Use Transnational Teams to Globalize Your Company - Essay Example

Use Transnational Teams to Globalize Your Company Transnational teaming is defined broadly as “a work group composed of multinational members whose activities span multiple countries (Snow, Davison, Snell and Hambrick, 1996).” Formation of this type of teams is made possible like any other business decisions wherein senior management decides to form one and directs operating units to implement the decision. Snow et al.’s article states three primary uses of transnational teams namely; “to help achieve global efficiency, to enable their companies to be locally responsive and for organizational learning (1996).

” The various models of transnational teams presented in the article show effectiveness and efficiency, and prove that transnational teams contribute the strategic, tactical and operational business strategies, goals and objectives.Aside from contributing to the overall thrust of the company, transnational teams also are a source of leadership, staffing challenges, able to communicate globally using modern and emerging technologies and often comprised of multidiscipline and multicultural team members.

In the globalize world of today, transnational teams are at the center of this evolution and are contributing vastly to the improvement of business processes aligned with information technology and other emerging ideas.The idea of forming transnational teams has always been an innovative idea for companies to find their niche in the global market. The different scenarios presented in the article proves that transnational teams indeed work from setting up new technologies, opening new markets or starting a regional or branch office.

But the thrust of any business is to increase the bottom line and satisfy stakeholders thus in utilizing transnational teams; the company enables transfer of technology, manufacturing or production facilities in Third World countries or emerging economies. The reason for this is the lower labor, production and overall operating costs. From the social responsibility point of view, there could be questions of exploitations or unfair labor practices, and these are just one of the few issues that adjuncts to globalization and transnational teams.

Aside from these, forming transnational teams with differing cultural and social beliefs may take time to fully enable the team to work together. As Snow et al. states: “Today’s international companies – even large, sophisticated global leaders – probably will discover that they must dramatically improve their human resources departments to support transnational teams properly.(1996)”Even if companies with transnational teams manage to pull their resources together, there could be issues regarding compensation – i.e. does a Thai team member make the same as an American team member?

– This is a concern considering effectiveness of the team is dependent on the basic package they get and “if you pay them peanuts, you’ll get a monkey’s work!”Thus, transnational teams are important in the global arena but stakeholders and directors should and must be cognizant of their social responsibility by giving fair pay for work done by people. Not because a transnational team member is a Western European, he should be paid more for the same job performed by a Czech – just because their respective country’s economies differ.

Since the global arena seeks to balance how business is done worldwide, social corporate responsibility must be a forefront in all business transactions.Bibliography:Snow, Charles, Davison, Sue Canney, Snell, Scott A. and Hambrick, Donald C. “Use Transnational Teams to Globalize Your Company.” Organizational Dynamics. Spring 1996.