Mutual Adjustment in International Teams

Multinational organisations have for a long time relied on the performance of international teams. Nevertheless, the success or failure of these teams is not yet well understood. In this book, Angelika Zimmermann argues that mutual adjustment between international team members is fundamental for their successful cooperation. She provides evidence from eleven teams of four combinations of nationalities - German-British, German-Japanese, German-Indian, and German-Austrian - in two German companies. In a one-year longitudinal study, in-depth interviews and observations were conducted with 116 participants. The resulting model captures mutual adjustment at the level of cognitive processes, attitudes and behaviours of team members. It further demonstrates how these internal adjustment components are influenced by external context factors. External factors are seen to influence the power relationships between team members, which in turn determine the direction of adjustment. The book provides valuable insights not only for researchers, but also for international team members, managers, and human resource specialists.