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

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.

Stewart, Catherine, 2022

Art der Arbeit Master Thesis
Auftraggebende
Betreuende Dozierende Gatziu Grivas, Stella, Grasshoff, Gunnar
Keywords
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Studiengang: Business Information Systems (Master)
Vertraulichkeit: öffentlich
Art der Arbeit
Master Thesis
Autorinnen und Autoren
Stewart, Catherine
Betreuende Dozierende
Gatziu Grivas, Stella, Grasshoff, Gunnar
Publikationsjahr
2022
Sprache der Arbeit
Englisch
Vertraulichkeit
öffentlich
Studiengang
Business Information Systems (Master)
Standort Studiengang
Olten