Performance effects of interaction between multicultural managers and multicultural team members: Evidence from elite football competitions

• Author: Komal Kalra,Mike Szymanski
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/tie.22175
• Date: 01 March 2021
• Published date: 01 March 2021

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Performance effects of interaction between multicultural

managers and multicultural team members: Evidence from elite

football competitions

Mike Szymanski

1

| Komal Kalra

2

1

Moscow School of Management Skolkovo,

Moscow Oblast, Russia

2

Gustavson Business School, University of

Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Correspondence

Mike Szymanski, Moscow School of

Management Skolkovo, Novaya Ulitsa,

100, Scolkovo, Moscow Oblast 143025,

Russia.

Email: mszymanski@skolkovo.ru

Abstract

Multicultural employees are an important organizational demographic and a subject

of increasing interest in the literature on international management; however, few

studies assess how multiculturals affect team performance. We first collect individual

performance data for 442 individuals from 20 teams led by monocultural and multi-

cultural managers. We then collect team-level performance data for 269 teams with

varying proportions of multicultural individuals. The results confirm that multicultural

individuals performed better in teams with multicultural managers and that teams led

by multicultural managers outperformed teams with the same percentage of multicul-

tural individuals led by monocultural managers.

KEYWORDS

bicultural competence, biculturalism, cross-cultural management, global leadership,

multiculturalism, team performance

1|INTRODUCTION

Cross-border expansion, internationalization, and escalating numbers

of multicultural persons (multiculturals) in society are increasing work-

force diversity. Multiculturals are individuals “who identify with, inter-

nalize and have knowledge of more than one culture”(Vora, Martin,

Fitzsimmons, Pekerti, Lakshman, & Raheem, 2019). Approximately

13% of the US populace (US Census, 2013) and 20% of Canada's

(Canadian Census, 2011) is foreign born, and those percentages disre-

gard native-born citizens raised in bi- or multicultural environments.

Multiculturalism is now an organizational phenomenon that attracts

scholarly attention.

1

Multiculturals switch between cultural frames in response to cul-

tural cues (Benet-Martinez, Leu, Lee, & Morris, 2002; Hong, Morris,

Chiu, & Benet-Martinez, 2000). That ability magnifies their cognitive

complexity, the “capacity to construe people, objects, and ideas in a

multidimensional way”(Benet-Martinez, Lee, & Leu, 2006:388). It also

raises their integrative complexity, which is “the degree to which a

person accepts the reasonableness of different cultural perspectives

on how to live”(Tadmor & Tetlock, 2006:174), and creativity (Leung,

Maddux, Galinsky, & Chiu, 2008; Leung & Chiu, 2010; Maddux & Gal-

insky, 2009; Tadmor, Satterstrom, Jang, & Polzer, 2012). These abili-

ties are especially useful when multiculturals are embedded in an

environment where they constantly have to adapt to changing cultural

conditions such as multinational companies (Hong, 2010).

Managers and organizational scholars agree on multiculturals'

potential as global leaders (Fitzsimmons, Miska, & Stahl, 2011;

Hong, 2010; Lakshman, 2013) and as leaders and members of global

and multicultural teams (Dau, 2016; Zander, Mockaitis, & Butler,

2012), however “biculturalism and team performance have been

largely overlooked in both the team literature and the emerging bicul-

turalism literature”(Dau, 2016:49). That is so even though contempo-

rary organizations increasingly assign work to multicultural teams and

international business teams commonly work across cultures (Zander

et al., 2012).

To illuminate how multiculturalism affects individual and team

performance, we ask, “how does the cross-level relationship between

multicultural team members and managers influence performance at

each level?”This empirical research invokes the social identity theory

of leadership (Hogg, 2001; Hogg & van Knippenberg, 2003) to

DOI: 10.1002/tie.22175

Thunderbird Int. Bus. Rev. 2021;63:235–251. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tie © 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC. 235

theorize about synergies of multicultural managers and multicultural

teams and to discover how multiculturalism among team members

and managers influences individual-level and team-level performance.

To answer the research question, we conducted two quantitative

studies using association football (soccer) data. Sport has been

accepted as a valid research context in many fields of social sciences.

For instance, it has been used to study a broad range of economics

phenomena such as the effects of migration (e.g., Allan & Moffat,

2014; Berlinschi, Schokkaert, & Swinnen, 2013), knowledge transfer

(e.g., Goodall, Kahn, & Oswald, 2011), and global economic develop-

ment convergence (e.g., Krause & Szymanski, 2019). Krause and

Szymanski argue that soccer is an ideal context to study such phe-

nomena because: “First, it is a truly global activity; (…) Second, the ser-

vice is standardized and internationally comparable. (…) performance

in soccer is far more accurately measured than most other data series;

(…) Comparable data on this scale is simply not available for other

industries, and services in particular. Third, international soccer is by

definition very competitive, so that small differences in skills, line-ups

and preparations can have a big influence on the performance. (…)

Fourth, the global nature of soccer facilitates the transfer of technol-

ogy and skills”(Krause & Szymanski, 2019:2981).

We first sampled 442 individuals from 20 teams to gather individ-

ual level data of individuals' performance in teams led by monocultural

and multicultural managers. We then analyzed team-level data for

269 teams with varying percentages of multicultural members. Results

confirm that multicultural individuals performed better in teams with

multicultural managers, and teams led by multicultural managers out-

performed teams with the same percentage of multicultural players

led by monocultural managers.

We proceed as follows. First, we review the literature of multicul-

turalism and leader-follower alignment. We develop hypotheses about

how multicultural interactions affect performance of multicultural

individuals and teams. Next we explain our data, method, and models

and then present results and robustness tests. We conclude by noting

theoretical and practical implications of our results, discussing limita-

tions of this research, and suggesting future research.

2|LITERATURE REVIEW

The number of multicultural individuals is rapidly growing worldwide

and they have become an important demographic in organizations

(Furusawa & Brewster, 2015). Therefore, it should come as no sur-

prise that multicultural research is gaining momentum in international

management literature. This section outlines the theoretical and

empirical literature concerning multiculturals in organizations and

notes a gap in these studies.

Hong (2010) shows that multicultural employees succeed in mul-

tinational organizations because of the ability to refer to multiple cul-

tural information and knowledge systems due to their exposure to

multiple cultures. Brannen, Moore and Mughan (2013) proposed that

multiculturals can act as bridges across multicultural teams to reduce

the impact of faultlines. Multiculturals' greater metacognition

(Brannen, Garcia, & Thomas, 2009) enables them to act as cultural

bridges and enhance communication and trust in multicultural organi-

zations (Brannen & Thomas, 2010; Hong, 2010). Since communication,

collaboration, and trust facilitate knowledge transfer, multiculturals

enhance organizational performance (Brannen & Thomas, 2010). Mul-

ticulturals benefit multinational organizations because they span

boundaries, bridge cultures and fault lines, and stimulate innovation

and creativity (Brannen & Thomas, 2010). Fitzsimmons, Miska, and

Stahl (2011) propose three ways multicultural persons elevate team

performance: by bridging cultural fault lines, by reducing time to

implement new ideas, and by deflecting groupthink, that is, they

expand the knowledge base of their teams by bringing in unconven-

tional solutions and new ideas.

Scholarly consensus holds that multiculturals can improve organi-

zational performance. Fitzsimmons (2013) argues that plurality of

identity constitutes intra-group social and structural capital and

relates positively to actions, performance skills, and analytical skills. At

the group level outcomes, she proposes that higher identity plurality

is related to higher levels of relational social capital and higher levels

of structural social capital. At the task level of analysis, she proposes

that identity plurality is positively related to actions skills and analyti-

cal skills. Lakshman (2013) attributes multiculturals' cross-cultural

leadership skills to their attributional complexity and knowledge. He

proposes that decisions grounded in these attributes affect cross-

cultural leadership by enhancing subordinates' satisfaction, motiva-

tion, leader acceptance, and performance. In conclusion, there seemed

to be a consensus that multiculturals have the potential to contribute

positively to organizational performance.

Extensive empirical research followed these initial theoretical

foundations. Most studies focus on such antecedents and conse-

quences of bicultural competence as boundary spanning (Yagi &

Kleinberg, 2011), creativity and flexibility (Tadmor et al., 2012), cul-

tural orientation-switching (Friedman et al., 2012), cross-cultural

conflict mediation (Kiesel & Haghirian, 2012), or ethical relativism

(Hrenyk et al., 2016). Okamoto and Teo (2012) find that multicul-

turals are effective cultural mediators because they tailor behavior

to cultural frames. Barner-Rasmussen and colleagues (2014) echo

this finding and show that key cultural mediators (who can also

serve as boundary spanners) are vital organizational resources which

are difficult to imitate but few studies address how multiculturals

affect team and organizational performance, although Hong (2010)

suggests that too many multicultural team members might impair

trust. Liu (2015) proposes that bicultural competence facilitates

knowledge transfer between country of origin and country of

employment. Gillespie et al. (2010) report that upper managers in

multinational organizations are more likely to be multicultural.

Szymanski, Fitzsimmons, and Danis (2019) find that managers with

multicultural background enhance team performance, contingent on

the degree of globalization in the organization's environment. In this

study, we follow the same contingency approach to study the effect

of multicultural managers but instead of looking at the external

environment of the team, we examine the internal alignment of

leader-followers characteristics.

236 SZYMANSKI AND KALRA