Abstract
This study examines cultural identity salience - defined as the extent to which an individual finds the cultural backgrounds of his or her team members to be salient - within the context of multinational teams. Instead of assuming that the cultural backgrounds of team members in a multinational team are salient to each team member, cultural identity salience was assessed empirically in a study of 15 culturally heterogeneous teams based in the United States. The results suggest that team members who have the same country of origin as either most or very few of their fellow team members view culture as being salient. In addition, team citizenship behavior was found to be exhibited when there was dispersion in team members' cultural salience assessments. This study offers a new approach for empirically assessing the effects of culture in multinational teams. Implications for multinational team composition efforts are discussed.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
