Cultural Differences Management At The Top Management Team Level

The rise of foreign firms investing in foreign countries has raised the need for culturally different TMTs to lead those firms for success purposes.In the past few years,Zimbabwe has had an increase in the number of Chinese investors setting up their businesses in the country.As most of these firms are led by TMTs comprising of Chinese and Zimbabweans,the cultural differences aspect in those teams has an impact on the teams' performance and the firm as well.The purpose of this research is therefore to analyse Cultural differences at the TMT level of Chinese firms in Zimbabwe.A qualitative descriptive approach was used for this research with twenty seven top managers interviewed from five different Chinese firms in Zimbabwe.The findings unveiled that cultural differences at the TMT level of these firms need to be managed well to ensure success.Challenges pertaining to managing the cultural differences were unveiled by the top managers as well as solutions to rectify the challenges.Cultural differences at the TMT level were revealed as having a positive impact on the quality of decisions made by the TMT.A negative impact on the quality of decisions made by the TMT was highlighted where cultural differences were not managed well hence raising the need for Chinese firms in Zimbabwe to consider the management of cultural differences at their TMT level for better development.The Upper Echelons theory was implemented as the theoretical base of the research by the researcher.