Abstract
As a collective group describes a group of people with the same national origin and culture values (Hofstede 2001), I can say my research team consists of two collectives groups, "Chi Ling Lin", "Zhang Ziyi" and "Jet Li" with a Chinese nationality, and I, "Samir", with a French nationality. Thus two different types of culture, or value systems, are facing, Western culture which promotes more the individual success and Eastern culture which emphasizes more the collective work (Dowling 1995). I will explain the profits that I got from this team working and the challenges of communication within the team that I had to face.
Being aware of the differences in the value systems helped us to be more efficient together and to take advantages of the benefits, despite the difficulties, that those differences offer. I think, while being supported by Kolb's (1984), the main benefits of cross-cultural team working are; the increase of the learning process, as a creation of new knowledge, attitudes and abilities. Working with people coming from different areas exposed me to new knowledge and learning style than I may experience individually (Hofstede 2001, Appendix 3) in my home environment. For example I have progressed at an international level by knowing more about the Chinese culture (Appendix 1, Figure 1) and speaking continually English.
