Leadership Across Culture

Cultural Diversity in Workplace
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Table of Contents
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Introduction  PAGEREF _Toc416125454 \h
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Culture diversity in organizations  PAGEREF _Toc416125455 \h
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Managing diversity in an organization  PAGEREF _Toc416125456 \h
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Fostering innovation  PAGEREF _Toc416125457 \h
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Effects of culture diversity  PAGEREF _Toc416125458 \h
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Conclusion  PAGEREF _Toc416125459 \h
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Cultural Diversity in Workplace
Introduction
In any organization, it is important to have a unified cooperation between the head office and the workers to achieve organization objectives. As the world becomes a global village, people are coming from different cultures and as a result, the problem of understanding their differences and similarities is becoming a major issue in any organization. Many countries are presently multicultural, due to demographic structures and integration of market through globalization. Work diversity has led to cultural diversity in organizations. Cultural diversity can be described in two basic dimensions, one being difference in race, ethnicity, gender, physical or cognitive capability, as they are the basic issues that shape human perspective or image. They also influence individual behavior through his life span. In terms of a group, diversity can be looked in terms of race, geographic origin, ethnicity, gender, education background, language, lifestyle, beliefs, economic category, sexual preference or age (Osborn, 2005).
Cultural diversity is derived from cultural background of a given group of people. This means that, understanding culture is the primary course of understanding cultural diversity. Culture can be described as a mixture of knowledge, belief, art, law, convention and morality shared by most of the members of a given society and they give a difference between one group and the other. Culture is learned as skills and habits, common attitudes and responsibilities and passed from one generation to another in that society. In such case, culture makes the perceptions and ideas of that group very different from another (Cox, Taylor & Stacy). With this in mind, then culture would determine what attitude and behavior would be considered the most appropriate and effective in every situation, as it is a way of life and a form of communication of resolutions. Many researchers have found culture being very complex and difficult to define, as some of its meanings are implicit and others explicit.
Culture diversity in organizations
Any organization must be able to manage cultural diversity effectively to achieve growth and success especially for a global organization. How the organization evaluates cultural diversity as either an advantage and source of power or a problem or a difficult issue to manage is important, as it will help to device ways in which to deal with it. For those who see cultural diversity as an advantage, they can use it as a competitive advantage for the organization through high performance of its labor force (Osborn, 2005). They can also increase the global competitive edge by using different creativity of different teams that have different strategies in solving problems. Some studies have shown that application of different culture to different problems to get a solution work for multinational organizations.
Organizations that view cultural diversity as an advantage or a disadvantage have a problem on identifying the basic underlying issues to understand the real result. Some researchers such as Dadfar and Gustavsson have found that cultural diversity can be positive or negative according to how it is being addressed. In case a given group is marginalized in work place, this can lead to a great problem and reduce organization performance. There is also the problem of communication in case of the culture diversity is on language. Performance evaluations can also be a problem in multi-national companies in that there need to show cultural diversity too. Development of a standard performance evaluation can become a problem to the organization management. These problems can be dealt with by blending cultural diversity with the existing organization culture. Through cultural diversity management, creating a common culture to the organization employees can be possible to provide an environment that can hold different cultures and working together comfortably without feeling the differences. Organization culture is important in achieving competitive advantage and to withdraw differences in cultural spirit, cultural behavior and cultural character. Cultural control achieves common organizational culture by encouraging culture blending which ensures common way of reasoning, way of acting, shared values, and ethical standards.
Managing diversity in an organization
Different organizations have different ways of managing and cultivating diversity. They identify different methods each day that bring together diverse cultural background together for efficient working relation. Through diversity initiative, organizations can in the long run understand their employees’ strengths and weakness in terms of their culture background. One of the major approaches is colorblind approach adapted in USA where cultural ideals are incorporated in individualism, equality, assimilation and meritocracy. This approach has proved to be effective in American culture and organizations. It approaches individual accomplishment and qualification to bring workers together and preserve diversity for unity and cohesion preference. It also treats all people, as equals does not attach any values to employees racial differences, frustrations and dissatisfaction.
The second approach is the multicultural approach to diversity, which stresses on advantage of diverse workforce and employees differences as sources of strength. This approach is preferred by minorities in the organization as having different background can be used for the advantage. There is high acknowledgement of diversity through seminars, networking, mentoring programs and diversity luncheons. However, multi-cultural initiatives can trigger skepticism and resentment in some work groups especially the non-minorities who do not get acknowledged.
There are five cultural dimensions that need to be managed to achieve effective domestic multicultural environment. This is by learning their differences and using them to the advantage of the organization instead of ignoring them and end up causing problems. The extent of recognizing these cultural differences and their contribution to the organization is the bass for setting strategies that would manage the differences. Either the organization management can ignore the cultural difference, minimize the difference or manage the cultural difference
Ignoring the difference can be applied where the managers have not recognized the effect of cultural diversity in the organization. In parochial organizations, employees and a managers have a believe that the organization way is the only way to manage and run the organization. This means that there is no other way to apply in the management of the organization and diversity is therefore irrelevant. The application of his method means that there is no realization of an advantage or disadvantage of cultural difference. On the other hand, minimizing of the cultural difference is applied in ethnocentric organization where the manager does recognize cultural diversity as a source of the source of a problem. The manager way is seen as the only way of running the organization and other methods are considered inferior. To solve the problem the manager tries to reduce the difference either trying to select a more homogenous workforce or socializing the employees to the dominant cultural way. By doing this, the company may achieve a less diverse workforce, but it may...