Role of cultural diversity: its application to manage human resources in global economy (original) (raw)
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The employees of multinational companies of various nations around the globe are working together to fulfil the task entrusted to them. Together with the new millennium, the global economy that is "world without borders" has become an everyday way of modern business. Given the large number of contacts with various people, the successful usage of cultural diversity has become an important area of management. Although the area of managing cultural diversity is still emerging, it is an area of vital importance for management in the modern economy. Understanding and accepting national culture with its values, beliefs, attitudes and forms of behaviour is a prerequisite for the comparison of national and international business practice, expansion on foreign markets, acquisition of knowledge and skills on which the success of an individual or organization is based. Modern business does not recognise the boundaries between the countries, and expects us to embrace and utilize all t...
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 Dimensionof Workplace Diversity
This study investigated the cultural dimension of workplace diversity in Ibadan, Nigeria in order to ascertain the implications of cultural dimension of workplace diversity on employees, and their performances in multicultural work organizations. Data for the study was generated through a multi-stage sampling technique, with a questionnaire administered to 250 participants randomly selected from selected work organizations in Ibadan, Nigeria. Out of 250 respondents, 238 turned in their completed questionnaires (male = 151, female = 87, mean = 2.89, standard deviation = 1.15). A 20-item questionnaire was developed by the researcher, and was tested on a 5 point Likert-type scale that ranges from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). The hypotheses generated for the study were tested at 0.05 alpha levels using a chi-square statistical method. The findings from the study revealed that a significant relationship exists between cultural diversity and employees' job performances, and the overall organizational performance. The finding further showed that although majority of the employees often perceived themselves as different from others due to the differences in their cultural orientations, there is no significant relationship between the way employees perceive themselves and their job performance. Based on the findings from the study, it was recommended that employers and all stake holders in human resource management, in today's multicultural business community, should not only be aware of the cultural diversity among employees, but must also ensure effective workforce diversity management principles that best fit into their work organizations so as to harness the rich benefits of cultural diversity for the good of the organizations they serve. Crosscultural education that could bring employees in contact with other cultures represented at the workplace should be introduced to promote cooperation, effective communication and harmonious work relationships among employees.
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Managers from the large multinational firms to the smallest domestic firms believe that managing people effectively plays a pivotal role in success in today's highly competitive marketplace. The relationship that we have with our people and the cultural norms of our company is our most sustainable competitive advantage. The role of human resources effectively comprises of the activities that organizations use to control the competencies and the psychology of the people who work for them. These competencies decide the profitability, customer satisfaction and many other mandatory measures of organizational effectiveness like Human Resource management. Ensuring these competencies is the key strategic challenge. These factors play a pivotal role in any organization and is important to everyone who work for it.Involvement of everyone in the organization is required to meet the challenges of managing people. Many companies have cultural diversity in workforces. This is applicable from medium to small sized businesses and as well as to global organizations. The existence of a diversity in cultural workforce derive some important implications for the policies of human resource management. The Multicultural Workforce management takes a systematic approach in connecting organizational features and activities to key discrete aspects of national culture. Workplaces today consists of people who are diverse and unique in their race, religion & culture, language, gender, age & education and the like. To have ease of communication with such diverse people demands good sensitivity to cultural differences. Cultural diversity of a company has a cascading effects on the way its organizational messages are restrained, collected, distributed & perceived and how it is elucidated. Cultural diversity is a universal term used in reference to varying differences in race, religion & culture, language, gender, age & education, abilities, interests& opinions and expectations as well. In this paper an attempt is made to identify the reasons for the development of multicultural workforce, the resultant challenges and the ways to manage effectively the diversified workforce in the global scenario.
We live in a world with an abundant array of diversity. Diversity is evident in people, the environment, and all forms of life. Advancements in technology have made the world seem smaller and increased the interaction between people from different cultures. The rapid globalisation has a significant impact on the work, employees, and organizations bringing them frequently with clients, suppliers and peer that they never work before. In an era of globalisation, organization faces unique challenges in coordinating among clients, developers, designers' workers from different countries. The major challenges are to develop practices, which balance global competitiveness, multinational flexibility and the building of a worldwide learning capability. This balance will require organisations to develop the cultural sensitivity and ability to manage and leverage learning to build future capabilities. While offering opportunities, globalisation also poses significant challenges to employees especially when different cultures are involved as a team. Multicultural teams have their culture as a set of shared values and beliefs. Beliefs are people's perceptions' of how things are done in their countries. They are reported as " practices " in a particular culture. Values are people's perceptions about the way things should be done. They are their preferred practices and people's beliefs. In a global context the management and development of people inevitably leads to considerations of diversity and related challenges. Attitudes towards working have changed dramatically in recent years and there is currently much more emphasis on multi-cultural working. Many organisations have found that multicultural team integration can be problematic and at times performance is not always at the level required or expected. With an ongoing increase of multicultural teams, leaders in multinational organisations must be aware of cultural diversity issues in order to function effectively and achieve high levels of team performance. This paper will focus on issues like Virtual team, communication in globalized world, resolving conflict and some effective tips for managing cross cultural diversity in the globalized world. Data has been collected from secondary sources.
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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 ...
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