Development of a self-assessment tool to support cross-cultural teams in self-organization

Abstract

The changing environment of business guided through volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambi-guity has change the requirements towards organization and employees. Reaction towards change must be faster, decisions must be made in an environment of uncertainty and ambiguity and prob-lems have become more complex. One solution on how to react to these changes is to give more authority to teams and letting them self-organize. In addition, through globalization and internation-alization of companies, working in culturally diverse has and will increase in the future. Teams oper-ating in this environment face the challenge, that culture impacts areas which are relevant for self-organized teams such as collaboration, communication as well as team culture and identity. Different methods have been proposed to either assess self-organization or cross-cultural teamwork. Never-theless, the impacts cultural diversity has on self-organized teams lack the respective method This thesis aimed to create a self-assessment tool, with which a team working in a cross-cultural environment, can assess their level of self-organization, and which provides support on how to im-prove the current state. Within this study the underlying components of the self-assessment tool were defined through literature research as well as expert interviews. In addition, the self-assess-ment tool as well as a method guiding through it has could be created. The research approach fol-lowed the design science research method in which an artefact was developed with several itera-tions. Through feedback from experts working in the intended operational field, the artefact was continuously improved. The results suggest that the self-assessment tool as well as the method developed can help teams to work on their culture, relationship, decision making, leadership, openness as well as error-orien-tation. Nevertheless, the artefact could not fully be tested due to the short time horizon. This thesis offers preliminary research in the topic of cross-cultural impact on self-organized teams which could be further analysed in future research.