Methods to Enhance Group Performance in Intercultural Collaboration

This master thesis analyzes distinct methods which are used to enhance group performance in intercultural collaboration as well as the importance of those methods in general. To answer this question, the author conducted seven narrative interviews with people who already gained much intercultural experience. Afterwards, the qualitative findings were evaluated and used as a foundation for a quantitative online survey. The results show that there are several methods which are deemed to be most useful for enhancing intercultural collaboration. Those are the concept of establishing and enforcing group norms, the concept of group identity and the concept of role identity. The results also reveal that the process of implementing these methods into actual work tends to be rather difficult and time-consuming. This master thesis emphasizes on the circumstance that different intercultural working groups have different needs and peculiarities which makes it hard to generalize between them. Therefore, this master thesis can be seen as an overview about the topic rather than an actual guide to success for intercultural working groups.