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Work group members' perceptions of the effects of their cultural differences on their ability to function effectively as a task-oriented team
Abstract
This study is concerned with the impact of two simultaneous trends in American business. The first is that work teams have become increasingly popular in the workplace (Miller, 1991). The second is that increasing cultural diversity is a demographic fact in the current and future workforce (Johnston and Packer, 1987). On the basis of these trends, this study presumes that work teams are becoming more culturally diverse and that research is needed on how work group dynamics may be affected by cultural differences. The specific goal of this study is twofold. First, to determine whether members of a culturally diverse work group felt that others in the group treated them differently because of their cultural background. The second object is to determine if those people in question felt that cultural differences (in a group or as a whole) interfered with the group's ability to work together. To achieve this goal, I interviewed five white men, three African American men, four Latino men and four white women from four different types of work groups. Past research has suggested that cooperative teamwork minimizes cultural tensions within a culturally diverse group. However, despite participants perceiving their teams as cooperative, the men of color in their twenties and thirties and all the white women experienced ongoing harassment and exclusion because of their culture. These participants perceived a relationship between their cultural group membership and their work group's dynamics. The two older men of color (over age forty-five) did not claim to have experienced harassment or exclusion.
Subject Area
Management|Business education|Multicultural Education
Recommended Citation
Landesberg, Jill Susan, "Work group members' perceptions of the effects of their cultural differences on their ability to function effectively as a task-oriented team" (1994). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9420647.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9420647