the overall rm and their parts in it, high capacity for self-control and willingness to

collaborate, and capacity to negotiate their differences.

22
This requires constant
attention to the application of what Evans calls glue technology, or the management
development technology of integration, that is, management development practices
that have as a primary purpose the integration of the management and executive
workforce of the rm and the building of the necessary competencies to use the
resulting networks in an effective way.
23
Such global management development
programs are discussed more fully in Chapter 10 on training and executive
development.
Use and management of cross-border teams
Given the increasing complexity of organizations as described so far in this book and
in this and the prior chapter, much of the work that needs to get done in a global
enterprise requires a high degree of interaction and interdependence between globally
dispersed organizations and between people in various, globally dispersed sections of
those organizations. This interaction is often relegated to a work group, or team.
24
And, increasingly, these teams are made up of people from multiple and varying
organizations (or parts of the same organization), geographic locations, countries,
cultures, languages, ways of thinking and working, and time zones. Often they have
the characteristics of virtual teams, that is, they dont meet face to face and are not
co-located, they are widely geographically dispersed.
These cross-border teams come with many different names: global teams,
multinational, multicultural, transnational, trans-cultural, geographically distributed or
geographically dispersed, non-co-located or out-of-sight teams. All of these terms
refer to the phenomenon of people working together in teams, with common goals,
who are not physically located in the same place and often do not meet but rather
conduct their business via electronic means. In this book, such teams will generally
be referred to by the term cross-border teams, since this is the primary structure of
interest in this chapter and the phrasing that seems to be most commonly used.
These cross-border teams represent a dramatic change in the way managers function
and they present two major new challenges.
25
Both of these challenges stem from
issues related to the physical separation of workers and managers made necessary by
globalization
26
and possible by technology:
27
The rst challenge has to do with managing people you cant see. Managers must
make the transition from managing which activities get done when to managing
projects and their results.
The second managerial challenge is to redene the role of management, itself, since
the virtual nature of cross-border teams creates much uncertainty as to whether
managers still have a role to play in managing employees who are no longer present
in the same locale. In addition, these teams tend to be largely self-managing, with the
members working very interdependently via the internet.
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Organizational structure and design of MNEs 81