Introduction to the Special Issue: Collaboration in multicultural environments

• Date: 01 August 2013
• Author: Eduardo Salas,Michele J. Gelfand
• Published date: 01 August 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.1880

Introduction to the Special Issue: Collaboration in

multicultural environments

EDUARDO SALAS

1

*AND MICHELE J. GELFAND

2

*

1

University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.

2

University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, U.S.A.

The nature of organizational work is changingat an incredible pace. In an era of rapid globalization and advancement of

technology, many organizations, civilian and government alike, are turning toward multinational collaborative work

arrangements in order to gain an advantage and remain competitive. Rapidly developing technology has broken down

geographic boundaries, making multinational corporations and overseas employment the wave of the future in both

industry and government. Two decades ago, the use of collaborative work structures within organizations became the

norm as organizations strived to remain competitive within an ever-changing environment. Today, the complexity of

working within a global marketplace has added a cultural layer onto an already complex dynamic. From an organiza-

tional standpoint, the globalization of the marketplacehas been argued to be one of the most significant changes to work

environments within the last decade (Earley & Gibson, 2002). The drive toward globalization has resulted in

organizationsincreasingly expanding to overseasmarkets where organizationalviability is driven by the ability to work

collaboratively across and within cultures different than one's own. While cultural diversity often brings with it new

perspectives and innovative solutions, differences in culture and viewpoint can also lead to misunderstandings and

interaction problems. Therefore, there is a pressing need to understand the processes and influences of intercultural

collaboration as well as how to manage the process to result in the most effective outcomes possible.

In this spirit,we set forth in this special issue to featurecutting-edge research on collaboration across cultures.To date,

scholarshipabout this phenomenon has paid little attention to the antecedents,moderators, and outcomes in populations

outside ofthe United States. As this specialissue clearly shows, studiesof organizational behaviorcan contribute unique

insights aboutcollaboration when it involvesrepresentatives from diverse national and culturalbackgrounds. The seven

articles featured in this special issue illustrate an array of novel theoretical and empirical approaches that comprise the

leading edge of research on cross-cultural collaboration.

In putting together this special issue, our editorial goal was to identify novel, creative, and high-quality scholarship

that sheds new light on the impact of culture on collaboration. The Call for Papers welcomed theoretical and empirical

papers that exploreda variety of predictors and moderators of effective interactionbetween individuals across cultures.

More specifically, we sought manuscripts that examined collaboration by drawing upon diverse methodologies,

disciplinary perspectives, and theoretical frameworks in various national contexts. The papers in this special issue are

rigorous and insightful and push our understanding forward in important ways.

The final seven articles presented in this special issue underwent a review process that is standard for this journal's

editorial process. The editorial team and reviewers worked collectively to provide authors with constructive feedback

to develop their manuscripts. The works' final manuscripts offered in this volume are the best of those submitted and

are diverse in numerous respects. Collectively, they represent a variety of research methodologies, including archival

analyses, experiments, participant observation, standardized interviews, field studies, and multiple case studies as well

as a breadth of research settings. They rely upon state-of-the-art analysis techniques, from multidimensional scaling to

meta-analysesto multilevel modeling and beyond.This set of studies highlights therichness of this growing domain of

cross-cultural research focused on the important processes of collaboration.

*Correspondence to: Michele Gelfand, University of Maryland College Park, Maryland U.S.A. E-mail: mgelfand@psyc.umd.edu;

Eduardo Salas, Department of Psychology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. E-mail: esalas@ist.ucf.edu

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 13 June 2013, Accepted 13 June 2013

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 34, 735–738 (2013)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.1880

Introduction