Cultural standard research and its implications for managing multinational teams: cooperation with Croatians and Slovenes - the Austrian perspective

This article examines the impact of different cultural variables in the particular contexts of Austrian, Croatian and Slovenian task groups. Referring to the concept of taxonomy of team processes developed by Marks et al. (2001), I analysed about 102 qualitative interviews with managers and identified cultural traits that significantly influence process dimensions relevant in cooperations. In contrast to other culture studies (see e.g., House et al., 2002; Sagiv and Schwartz, 2007; Hall, 2000; Trompenaars, 1997; Hofstede, 2001) the framework of narrative interviews (Thomas, 1993, 1996) focuses on many different cultural variables and on the particular contexts of these variables. I identified the following critical elements relevant for interactions in intercultural teamwork: time concepts in different context situations, level of personal responsibility and importance of social relationships.