Malleable Mindset and Cross-Cultural Interactions in Multicultural Engineering Teams
Session We2: Nov 11, 10:40 AM
Abstract:
Background:
Globalization has rapidly diversified the engineering industry. Success in the field today demands not only technical skills but also the capacity to break down cultural barriers and foster multicultural collaboration. Past research informs us of the impact that mindset has when working in multicultural settings (Chao & Kung, 2015; Dweck & Leggett, 1988). We draw on this research and examine how a malleable cultural mindset influences cross-cultural interactions in the engineering field within teams and in general.
A malleable cultural mindset is defined as the belief that cultural differences observed in people are socially constructed, learned, and fluid throughout life (Kung et al., 2018). Malleable cultural mindsets promote more positive attitudes and collaboration tendencies in multicultural situations (Chao & Kung, 2015; Kung et al., 2018). We hypothesize that engineers with more malleable cultural mindsets will have greater positive cross-cultural attitudes in general, and will report more multicultural team competency.
Methods:
We recruited 248 practicing engineers to participate in an online survey about cultural mindset and cross-cultural interactions in the engineering field. Cultural mindset was measured with four validated items (e.g., “The ethnic culture a person is from (e.g., Chinese, American, Japanese), determines the kind of person they would be (e.g., outgoing and sociable or quiet and introverted); not much can be done to change the person” (reverse-coded); Chao et al., 2016).
To capture their cross-cultural attitudes, we asked participants to respond to questions about their attitudes toward cross-cultural interactions in general (e.g., “In getting to know someone, I like knowing both how he/she differs from me and is similar to me.” Miville et al., 1999) and in teams (e.g., “I make an effort to communicate in ways that other members will understand.” van Knippenberg et al., 2004). Subsequently, participants reported their competency with working in multicultural teams (e.g., “I can collaborate and work towards common goals as a member of a multicultural team.” Mazzurco, Jesiek, & Godwin, 2019). Finally, participants answered basic demographic questions (e.g., age, gender, position, industry).
Results:
Our results showed support for our hypothesis. Engineers’ stronger malleable cultural mindsets were associated with more positive cross-cultural attitudes both in general (r = .40, p<.001) and in teams (r = .30, p<.001). Greater malleable mindsets also correlated with higher levels of self-reported multicultural team competency (r = .42, p<.001).
Conclusion:
These findings of correlations of moderate strength suggest that engineers’ cultural mindset is connected to and important for their cross-cultural attitudes and multicultural team effectiveness. These results support the general and group benefits of a malleable mindset in the engineering field and provide important validation for the movement towards encouraging greater cultural competence in the workplace.
Although these findings align with our theoretical model, limitations of the study include a focus on individuals rather than teams and correlational findings that do not afford causal conclusions. Future research by this team will examine both individual- and team-level outcomes in an experimental design and conduct direct tests of the results of malleable vs fixed mindsets in the engineering field rather than relying on indirect attitudinal and reported competency measures alone.