Multinational Teams: Values, Productivity, and Operational Integration

Data were gathered from 147 employees in two U.S. headquartered multinational manufacturing companies. Participants responded to questions about their work-related values, perceptions of the productivity of their work teams, and the degree of operational integration between firms¿ foreign affiliate offices and their U.S. based headquarters. Additionally, analyses were conducted to assess the relationship between team productivity and psychic distance, which is a measure of country-level cultural differences. As expected, work values were found to be different between a firm¿s headquarters and a foreign office and work values predicted perceptions of team productivity when controlling for the age of the team. Psychic distance was found to predict team productivity when team age was controlled, and a more highly integrated degree of operational integration was found to relate to perceived productivity. Contrary to expectation, a significant interaction was not found to exist between work values, degree of integration, and psychic distance. However, a significant interaction was found between psychic distance and work values.