Empirical Analysis of Intercultural Communication and Multicultural Team Performance: A Case of Uzbek and Russian Managers in Uzbekistan

There is a practical problem which this study will solve given that Uzbekistan is a country in which members of many ethnicities live. This article aims at identifying the Intercultural communication competence of Russian and Uzbek managers, team performance of a diverse team, and analyze how well these nations collaborate with each other. The main objective of this study is to explain the high team performance and intercultural communication competence. The data had been collected from various companies across Uzbekistan. Both online and paper questionnaires were distributed to Russian and Uzbek managers. Fundamental statistical procedures are applied to answer the questions of our research. Descriptive statistics, reliability and validity testing, regression modeling and other statistical indicators were used to validate our theory. The findings suggested that Russian and Uzbek managers do not differ significantly in their Intercultural communication competence. Overall intercultural competence score of Russian managers is insignificantly higher. Nonetheless, Uzbek respondents scored higher on the Interpersonal Skills dimension than Russian participants. Team performance of Uzbek managers is higher than Russian ones. Through regression analysis, an impact of Intercultural Communication Competence on Multicultural Team Performance has also been established. The mentioned studies have implications for the practice of Uzbek companies, and organizational theory, as such research has not been conducted on the sample of these nations. The study provides a knowledge foundation, and it will give us a specific insight into Uzbekistan working culture and relationships between different cultural backgrounds.


Introduction
Team performance is a crucial component of organizational success. Organizations rely on teams to work on various complex tasks delivering quality output and in enriching organizational knowledge. Many new challenges are arising in complex environments characterized by geographical dispersion, virtual work, collaboration, and various types of diversities.
In such geographical dispersed environment, it may be quite difficult for the various unit members to collaborate effectively. Furthermore, managing and overseeing work of such units and individual team members may be difficult due to the inability to collaborate effectively. Another reason that this may happen is diversity. Diverse teams are often put together to meet the tests of complex operations.
In order to master the complexity of the proce sses and work tasks, teams from different divisions, background, and knowledge are usually constructed. The effects of such teams can have positive effects. Nevertheless, those people have difficulties in communicating due to their different languages as special terminology, slang or dialects. As language is also rooted in the culture, effective communication would require a combination of both understandings of verbal signals and culture. When it comes to diversity based on national cultures, the problems may go further than the language itself. Especially for those reasons, the following proposal focuses on drivers of team performance in the light of cultural diversity.
Intercultural communication is a key factor conducive to various outcomes in teams (Badubi, 2017). It may have a strong implication on how members of the team communicate with each other. It may impact team cohesiveness and performance. The leaders of teams should be able to communicate well with other members through verbal language and ot her nonverbal means of communication.
Team performance has been studied from many perspectives in the current management literature. Impacts of various individual behaviors, organizational concepts and management initiatives on performance have been studied. However, the cultural impact on how members of teams collaborate has not fully been investigated. National culture and cultural diversity have been scarcely studied in the management literature. Even though a line of researchers led by Hofstede takes national culture as a major component of management outcomes, it is still an understudied concept. Also, in the literature reviews of other authors it is concluded that their findings are not consistent (e.g., Harrison, Price, & Bell, 1998;Kirkman, Tesluk, & Rosen, 2004). The following study aims to solve a problem of finding out and to what extenders cultural diversity factors impact team performance.
Also, there is a practical problem, which this study will solve given that Uzbekistan is a country where members of many ethnicities live. Thus, this research intends to study the team performance of diverse teams and how well these nations collaborate with each other. This will provide a knowledge foundation work, and gives a specific insight into Uzbekistan working culture and relationships between different cultural backgrounds.
The main objective of this study is to explain the impact that the intercultural communication competence on the team performance. The second objective is to evaluate the relations hips between each variable and the levels of them.
Basically, there are the following sub-objectives: • To explain whether intercultural communication competence impacts multicultural team performance • To explain the differences between Uzbek and Russian managers • To identify the levels of these constructs among Uzbek companies • To suggest companies on how to help facilitate resolving cultural differences to increase team performance.
The globalization process has led to the internationalization of businesses. Most of the people in the business sphere spend time communicating with different people from diverse backgrounds. In this regard, it is important to have an essential communication skill in order to have a successful cooperation and negotiation proce ss (Alexei, 2004). Apart from this, it is important to be familiar with the culture and language of the people that you are dealing with. Depending on the cultural diversity of people, a person can think of strategies through which he or she can send the message and understand the way how receivers accept, perceive or even reject their proposals. Therefore, the intercultural communication process is quite an important factor. Moreover, it is important to note that apart from the cultural background of the people that one is dealing with, a person should understand different types of personalities, their previous knowledge, experience and the way how they deal with conflicts (Steven, 2009).
The understanding of multicultural differences and communication pro cess become quite essential when working with multicultural teams. Those chief financial officers and managers of large businesses which operate in international markets by leading multinational businesses often start their career process through corporate ladder. During passing through corporate ladders, they have to deal with people from different backgrounds, and what is more important, they consider that cultural differences which are encountered in these people are only minor obstacles that can be dealt without any difficulty. Thus, they allocate only limited attention to understand the cultural differences of people working under their teams.

Work Group Diversity
Diversity is mainly defined in reference to differences between individuals where one person perceives himself to be different from another person (Jackson, 1992). It can be concluded from the review of the literature that papers on diversity topic mainly focused on the differences in gender, ethnicity, age and educational background (Martins, 1996). In this regard, the main question may arise as to what extent the differences between group members may impact on team performance and its effectiveness. In order to answer these questions, there are types of research areas in diversity research with the first one being focused on social categorization and the second one decision making perspective.
It should be mentioned that often these areas of research are loose in terms of definition. For instance, it is important to consider the starting point for the perspective of social categorization which describes the similarities and differences between work groups. Social categorization perspective distinguishes between group members based on t heir in-group members and outgroup members. However, in the case of diverse groups, this categorization is done based on the subgroups within work groups.
The review of the literature shows that people are more likely to welcome more ingroup members compared to outgroup members. Moreover, ingroup members are trusted more, and they are more likely to be cooperated with (Brewer, 1979). The main reason for this is that this way of categorization helps group members to work more smoothly when they are similar to each other (Sánchez-Rodríguez et al., 2018). However, it might be difficult for them to cooperate when group members are more diverse. Group members are more likely to communicate with each other, and they are attracted to each other when they are homogenous (Oreilly, 1989).
Therefore, social categorization theory can be explained mainly based on the perspective of similarity and attraction (Oreilly 1998). The main idea behind this categorization perspective attraction is defined based on an individual's value and attitudes instead of focusing social group (Byrne, 1971). Furthermore, people are more willing to work with other people who are quite similar to them based on the social categorization perspective (Jackson, 1992).

Cultural Diversity and Communication Effectiveness
The growing presence of employees from different backgrounds and cultures since the 1980s implies that there has been a dramatic change in many organizations. To ensure a smooth and effective means of communication, co-workers should take into consideration different factors. However, the failure to understand the impact of employee's cultural background For example, some employers can think of changing their food -related parties and different events during the holy month of Ramadan, which is followed by many Muslims in Islam. Those companies which fail in understanding the essence of cultural diversity and traditions may put their employees in a situation where it will be embarrassing for them.
With the development of the technology and a growing global economy, international businesses are finding themselves in a transition process (Gabriel, 2016). Many companies depend on global business operations. As a result, we can see the increase in the complexity of the modern workplace which requires a high level of collaboration and interaction among workers from different backgrounds who work in one team.

Hypotheses Development
The review of the literature in the field of multicultural management has led to the several different hypotheses which are described below. As most of the businesses have become global by operating in more than one country, the outcome of their business mainly depends on a different set of factors including the management of people from different backgrou nds. When team members collaborate effectively with each other and cooperate properly, the outcomes of the project are going to be more positive.

Hypothesis-1
There are differences in the intercultural communication competence based on gender, age, level of education and work experience of people.
Findings of several papers have shown that it is of critical importance to understand the intercultural communication processes observed in teams and it is quite essential for the effective operations and functioning of teams (Bonito, 2008). The studies carried in this field of communication process had revealed a number of critical dimensions of communication competence and factors which are essential for a positive intercultural environment. For instance, several papers have analyzed the influence of work duties, age and personal as well as general factors which influence cross -cultural management process. However, there is a lack of papers when it comes to the analyses of intercultural communication comp etence of Uzbek and Russian managers, and its impact on demographics including age, level of education and work experience.

Hypothesis-2
There are significant differences between intercultural communication competence of Uzbek and Russian managers.
It is important to note that the communication of competence of the person is directly related to his willingness to communicate, understanding and assertiveness of communication (Kang, 2006). In this regard, it should be mentioned that the way Russian peop le communicate is significantly different from the way Uzbek people do. This can be explained by the fact that Russian people are less likely to communicate with people from diverse backgrounds especially when they are strangers and people from the lower ranks of similar countries.

Hypothesis-3 (a)
Russian managers score higher when it comes to interpersonal skills, developing effective teams.

Hypothesis-3 (b)
Russian managers have high scores on intercultural communication competence than Uzbek managers.
Uzbek managers may show lower scores when it comes to demonstrating their interpersonal skills compared to Russian team members since Uzbek managers are less likely to differentiate between the communication and interaction styles that people from diverse backgrounds possess. Moreover, Uzbek people may face some challenges while dealing and communicating, negotiating with people from different cultures and they might be less flexible when it comes to solving several problems. This can be explained by the fact that Uzbekistan was not so open to international trade for many years after its independence and the number of foreign companies and franchisees was significantly limited. Moreover, due to the strong visa regimes, it was difficult for people to travel. However, after several years Uzbekistan has opened its doors for international trade by introducing changes in the policy. Moreover, it can be stated that Uzbek people are more oriented towards individuals rather than groups. This can be considered as one reason why they have a more positive orientation towards individual rather than team effectiveness.

Hypothesis-4
There is a relationship between the intercultural communication competence and multicultural team performance.
The review of the literature in the field of team development identified several stages in which team members pass being developed as a fully functional team (Alexie, 2014). Nevertheless, there are no papers in the literature which has analyzed the impact of intercultural communications on multicultural team performance. These stages include forming, storming, norming and performing. Forming is considered as one of the initial stages in which team members get to know each other through different activities, informal meetings, and activities. In this stage, most of the team members stay passive. It is difficult for them to consider themselves as a complete part of the group. This is a crucial stage of the multicultural team development stage as managers have a chance to introduce the objectives and missions of the project. Storming is regarded as one of the most challenging parts of group development stage since the ideas of an individual confronted with the ideas of other members of the group.
If everything goes as planned, team members succeed in understanding the main aim of the group project and move to the next stage which is known as norming. In this stage, team members develop trust towards each other and they consider themselves as an import ant part of the group. They show the willingness to contribute to the success of the team development. Thus, in this part, they agree on the common types of the goals and do their best in order to achieve these goals. In this process, the role of the leade r is to guide their subordinates towards the achievement of the project. Performing is considered as a final stage of team development and in this stage whole team members function as a whole unit.
Most of the members establish strong trust towards other members of the team and they become quite experienced in performing the tasks. Most of the conflicts which occur in this stage only contribute to the development of team performance and team members rely on minimal guidance from the leader at this stage. Thus, the main task of the group leader becomes delegation in this stage. Forming a team with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and leading them effectively is considered as one of the challenging tasks that leaders face. Particularly, there is lack of papers which analyzed the communication issues in the multicultural team development stages. Thus, this specific hypothesis will analyze the relationship between intercultural communication process competence of individuals and its Linear regression research model will be tested including those two variables below.

Research Methodology
The study uses a survey strategy, and the first step consists of reviewing literature in order to find suitable scales for measuring the variables of the model. The scales are combined to construct a questionnaire that was administered to the targeted sample. The questionnaire consists of demographic questions with multiple choices and all of the statements to be assessed with a Likert scale from strongly agree or strongly disagree. The survey sample was accessed through meetings with leaders of various company departments in Uzbekistan. We distributed the questionnaire online and individual respondent had access to the questionnaire through a web-link.

Questionnaire. Development and Variable Operalization
Two questionnaires were used to collect the answers from respondents. The scale which aimed to measure intercultural communication is called Intercultural Communication Competence Questionnaire (ICCQ): consisted of several dimensions that included items related to "intercultural communication knowledge, attitude, motivation, and skills" (Matveev, Rao, & Milter, 2001). In the research, the four dimensions are known as interpersonal skills, team effectiveness, cultural uncertainty, and cultural empathy.
The scale used in the study were adopted from the studies of Matveev (2002). He built his questionnaire on the Inte grated Intercultural Communication Competence Model that was founded on Abe and Wiseman's (1983) abilities model and Cui and Awa's (1992) concept of intercultural effectiveness.
And the high-performance team scale was taken from Matveev (2002). High -Performance Team Questionnaire (HPTQ) consisted of 42 items that assess and characterize team performance during the high-performance stage) of its development. The author based it on the integrated model of group development designed and tested by Wheelan (199 0;1994). Both scales were tested multiple times by Matveev in various contexts, where they showed high levels of reliability and validity.
All the answers were measured by the 7-point Likert scale, from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The questionnaire was examined for face validity and was approved by several experts in Uzbekistan, with a PhD in management. In order to eliminate the misunderstanding of the language, the questionnaire was translated into the Russian language.

Structural Model and Hypotheses Testing
Originally the number of respondents was 120; however after exclusion of missing values, the number of observations became equal to 109. Minimum and maximum values for each variable are presented as well.
As we are studying multi-cultural relationships between employees and their performance demographic along with individual characteristics are of great importance. Such control variables like educational level and background age and gender were included in the analysis.
Hypothesis-1 There are differences in the intercultural communication competence based on the gender, age, level of education and work experience of people. The reliability levels of the used scale were adequate after deleting eight items from the initial scale. The reliability was .734 EFA and CFA analysis secured appropriate validity. Table 2: T-Test (Gender) H1 The first hypothesis, emphasizes the relationship between demographic characteristics as independent variables and intercultural competence as a dependent. All the results can be seen in the table below which indicates demographic details such as education, a frequency of work in international teams, age as well as gender.

Hypothesis 2. There are significant differences between intercultural communication competence of Uzbek and Russian managers.
In addition to this t-test provided sufficient proof to answer other research questions. First of all, the results of the analysis for Intercultural communication competence is not the same in different nationalities. It means that people of different nationalitie s have different values of intercultural communication.
In this part of the starting, the conditions for the t-test have been changed slightly. The nationality of respondents was chosen as a predictor for the difference in the mean of Intercultural communication competence. Following the rules, all the tests for normality and homogeneity for two groups of participants were done as well.

Hypothesis 3. Russian managers score higher when it comes to interpersonal skills, developing effective teams (H3a), and they have high scores on intercultural communication competence than Uzbek managers (H3b).
Referring to the results, we can state that Russian respondents place some of the intercu ltural communication competencies such as interpersonal skills and team effectiveness in the first place. The same as in the previous hypothesis testing, we compare the results from Russian and Uzbek managers' samples. However, in this part, the difference s in cultural competency components of the dependent variable were studied. Comparison between respondents from two nationalities in terms cultural empathy and uncertainty were also tested with the help of t-test and correlation analysis. Reliability of the High-performance team was adequate from the start with 0.783 Cronbach's alpha and did not require any exclusion of items.

Correlation
Given that the measurement tool has been confirmed as valid and reliable, the analysis process continued with a correlation analysis. The correlations are presented in Table 7. In order to proceed with testing the structural model, the correlation between the variables must be in support of our hypothesis model.  Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). Correlation analysis that was performed indicates that two variables are positively correlated, thus fulfilling the assumption for the linear regression.

Regression
As the first step, the descriptives were calculated. HPT indicates Multicultural performance, whereas ICC indicates intercultural communication competence. The sample of analysis was 109 respondents.   In the process of analysis, ICC was input as an independent variable whereas, HPT was the dependent one. The R Square value was 0.183, which means that 18,3 percent of the variation in HPT can be explained by ICC.

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The ANOVA test was then performed in order to test the significance of the impacts. The Beta coefficient was 0.427. Additionally, collinearity indicators of tolerance and VIF showed that there was no multicollinearity issue.  To visually validate the findings of the linear regression, two plots were examined, a PP plot, where it is seen that data points follow the linear regression.

Intercultural Competence and Multicultural Team Performance
The findings of the study are in the line with prior studies suggesting that Intercultural communication competence has a positive impact on Multicultural team performance. The findings of other studies are therefore validated in the context of Uzbekistan, in a sample consisting of Russian and Uzbek managers. Forming a team with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and leading them effectively is considered as one of the challenging tasks that leaders face. The more experienced is the leader in communication, the more chances are of developing multicultural teams and increasing their performance.

Intercultural Communication Competence
Overall Russian managers rate insignificantly higher on intercultural competence than Uzbek managers do. However, Interpersonal Skills of Uzbek managers are higher than Russian. They are more willing to work with people from different countries, find it interesting and exciting. Additionally, they do not treat foreigners in the same way as they do local people.
The results of the study show that Uzbek people score higher in interpersonal skills compared to Russians. Several reasons can be proposed to explain this finding. Firstly, Uzbek people are more willing to work with people from different countries. Moreover, they find this process interesting and exciting. Moreover, from their cultural background, Uzbek people show high respect to people from a foreign background. This can be observed by the way how they meet, treat and communicate with people from different backgrounds. Due to the hospitality of Uzbek people, many foreign people also find it exciting and interesting to communicate and collaborate with Uzbek people.
The review of the literature shows tha t interpersonal skills are important means to achieve group objectives and highly effective team performance. Particularly it should be mentioned that the presence of interpersonal skills was mainly associated with satisfaction and high employee performance. Therefore, in order to ensure the effectiveness of culturally diverse teams, interpersonal skills of managers should be considered appropriately. Moreover, it is worth to mention that productivity has also been associated with good interpersonal skills.
Although it is quite difficult to measure the impact of interpersonal skills on productivity, it was studied in relation to feedback and job satisfaction. In this regard, it is also important to consider what constitutes good interpersonal skills. Cultural empathy values are almost the same, but mod erately higher for Russian managers. This study has also considered the cultural empathy between Uzbek and Russian managers. Cultural empathy is described as an ability of the person to see differences and similarities of his culture with other cultures. In this regard, despite both nationalities have almost the same scores, it should be mentioned that Russians have a higher score for cultural empathy compared to Uzbek people. One of the reasons for this can be explained by the openness of the Russian people in Uzbekistan to travel and collaborate with other nations and the level of development of their homeland. Russia is considered as one of the developed countries in CIS region and Russian people have a higher cultural empathy towards other nations.

Multicultural Team Performance
Team effectiveness and performance of Uzbek managers is higher than of Russian ones. Russian managers think that the presence of various nationalities in the team decreases performance and if the person speaks with the accent they can consider him less capable to do the work cultural uncertainty almost equal in both nationalities. Russian managers' report slightly higher values.

Akmal Khudaykulov, Alisher Doniyorov Empirical Analysis of Intercultural Communication and Multicultural Team Performance: A Case of Uzbek and Russian Managers in Uzbekistan
In order to explain this, several factors can be mentioned. As it was mentioned above, it can be attributed to the hospitality and good communication as well as interpersonal skills which are demonstrated by Uzbek people. Moreover, the review of the literature shows that interpersonal communication skills of the members has a critical impact on the effectiveness of the team performance. However, the review of the literature shows that despite the challenges which are faced while managing intercultural teams, the outcomes of the teamwork can be highly effective. Due to the cultural background, team members share various ideas and viewpoints which stimulates the discussion in teams and to take a look at the discussed problem from the different perspectives. Therefore, projects which are accomplished in multicultural teams are more effective.

Managerial Implications
To improve team effectiveness, it is critical to have a proper understanding of the main development stages through which team members pass. These stages include forming, storming, norming and performing.
A proper understanding of the team development stages and using effective strategies to prevent problems especially in difficult stages such as storming is critical for achieving and improving team effectiveness. As a conclusion both Russian managers and Uzbek mana gers should focus on developing intercultural competence as it leads to better team performance. Furthermore, organizations that consist out of such teams should recognize the importance of it and provide training for their managers and staff that would bu ild up their overall communication competence and deal with other cultures.

Conclusion
In order to investigate the difference between Intercultural communication competence of Russian and Uzbek managers, an empirical study was conducted. In the study, a link between cultural communication effectiveness and team performance was explored. We focus on developing a mechanism that would ensure companies to manage team performance better and act accordingly to manage cultural differences. The study resulted in new theoretical knowledge and therefore is significant for the academia. Additionally, the study showed specific levels of cultural diversity, communication effectiveness, and team performance in Uzbekistan firms, so there are practical implications for the firms belonging to the studied sample. There is a number of potential implications of this study for both nationalities. The findings of this study are useful for investors who want to launch their businesses in Uzbekistan or for those who w ant to cooperate with Uzbek people to establish their businesses. Understanding the differences and similarities between these two nationalities can help businesses people and project managers, team leader to choose the right strategy while working, choose the right style of management, communication, motivation and other necessary skills that might be useful while dealing with people from Uzbekistan and Russia.
Currently, due to the internationalization of businesses, many organizations need to run their projects in different parts of the world. In this regard, most of the organizations need to establish teams which consist of people from different backgrounds. However, managers of these teams find it difficult to manage people from different cultures. Thus, there is a strong need to undertake a research in this sphere to analyze the important trends and issues which are observed in culturally diverse teams. According to this, this research paper aims to develop a research model which is dedicated to understanding the differences in multicultural teams. Through the development of a research model and hypotheses testing, relevant findings were derived. Current research suggests a need to test the intercultural communication on different samples empirically.
Recent changes in Uzbekistan has attracted the attention of many foreign businesses. Particularly, these changes and reforms can be seen in terms of liberalization of currency and establishment of free economic zones. These opportunitie s are of high interest to foreign investors who are willing to launch their businesses in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan is improving its financial system that should attract many international companies in this country. Therefore, these suggestions will be of high value as a team of the companies will be diversified. Moreover, after the appointment of the new president, Uzbekistan is improving its relationship with a number of neighbor countries in the CIS region. New ventures are being established between Russia and Uzbekistan that stimulates the need for effective collaboration between two countries through the formulation of teams.