In August 2016, the first products of the brand “Swiss Tempelle” were launched in the Indian market. The current collaboration of the joint-venture includes employees based in Buchs, Switzerland and Mumbai, India. Thus, the collaboration mainly takes place in a virtual environment, including regular video conferences with both teams involved. This bachelor thesis aims to analyse how the intercultural differences between India and Switzerland as well as the virtual environment influence the collaboration of the joint-venture between Mibelle Group and Future Group. Moreover, the main goal is to provide the client with specific recommendations how the collaboration of the joint-venture can be improved.

To achieve the three mentioned goals, the authors follow a deductive research approach. Thus, first a theoretical basis is compiled. The theoretical frameworks of intercultural management and virtual collaboration build the foundation to elaborate the interview questionnaire. The questions are mostly open-questions and include various sub-questions to one main topic. In order to receive comprehensive insights into the collaboration, eight semi-structured interviews are conducted with team members from Switzerland and India. A structured analysis of the findings includes a comparison of the data with the theoretical foundation. These results lead to the main outcome of this thesis.

The authors identified that no major intercultural barriers are existing in the collaboration. Overall, all employees are aware about the different backgrounds and do consider these when communicating with each other. Moreover, the virtual environment as a basis to communicate between the teams was not identified as a major barrier for the collaboration within the joint-venture. However, several minor areas of improvement could be identified. The client is provided with four main recommendations. Specific sub-categories are arranged in four areas of improvement, namely, on structure and coordination, regular visits, communication and collaboration tools as well as on communication. Various sub-categories are based on the findings by comparing the data with the theoretical background. However, several points could be elaborated due to the real-life insights the authors could gain during the compilation of this project.