The difference in management styles of local and international managers in culturally diverse call centres

Abstract

Over the last decade, organisations have started to change the way they do business. Every day more companies are trying to cover different markets and establish their brand globally. In the current business environment, cultural diversity is rapidly becoming a day-to-day reality for more and more managers. The research undertaken as part of this project may help to develop current management styles in order to improve the overall results of an organisation. The purpose of this dissertation is to answer the question of why the management styles of international managers has different results as compared to that of local managers in a culturally diverse call centre environment. In order to answer this question, research was undertaken to analyse and compare the different management styles of local and international managers when handling culturally diverse teams, and to investigate the effect of the different management styles upon those culturally diverse teams. Once these objectives were met, the researcher proposed the optimum management style for managing culturally diverse teams. The subject areas covered in this dissertation are cultural diversity, management styles and the organisational context of call centres. The population selected for this research project is made up of managers and employees from multicultural call centres based in Ireland. In short, the results from the questionnaires and interviews showed that it was evident that cultural diversity existed within the different call centre teams researched, that international managers obtained different results from multicultural teams, such as better relationships and communication within the team, and that those teams were generally more effective than others managed by local managers. In summary, this research gives an overview of the current management situation of culturally diverse teams, which the researcher believes could be useful to any manager who deals with a culturally diverse team.