Exploring Cultural Intelligence’s influence on performance of multicultural teams within a Vietnamese empirical setting.

Abstract

RELEVANCE. Increasing globalization at the workplace leads to the frequent use of multicultural teams. Thus, over the last century, a vast number of researchers have been looking for ways to enhance team performance in general and multicultural team’s performance in particular. Despite that, there have been a substantial number of studies dedicated to investigating of the influences of cultural diversity and Cultural Intelligence (CQ) on team performance in multinational corporations (MNCs), focusing on the context of developed business environment such as the USA and small markets have so far been ignored. Thus, the scope of this study is limited to the multinational corporations in the Vietnamese empirical context. GOAL. The goal of this thesis is to shed light on the impact of cultural diversity and Cultural Intelligence on performance of multicultural teams (MCTs) in MNCs in Vietnam. Furthermore, this thesis also investigates the role of CQ as a moderator of the relationship between cultural diversity and team performance. RESULTS. The empirical results are in this thesis gathered by use of online survey, which is a popular methodological trend in qualitative research. The survey is in English and back-to-back translated in Vietnamese. Some findings found are in accordance with previous studies. In contrast, some results show different interesting patterns experienced in practice by respondents in the Vietnamese setting. Firstly, we tested the relationship between cultural diversity and team performance. In line with our expectations, we found that cultural diversity has a negative effect on team performance. However, CQ was found to have no significant moderating effect on this relationship. Moreover, results indicated that CQ positively impacts MCTs’ performance. And finally, this thesis also found that nationality, gender and business experience also impact team performance in the Vietnamese empirical setting CONTRIBUTION. We hope this study can contribute to the under-researched area of the relationship between cultural diversity, CQ and team performance in MNCs in Vietnam. It will be not only a potential support for future researches, but also an assistance to managers in MNCs to enhance the MCTs’ performance. Keywords: Cultural Intelligence, cultural diversity, team performance, multicultural team (MCT), multinational corporation (MNC), Vietnamese setting.