The importance of managing cultural diversity for modern business environment (original) (raw)
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The Role of National Culture in Contemporary Business Environment
2015
Together with the new millennium, the global economy that is "world without borders" has become an everyday way of modern business. In order to fulfil the task given to them, the employees of around the globe are working together. Modern technology, new ways of communication, technology and information transfer has enabled us that such a business is easy and affordable. The emerging trend of multinational corporations and their increasing power in global economy have led to the fact that we work and communicate globally each day our business partners, suppliers and customers are located all over the world, and this became our reality. Given the large number of contacts, the successful use of cultural diversity has become an important area of management. Although this area is still emerging, it is an area of vital importance to the management of people and processes in the modern economy; of particular importance to the global managers who work for multinational corporation...
The world today is more culturally aware and integrated within different cultural backgrounds to raise the economy. A culture plays an important role on how an individual reacts, behaves, and responds to things in a community. The cultural differences among countries and their associations bring up the question of whether what can be applied to associations in one country is appropriate to the associations in another country. In a growing economic world and in the process of globalization, international relationships between organizations are becoming more and more important. If a culture is not properly understood it can lead to many business failures. Since the board is managing the incorporation of individuals in some type of joint endeavor, it is acutely embedded in the culture. It is essential to have knowledge about other cultural backgrounds to become successful in this new economy. To improve the managerial skills it is important that managers should understand their international partners and competitors by learning about the cultural differences. Management and organizational behavior is affected by national culture to a certain extent. Thus, associations are progressively keen on individuals that have encountered and changed in accordance with different cultures as they are adaptable in fitting in the culture. This adaptability helps an association in saving money by sending a worker who is equipped for continuing the task they were sent on effectively without harming business connections abroad. This paper will examine expatriates and their jobs, what are cross-cultural issues, the distinction among high and low context cultures, and an examination of European and Omani culture According to Broke et al ., (2008) Organizational culture can be passed by expatriate assignment to subsidiaries, which can pose few issues such as that nationals from small power distance countries may have issues enforcing ' solid organizational culture ' in their subsidiaries. Community culture is an inevitable concept that affects the initiatives and style of management of the companies. Tayeb (1996) states that different national cultures results in different patterns of social interaction affecting groups and individuals and therefore demand new management styles. The degree to which an immigrant is socially relaxed with various aspects of the hostile country is referred to this as cross-cultural transition as per Black (1988). This entails the ambiguity by mimicking or acquiring suitable local habits and harmonizing with society according to Peltokorpi and Froese (2009).
Role of cultural diversity: its application to manage human resources in global economy
International Journal of Physical and Social Sciences, international journal IJMRA-7993, 2015
Global business presents a tremendous opportunity but is also a challenge. Nowadays, in a totally connected world, it is not possible to have a successful business without being aware of cultural differences. It is important to have a multicultural work environment, because it allows the development of different perspectives and powerful brainstorms about the solutions of problems. It is important to keep an open mind and treating people fairly based upon what they do or don't do are the keys to bridging whatever cultural gaps exist.
Managerial Challenge to Cross Cultural Management of Diversity
Organizational culture was initially thought to be monumental that could easily be conceptualized but globalization has challenged this notion. Culture the multifaceted concept of shared beliefs, philosophies, values, norms, customs and mental programming is no longer static but volatile. Most scholars argue that free movement of political, economic and cultural resources between and within countries has facilitated the change in culture as the elements interact during the movement of various cultures. Conceptualization of culture with volatile boundaries and dynamic nature calls for proper understanding of the movement in culture with its cognitive elements. Theoretical explanation of cultural movement through convergence, divergence and crossvergence attempts to explain the movement of culture. This process transforms cultures through conflict and stress which affects boundaries and elements of culture leading to shifts through natural adaptive mechanisms. Traditional management was not interested in organization environment but the paradigm shift of static culture has brought in new management concepts that are mindful about organizational culture and dynamics of its environment. The paper undertakes to define culture explain constituents of culture, the concept of national culture and organizational culture, theories convergence, divergence and crossvergence of cultural movement and contemporary factors influencing cultural movement. The paper strongly advocates for management to understand the cultural elements in order to effectively manage diversity. 1.0 Background Culture has variously been defined from different perspectives due to different contexts, time, society, organization, and nationality. Jacques (1952:251) defines culture as a customary and traditional way of thinking and doing things, which is shared to a greater or less degree by all its members and which members must learn, and at least partially accept, in order to be accepted into service in the firm. Hagget (1975:238) defines culture as a description of patterns of behaviour that form a durable template by which ideas and images can be transferred from one generation to another. On the other hand Swartz & Davis (1981:33) define culture as a pattern of beliefs and expectations shared by the organization members, responsible for production of norms and powerfully shape the behaviour of individuals and groups in the organization. Lorsch (1986:95) defines culture as shared beliefs top managers have about how they should manage themselves and other employees, and how they should conduct business. Lorsch looked at culture from the perspective of managers working towards transforming the culture of the organization unlike other scholars. Louis (1983:39) defines organization's culture as a bearing milleux, that is, they are distinctive social units possessed of a set of common understanding. Similarly Shein (1985:6) defines culture as a pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, and that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to these problems. This is closely related to Van Maanen (1988:3) who defined culture as knowledge members of a given group are thought to more or less share; knowledge of the sort that is said to form, embed, shape, and account for routine and not so-routine activities of the members of the culture... a culture is expressed (or constituted) only through the actions and words of its members and must be interpreted by a given a fieldworker...culture is not itself visible, but is made visible only through its representation. This notion has been argued by various scholars like Kotter and Hesket (1992), define " culture as shared values (that define what is important) and norms that define appropriate attitudes and behaviors for organizational members (how to feel and behave). " This is in agreement with Rousseau (1990), who also asserted that system of shared values and norms. Trice and Beyer (1993:2), cultures are collective phenomena that embody people's responses to the uncertainties and chaos that are inevitable in human experience. These responses fall into two major categories. The first is the substance of culture-shared, emotionally charged belief systems that we call ideologies. The second cultural forms-observable entities, including actions, through which members of a culture express, affirm, and communicate the substance of their culture to one another. Culture is a multifaceted concept of peoples shared people's beliefs, philosophies, norms, customs and mental programming of a group of people (Hofstede 1981, 1983, 1997, & 2001).
Managing Cross-cultural Diversity: Issues and Challenges in Global Organizations
IOSR Journal of Mechanical and Civil Engineering, 2014
Today, globalization has become a reality. Advances in the field of information and technology and liberalization in trade and investment have increased the ease and speed with which companies can manage their global operations. Due to globalization, many companies are now operating in more than one country. This crossing of geographical boundaries by the companies gives the birth of multicultural organization where employees from more than one country are working together. It may be true that companies are finding these expansions as attractive and lucrative but operating and managing a global business is normally a lot tougher than managing a local company. The global business is affected by a number of factors like differences in-socio, economic, cultural, legal and political environments. The global business is also prone to a number of risks like political risk, currency risk, cross-cultural risks etc... Human resources are required to perform at all operational levels across all business units be it domestic or global. In such circumstances, the risk of cross cultural discrepancies is inevitable. The aim of this paper is to find out these discrepancies and then suggest some effective solutions to manage effectively the cross cultural aspect of human resources for the success of global business.
Cultural diversity in multinational organisations
2005
Abstract With the rhetoric in international management espousing the value of being able to access and capitalise on the knowledge of a workforce with international experience in order to compete globally and the need to embrace diversity (including cultural or ethnic diversity) in and across organisations, this paper discusses the findings from a qualitative research undertaking where senior and middle managers working for multinational organisations in a cross-section of industry sectors were interviewed.
2016
Nowadays, there is growing concern on how managers manage cultural diversity considering that many businesses endeavors into international operations. Relative to this, managers were faced with challenges and issues that requires concrete and prompt response on how to effectively manage cultural diversity and the diverse workforce that exist not only domestically but globally. Therefore, understanding with basic tenets of cultural diversity and its importance to organizations should not be underestimated. Hofstede’s theory help managers in providing information about cultural dimensions on how to understand cultural differences existing in Multi-National Enterprise (MNE) as an input to developing an effective strategy to counter the negative implications of cultural diversity. Considering that cultural diversity may provide positive and negative impacts to organizations, managers should take into consideration the importance of developing an effective intercultural communication to ...
HOW MULTICULTURALISM IMPACTS MANAGEMENT PROCESS WITHIN INTERNATIONAL CORPORATIONS
2010
International business conflicts take place when one part sends a message in accordance with a specific culture, while the other part decodes the message considering another set of values, corresponding to their own culture. This situation is present because the particularities of other cultures are not known. Very often, the fact that people belonging to other cultures are different is ignored, through their religion, statute, decisions they take, attitude towards time and nonverbal language.