Challenges of Trust Building in Intercultural Teams With Focus on German-Indian Collaboration

Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Leadership and Human Resource Management - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, University of Applied Sciences Worms, language: English, abstract: Based on the existing literature and an empirical study conducted with 15 German managers, this work derived 22 trust factors that are important for the development of trust between German managers and Indian colleagues or business partners. The results show that, there is a vast variety of trust factors that need to be considered. Additionally, the results show that cultural differences can lead to trust misunderstandings, initiated by different interpretation and diagnosis of behavior. Afterwards, recommendations for action were derived from the research findings. With this work, German managers are able to acquire knowledge about the Indian business culture, trust factors that are important in the development of trust between Germans and Indians and how they can understand, prevent or dissolve cultural misunderstandings. Today’s business world is global, complex, dynamic, highly competitive and extremely volatile. This has increased the importance of internationalization strategies for companies in order to be competitive. In recent years, the interest for emerging markets has increased due to the size of the markets and the amount of customers, as well as the technology and human resources available. India has grown to one of the world's leading exporters of computer software and is an attractive country for Foreign Direct Investments (FDI). However, intercultural collaborations often fail to succeed due to cultural differences and difficulties in the process of trust building. Nonetheless, the presence of interpersonal trust is highly important to successfully manage the increase in complexity and uncertainty of today’s business environment.