represent a key strategic action that generate significant competitive advantages and innovation. The authors address the question of how transformational leadership, cultural orientation, and emotional conflict impact on multicultural teams focused on innovation. The methodology used has a quantitative and transversal approach because the measurement is carried out in a specific moment. The sample is composed by 415 multicultural-team members working in multinational companies. Results indicate that the dimension of intellectual stimulation and a horizontal hierarchy are factors that influence the team innovation. In contrast, the emotional conflict did not show a significant relationship. The positive moderating effect of organizational support on intellectual stimulation and team innovation´s relationship is proven. This study contributes significantly to international human resource management domain by leading to a better understanding of the functioning of work teams to ensure business innovation and the need for internationalization.
TopIntroduction
In the rapidly changing and challenging environment, innovation as a business management model has been positioned as a new paradigm for business strategy (Lopez, Jaramillo, & Susaeta, 2019; Perry-Smith, & Mannucci, 2017). Hence, organizations are oriented to constantly apply innovation in order to maintain and enhance the effectiveness, create corporate value and promote the competitive advantage (Bouncken, Brem, & Kraus, 2016; Lee, Yen, & Perromat, 2019). In this matter, diversity in workforce and collaborative work are determinant to reach an effective implementation of business (Lopez, Jaramillo, & Susaeta, 2019) thus, organizations are increasingly using team members of different nationalities, taking the path of cultural diversity and thus, giving rise to multicultural teams (Neukam, 2017; Snell, Snow, Davison, & Hambrick, 1998; Winkler & Bouncken, 2011) to generate new ideas and solving difficult problems (Fisher, Pillemer, & Amabile, 2018; Li & Huang, 2019).
According to some authors, multicultural teams are considered a key strategy to reach creativity and innovation (Bouncken, et al., 2016; Leung & Wang; 2015; Lisak, Erez, Sui, & Lee, 2016) in order to face challenges in a globalized competitive environment (Cheng, Chua, Morris, & Lee, 2012; Chua, Morris & Mor, 2012; Kraus, Mensching, Calabrò, Cheng, & Filser, 2016; Yasini, 2016) and enhance organizational performance and innovation (Xie, Wu & Zeng, 2016).
In past, several factors and their impact con teams have been analyzed. For example, leadership style (Al-edenat, 2018; Bednall, Rafferty, Shipton, Sanders & Jackson, 2018; Ochieng & Price, 2009, 2010; Jiang, Wang, Chu, & Zheng, 2019; Odoardi, Battistelli, Montani, & Peiró, 2019); multicultural personality (Van Der Zee & Van Oudenhoven, 2000); intercultural competence (Matveev, 2016, 2017); cultural empathy (Lvina, Matveev & Grishin, 2019); trust (Earley & Mosakovski, 2000; Ochieng & Price, 2009; 2010); cultural diversity (Chen, Zheng, Yang, & Bai, 2016). Dutra, Mazza, & Menezes, 2014; Han & Beyerlein, 2016; Hofstede, 1980, 1991; Kirkman, Shapiro, Lu, & McGurrin, 2016; Nielsen & Nielsen, 2011; Leung & Wang, 2015; Lvina et al., 2019); and team conflict (Jehn & Mannix, 2001; Santos, Uitdewilligen, & Passos, 2015; Tjosvold, 2008) among others.