5.2 Introduction

Diversity and thus heterogeneity has become a mainstream topic in global business. This is not only due to the growing interconnectedness of all business areas but also due to an increasingly diverse, mobile workforce and marketplace, changing workforce demographics, scarcity of labour and the availability of global internet access. These developments have facilitated the organisation and growth of work groups whose members come from a wide range of diverse backgrounds.

These diverse backgrounds indicate membership of different collectives, which can be linked to characteristics such as education, family history, profession, gender, languages and lifestyles. Membership of these collectives influences a range of factors, such as the resources and capabilities members are able to bring to the team; the expectations members harbour with regard to working styles and the way members expect to communicate with each other.

In the workplace environment, culturally diverse teams provide a vast number of opportunities to increase performance, creativity and innovation. However, they equally throw up some challenges which need to be faced and overcome. One of the first tasks is therefore to identify the level and type of homogeneity and heterogeneity of a team and develop strategies that will enable the team to utilise and benefit from its diversity in order to achieve its goal. In other words, a team which ignores its diversity and is not willing and/or ready to manage this issue will find it difficult to fully mature as a team. The purpose of this unit is thus to introduce the MBI approach as a tool to identify commonalities and differences and investigate how these can be used to benefit the team. This 'MBI' approach involves mapping (M), bridging (B) and integration (I).

While the Tuckman model illustrated the process of team development, the MBI approach is a tool which can enhance the quality of the team’s performance by making commonalities and differences explicit and generating a discussion centred around ways of creating mutuality. As a tool, it can be applied during the initiating phase and at any time during the norming phase when anybody in the team feels that there is an issue.