Culture and Collaboration

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Culture and Collaboration

Most collaborative teams in industry and in the classroom include people from other cultures. The challenge for all team members is to understand the ways in which cultural differences can affect team behavior. People from other cultures

For more about multicultural issues, see Ch. 5.

Even the most benign gesture of friendship on the part of a U.S. student can cause confusion. If a U.S. student casually asks a Japanese student about her major and the courses she is taking, the Japanese student might find the question too personal—yet she might consider it perfectly appropriate to talk about her family and her religious beliefs (Lustig & Koester, 2012). Therefore, you should remain open to encounters with people from other cultures without jumping to conclusions about what their actions might or might not mean.