Abstract:

A few years ago, the term VUCA (an acronym for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) appeared in the business literature to describe business environments. A VUCA business environment is estimated to reshape and add stress to any business activity and industry included in the environment under consideration (Saleh & Watson, 2017).

Managing a global team in any multinational company can be considered a separate business due to the uniqueness of each team. Teams are driven by the need to ensure business growth, pursue superior development, and continuously seek trade-offs between multiple and sometimes simultaneous decision-making processes (Blanchard et al., 1993).

Over the last decades, a growing number of authors have been interested in the relationship between team diversity and decision-making processes (Meyer, 2017; Li et al., 2016; Rao & Tilt, 2016; van Dijk & van Engen, 2013). Some research has addressed the diversity of multinational company work teams from different perspectives, analyzing the differences between possible subgroups based on people's gender, age, formal education, nationality or primary culture, and the teams’ geographical location.

There is also research that has analyzed the decision-making processes of work teams and found significant differences in thinking styles (Tonetto et al., 2021; Liang et al., 2021; Paik, Lee, & Pak, 2019; Arslanoglu, Dogan, & Acar, 2018; Ilie & Cardoza, 2018; Jensen et al., 2016; Vance, Zell, & Groves, 2008) and some cognitive biases that affect established decision-making processes (Hristov et al., 2022; Stapleton, 2019; Kinsey et al., 2019; Juárez Ramos, 2018; Costa et al., 2017).

This study analyses the influence of team diversity in a multinational company on decision-making processes. Specifically, the paper presents the relationships between five elements or factors associated with team diversity (gender, age, education, nationality, geographical location) and two categories of individual factors influencing the decision-making process (thinking styles and cognitive biases).

A questionnaire has been developed based on the Linear Thinking & Non-Linear Thinking Styles scale (Vance et al., 2007; Groves et al., 2008; Groves & Vance, 2015) and cognitive biases scales of base rate neglect, Wason test, anchoring, and cognitive reflection test (Enke et al., 2023). The questionnaire was answered by 536 people working in different country divisions and international teams of the multinational company analyzed.

Various multivariate analysis methodologies have been applied to segment the subsamples based on independent variables (PLS-SEM, K-means cluster analysis) and to determine the existence of statistically significant differences between the subsamples (normality test, mean difference tests, Levene's test, and test of independence).
The results suggest the existence of some statistically significant differences in the predominant thinking styles and cognitive biases committed during decision-making processes
(1) by women and men;
(2) by Baby Boom, X, Y, and Z generation individuals;
(3) by people with electrical or electronic engineering, other engineering, and different university degrees;
(4) by people who have a nationality and have grown up in a national culture different from the culture of the work team where they work; and
(5) by people working in country divisions from different continents.

Keywords:

Team diversity, Educational diversity, Decision-making processes, Thinking styles, Biases, Multinational company.