Managing Communication Across Cultures : A qualitative study of leaders' way of communicating with their culturally diverse teams

• Main Authors: Barros, Rayane, Idrizi, Arbesa
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för organisation och entreprenörskap (OE) 2020
• Subjects: Culture; Leadership; Communication; Cultural diversity; Teams; Sweden; Multicultural Environment; Business Administration; Företagsekonomi
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-95635

Globalization has helped to increase the movement of people between countries and has also affected organizations through increased international operations. This mean that companies are also significantly more heterogeneous internally than they have been in previous years with more people from different cultures working together. Sweden is one of the countries where this has become increasingly common in connection with more people coming to the country as refugees and workers with visas. In organizations this means that more demands are put on the leadership to handle cultural differences in work teams. For this reason, we chose to focus this study on researching how leaders in Sweden handle communication with culturally diverse teams and what commitments are made in connection with this.Therefore, a qualitative research process has taken place with an abductive approach to draw parallels between theory and empirical material. The study was based on primary and secondary data through interviews with nine leaders and previous research in the areas of leadership, culture, and communication. The results of data collection and analysis highlight important aspects regarding the challenges of leaders in culturally diverse teams and the commitments made to manage it. Hierarchy was an aspect that was raised which meant differences in communication between leaders and individuals from other cultures. Moreover, this meant expectations for leaders to be more direct in offering answers and instructions, which differs from the leader's culture in maintaining an informal level of leadership style and communication (common to all leaders in the study). Among the recommendations was the use of mixed communication tools, perform follow-ups, and do personal meetings to avoid misunderstandings.For all leaders, understanding and an open mindset were of paramount importance. Be vigilant about what certain behavior or modes of communication may be. Adaptations appear to be made to some extent but more thought about culture in communication and how certain information can be perceived. Of further importance is to keep the leaders' own culture in mind when trying to understand others in communication.