As a result of the increasing globalization more and more organizations are operating
internationally. Such multinational companies often rely on successful teamwork to reach goals
and to compete on the fast-paced global market. Indeed teamwork plays an important role and
can lead to faster results. Teams whose members come from different nations and backgrounds
place special demands on operations diversity clearly adds complexity and a longer learning
curve for establishing effective processes. In the multicultural team the role of emotions has
gained increasing interest in the last years practitioners report that where people work
together emotions are not far to seek. An awareness of emotions seems to be especially
important as cultural differences in emotion processing and diversity among members may cause
negative emotion and lead to conflict and misunderstandings what may have serious consequences
reducing performance. The aim of this book is to identify challenges for multinational teams
focusing on emotions within the team and to propose emotional intelligence as an approach to
multicultural team effectiveness.
