(TIỂU LUẬN) assessment task 2 team consultancy project written report lastly, recommendations are proposed for improvement in the workplace of generali the ability to empathize with each others

Moreover, in an increasingly technologically advanced world, virtual communication between countries is a big step forward to help multinational groups communicate with each other quickl

Assessment Task 2 - Team Consultancy

Project Written Report

Location & Campus RMIT Vietnam, Hanoi Campus

Tran Quynh Ngoc - s3636101

Pham Hai Yen - s3776356

Nguyen Phuong Hong Yen - s3695645

Executive Summary

Each person from various different cultures and backgrounds will have to interactwith each other more frequently in an increasingly globalized and growing economy

Regardless of whether everybody will work and attempt together decently well,

diversification will in any case happen and cause furious struggles and clashes because of anabsence of comprehension of colleagues Diverse reasoning or methods of working are

consistently a difficulty that each organization or business will have The most clear examplescan be found in worldwide multinational organizations Moreover, in an increasingly

technologically advanced world, virtual communication between countries is a big step

forward to help multinational groups communicate with each other quickly and economically.However, global virtual teams (GVT) also hides many cross-cultural challenges To relieve

this issue, individuals in particular and businesses in general, should know about thefundamental drivers that have an immediate impact

The objective of this report is to analyze several issues related to GVT of

multinational corporations with the use of academic theories and real cases of an internationalcompany in Vietnam The case of an multinational insurance company, Generali will be

applied to evaluate their practices in solving common cultural challenges Besides, asupporting article about GVT challenges perceived by millenials, is also reviewed As a

result, in such a broad community, problems with communication and collaboration may

often unintentionally offend each other Moreover, the interview conducted with Mr NguyenTung Lam, regional director in Hanoi of Generali, delivered a more in-depth perspective at

the workplace from the viewpoint of a manager People communicate in their own uniquemanners, which may lead to misunderstandings when they do not have the same level of

understanding In detail, difficulties of Generali in cross-cultural virtual management could

be divided into 4 categories: leadership, communication, time issue and trust issue.

Lastly, recommendations are proposed for improvement in the workplace of Generali

The ability to empathize with each other's cultural differences through training and

preparation demonstrates one's effort when attempting to collaborate with an internationalpartner It is important for a large multicultural corporation to create its own management

structure in order to retain overall performance

1 Introduction

Many businesses are looking to expand their operations internationally By moving toemerging markets, they will benefit from lower costs, as a result, contribute to the economic

development of countries Generali, a big Italian insurance company is not exceptional when

it operates branches in Vietnam However, doing business overseas presents severalchallenges in terms of different human behaviors and a lack of knowledge, especially when

there is a significant difference in business concepts between Western and Eastern Thesedifficulties become even more challenging in the virtual working context The theory of

cross-cultural management was developed to help businesses submit, control, and operate

their business successfully on a global scale

2 Overview of issues

The global economy is increasingly developing and expanding these days, with trade

value accounting for 60.4% of world GDP (World Bank n.d) Globalization is an ongoingprocess, and understanding cultural differences has become a key factor for multinationals to

expand into emerging markets Hence, as businesses evolve in the international context and

especially in the current covid outbreak then all companies have to use virtualcommunication tools to support the work process, there is a question that top managers and

company insiders need to consider: how to communicate well between cultures, to operatethe business effectively, and how leaders need to give direction to find the best solution

Therefore, there are four main problems that most businesses face in the context of

international business

2.1 Communication problems within multicultural teams or across subsidiaries

Understanding a country's culture is about showing respect and ensuring effective

communication among members of an organization Communication is the key to all

problems that need solving, expressing their thoughts and direct intercultural communicationcan sometimes lead to confusion because of different ways of presenting messages

Especially during Covid pandemic, it is even more difficult to transmit information orcommunicate in language when everyone has to switch to virtual communication tools There

is research about low context communication terms (LCC) and high contextual

communication (HCC) and how they affect understanding and interactions among people(Nam K.A 2015) When a group comprises multinational members, communication conflicts

between people from LCC culture and people from HCC culture will easily lead tocommunication conflicts It is more common in LCC cultures in individualist cultures such as

Western countries (Canada, Germany) They tend to express themselves through direct verbal

communication, speaking straight to the point Verbal agreements are respected in HCC whendoing business, written contracts and signed agreements are essential while in LCC (William

D 2015) This may cause conflict between enterprises when the business from LCC requiresthe enterprise from HCC to write a signed contract may be perceived as disrespectful, and a

lack of trust can damage a relationship While the culture of contextual communication is

high as in some Asian countries, the use of nonverbal communication involves paralinguisticsignals (voice, pitch, volume) and non-verbal signals (eye contact, smile, touch, silence)

They often speak through a message that they want others to ponder and understand.Currently, to achieve high performance in a multinational environment, most companies

adopt a Western working environment This will help employees be able to frankly express

their individual opinions to make it easier to understand, collaborate and save time

2.2 Leadership in multicultural organizations or between subsidiaries

Leadership and culture have similar relationships Different cultures will have

different images of a good leader A survey of employees’ IBM from multiple locations

worldwide and four dimensions that different cultures were identified (Hofstede 2001) Whilecollectivistic culture is more team-oriented Individualistic cultures tend to prefer

independent and different leaders (the GLOBE framework n.d) In the Certainty Avoidancedimension, countries with a high degree of uncertainty avoidance often favor more controlled

regulators Besides, the Power Distance also contributes to an excellent leader in different

cultures Employees from cultures with low power gaps cultures prefer active andparticipatory leadership In contrast, those from cultures with a high power gap tend to work

better in a more directing style of leadership

2.3 Trust in multicultural groups or between subsidiaries within an organisation

Every branch of Multinational Corporations faces challenges related to different

cultures as they resemble parent group operations in the local context (He R and Liu J, 2010).Administrative personnel play a vital role in the failure or success of a Multinational

Corporation, they must deal with fundamental challenges like strategic and culturaldifferences Nationalism has created friction within a group that can cause trust between

members or governance between the parent company and its subsidiaries Differences

between cultures and languages can lead to misinformation, distrust, as the story of Japaneseand Americans working together has been likened to mixing hamburgers with sushi

(Hausmann R , Tyson D, Zahidi S, 2012) Because the Japanese and the Americans have along history before, and some Japanese still keep that hatred against their partner and vice

versa Alternatively, the Vietnamese are still skeptical of China; requests for trust from the

Vietnamese towards their neighboring partners may be hard to accomplish Moreover, due to

the centralized decision-making power at the headquarters, promotion opportunities for theexecutive position of the host country nationals are limited This creates communication

barriers, leading to misinformation and misunderstanding between host country nationals and

top managers of the headquarters Hence, headquarters will have limited understanding andinteraction with the local staff to assess the performance of local ability for future

advancement (Ando N, Rhee D and Park N, 2007)

2.4 Time issues within multicultural societies or between subsidiaries

The virtual aspects of communication also have an impact on aspects of the

management tasks of MNCs The most significant reported impacts include time zonedifferences, response delays, and time limits for virtual communication (Kimble, 2001)

Around the world, we have different time zones, it can be challenging to get everyone in theright group It could be midnight in one part of the world, and it could be rush hour in

another This is a problem because everyone needs to be on the same page and doing the

same thing Team members must start work early and work very late to communicate witheach other, for instance, calling until 10pm or holding a three-way conference at 1 am Swiss

time (Oertig M & Buergi T, 2006) Besides, response delays and time limits for virtualcommunication are also factors that create obstacles in an international environment (See M

2018); in online meetings, they often bring up some new issues in meetings off the agenda It

prolongs the meeting time and reduces the quality of the meeting Furthermore, when asubsidiary needs assistance from a qualified person, they cannot be present However, that

day falls during the host countries' public holiday time, which leads to a delay in reply whilethe subsidiaries need an immediate response

3 Case studies

3.1 Description of case study and research article

3.1.1 Generali Group

Generali is a multinational insurance corporation based in Italy The company

currently has 8 overseas headquarters and more than 60 branches in 50 countries Vietnam isone of the subsidiaries of Generali Group The offices in Vietnam had about 2000 employees

out of 72.000 employees worldwide The Generali teams in Vietnam are mainly responsiblefor sales, marketing and customer services for the local market As R&D and Operation

management mainly take place at headquarters, branches in Vietnam receive allocation

targets from the head office in Milan or receive targets directly from Asia Regional Office inHong Kong Regional meetings with the Asia Regional Office in Hong Kong and its

headquarters in Italy will take place monthly, or when the company undertakes importantprojects Meetings are usually in the form of an online conference In addition, other forms of

virtual communication are applied such as emails, calls or messages Virtual communication

is expected to help the company save costs and time for travel, accommodation and humanresources

Figure 1 Workflow of Generali Vietnam

3.1.2 The article “When technological savviness overcomes cultural differences:

millennials in global virtual teams” (Velez-Calle et al 2020)

We selected the research paper on the topic of virtual group challenges under the

perceived experience of millennials because this is one of the large demographic groups of

countries around the world (Deloitte 2020), and is expected to hold the senior positions ofemployment in the next 5-10 years (Tilford 2018) The paper focuses on two major issues:

evidence to contradict previous international business literature which argues that culturaldifferences are the main problem of GVT and how millennials work in GVT to deal with the

challenges of virtual teamwork and ensure effective team performance The study analysed

503 journals of undergraduate students from all over the world submitted to the GEEcompetition in 2012

3.2 Analysis of the case study and article

Our study analyzes the case of Generali and the findings in the article of Velez-Calle

et al (2020), to uncover the key challenges companies face when working in multicultural

virtual teams This study adopts the input-process-outcome (IPO) framework which was

adapted by Dulebohn and Hoch (2017) to align the context of the GVT According to Hoch1

& Kozlowski (2014), the IPO is the most widely used framework which is a tool tocategorize and incorporate theories on GVT

understanding, since virtual communication is limited in space and time, as well as lacks verbal signals (Tenzer & Pudelko 2016) In particular, the study of Hoch and Kozlowski

non-(2014) shows the importance of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) in virtual leadership Leaders with

a high level of CQ have a positive effect on the team's performance, strengthen team cohesionand encourage engagement of team members Velez-Calle et al (2020) also agrees with the

importance of leadership in virtual teams Leaders in the analyzed cases are said to be the

“rescuers” for the whole team when facing a crisis, and the one who provides the leading

solution for the team's challenges However, the virtual team leaders at Generali, in general,

have not paid attention to this aspect When asked in the interview what strategies thecompany has in place to improve the understanding of diverse cultures of managers, it

seemed to be a new concept to the interviewee There was a lack of proper training on how

-managers can solve problems related to multinational virtual teams

The second input is team composition At Generali, the most visible difference on the

surface of diversity is language differences English is used as the common language for thethree countries to communicate with each other However, because this is the second

language of all three countries, virtual team members have encountered many difficulties inexpressing and understanding the message The barriers in verbal communication can be

overcome more or less by non-verbal communication (DiStefano & Maznevski 2000) For

example, when you are unable to express your ideas with words, gestures and facialexpressions can assist in conveying your ideas However, when teams work virtually together,

communicating from long distances through the middle technology platform limits verbal communication (Jimenez et al.2017) This limitation also makes it difficult to build

non-close relationships between colleagues in different countries, which also limits the level of

trust and team cohesion of multicultural teams (Ford, Piccolo & Ford 2017) The nextcomponent of team composition is the level of KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities) of

members In the case of Generali, the level of CQ once again needs emphasis For amultinational company, understanding and adaptability to diverse cultures are the minimum

requirements for employees One of the important elements in cross-cultural communication

is the cultural context, including low context and high context (Hall 1959) High contextcultures like Vietnam emphasize implicit messages that cannot be expressed in words In

contrast, low-context cultures such as Italy emphasize direct verbal communication 2

According to the interview, when working virtually, the lack of understanding of cultural

differences has made some Vietnamese employees feel uncomfortable when receiving too

frank opinions from the Italian manager The limitation of the virtual working environmentfurther hinders mutual understanding

3.2.2 Moderators

This study focuses on virtuality as the main moderator in the case of the Generali

company Virtuality factor is a broad concept, which includes geographical dispersion, spatial

distance, temporal differences and configurational differences (Dulebohn & Hoch 2017) Thetime difference is a key challenge that is associated with other cross-cultural difficulties in

Generali In the article by Velez-Calle et al (2020), time difference is a frequently mentioned

-issue in students' journals However, the authors argued that the time difference problem does

not belong to the concepts of cross-culture issues, including values, beliefs and social systems

(Hofstede 1991) The article also cites one of the student journals in the study, where the timeissue is mentioned as a solvable problem and less significant than the other challenges

However, according to Dulebohn-and Hoch- -(2017), temporal difference is one of the factorsthat affects the inputs and outputs of teamwork, because it changes and connects relationships

within the framework This is true in the case of Generali, where the time management

problem, although not a culture issue, indirectly affects cross-culture challenges Firstly, the