Challenges and rewards of cultural diversity

In today’s global economy, working with people from different cultures is becoming the norm.  Although this brings many rewards it also introduces challenges for both workers and management alike. All managers know that motivating their staff is the key to a successful business. To do this, they must understand what drives their staff.  But what if their staff, seem to think and behave in unexpected ways? This can happen when people from very different cultures work together.  Organisations are beginning to realise the importance of training their managers to become inter-culturally competent in order to ensure their staff continue to be motivated and productive. 

Organisational values as well as individual value of the employees very enormously, especially across National cultures. In a diverse workplace employees possess the tendency to judge the behaviour of their colleagues based on own cultural norms. As DuBois et al. (2015), identifies, here we have potential opportunities of miscommunication, conflict as well as misunderstandings.

In this context the Trompenaars model of cultural diversity can be highlighted. This model identifies individual employees as either self or community oriented. The communal values in heaven in an individual reflects his attitude in workplaces. For evidence the French identifies with country and family where as a Japanese identify with corporation and the Irish with the Catholic values easily. Dartey-Baah (2015), identify that this workplace diversity can provide strength as well as bring up challenges for the organisation. Diverse culture of individual employees often helps in improvement and development of workplace by helping to enrich the individual learning experience of the employees. As assessed by Choi, Kim and Kang (2017), different employees include individual talents as well of experiences thereby suggesting flexible ideas and making the organisation more adaptive. As such, it can be summarised that cultural diversity in workplace is can account for higher productivity, profit as well as return on investment.

On the other hand Samad (2015), believes that diversity among employees can also create issues like high money cost, time and efficiency and so on. Difference in cultural can create an unhealthy tension among the employees or within the higher management. This will in turn cause the higher management to focus more on HRM and less on productivity of the organisation. Difference in individual culture of the employees can also become the causes of workers conflict. As an impact, it becomes difficult for the organisation to retain their employee base, resulting in loss of interest rates in recruitment as well as training. Organisational communication also gets hampered because of the difference in individual culture. Employees coming from various cultures bring in different kind of assumptions regarding appropriate ways to communicate as well as co-ordinate in the company. Both verbal as well as non verbal methods of communication can be affected because of difference in culture of the participants. In this context most potential barrier generally comes in the form of difference in spoken language because in most of the instances people on both sides are not articulating in their native tongue. This makes it difficult for them to present their words. According to Mgeni and Nayak (2016), linguistic diversity is an essential element of global diversity. This is why, managing a diverse workforce is not possible without eradication of the challenges coming from linguistic diversity.

The Trompenaars model of cultural diversity

Misunderstandings, inefficiencies, slowness as well as inaccuracies are some of the typical problems that can root out of typical communication issues in a diverse workplace group. As highlighted by Gelaidan, Al-Swidi and Mabkhot (2017), .the communication problems become most evident when people in both groups assume that they have understood the message from the other party, when in fact they have not. Difference in communication styles are the reason for issues created in course of nonverbal communication between members of different cultural groups in a company. Magnification of the communication problems according to workplace can take place since the workers are generally applied or unwilling to discuss the internal issues we are facing in the organisation. The person that this might defend their potential before the seniors and peers.

In certain work groups trust is an essential factors that goes on to play a significant role in creating intercultural, interracial as well as inter-gender communication issues.

Accent of workers coming from diverse cultural groups can cause problems in communication also. People might react negatively to different accents. In some workplaces it is also considered to be rude if someone is not speaking in the official language of that region. The fact that the experience of different people very based on their inherent and communal knowledge, accounts for most of the workplace problems that stems out of cross cultural communication. 

An autocratic management believes in centralisation of power and decision making is concentrated up to the core management group only. Tasks and duties are assigned under autocratic management without consultation of Executive for employees. Automatic management is founded upon precise direction, close supervision as well as order and Commandment of the superior in every department. However, in cases of autocratic management extremist outcomes are mostly perceived. Organisations, either Run smoothly and perfectly out of autocratic management call in the other case strikes and industrial disputes are the outcome of such managerial style. As Castelli (2016), strikes and disputes can hamper production and cost frustration among the employees as well as retired the growth of the organisation alongside limiting the working capability of the employees. Furthermore Gold and Thorpe (2016), analysis that this style of Management is not likely to succeed in a modern organisation because the new generation likes to work independently and are not amendable by rigid organisational control. Other than that Gelaidan, Al-Swidi and Mabkhot (2017), observed that the employees who have higher rate of ego satisfaction from their job roles are the biggest performance in a company. Again autocratic management have the least scope of ego satisfaction for an employee.in this context, the theory X by McGregor can be highlighted. This theory defines the manipulative autocrat under whose leadership the employees perceive that they can participate in the decision making process. However it is a manager who takes the ultimate decision in the end. This form of autocratic management exist in most small and emerging organisations where is very few successful organisations following autocratic management are relying upon benevolent autocratic management style. This style emphasizes on positively influencing the employees by means of rewards and incentives. The use of praise as well as pets on the back are also coming under such management in order to ensure the loyalty of the subordinates who accepts the decisions of the rewarded.

Impact of cultural diversity on workplace performance

Democratic managers mostly consult with their subordinates and believe in active participation with the employees before formulation of project plans.in contrast to fear and punishment, democratic managers manipulate employees through persuasion and this is the basic component of theory Y of McGregor. Again, as Gold and Thorpe (2016), perceives given the nature of modern employees, this helps in fostering enthusiasm within them. The employees feel communicated to the management and does feel inspired to work for the company. The basic advantages of Democratic management are increase in cooperation of the employees, improvement in individual job performance of employees, resolution of interpersonal conflict among employees, production of grievances reduction of employee turnover rate as well as reduction in the rate of absenteeism among employees. 

Laissez-faire management generally avoid power and responsibility. Such managers are passive and generally leaves decision making up to their subordinates and also allows the workgroup to set goals for themselves in order to execute the project at hand. Such management has no control over the working styles of the employees and in organisations where workplace diversity exists this form of management is absolutely redundant. Most managers with this style of leadership perceive that loyalty of the employees is ensured. However this affects the employees in a contradictory way where they start neglecting the organisational objectives and gradually becomes less productive.

Paternalistic manager always preserves a fatherly attitude towards the workers. Such organisational managers believe that the employees are valuable to him or her like family members and it is also assumed that workers will there for work harder out of gratitude for the leader. The stringent social background among Japanese citizens make this form of workplace management successful in the companies of Japan. In the small companies of developing countries of Asia paternalistic leadership is widely followed also. This is because such companies mostly employee young people injured under 30. In this context Gelaidan, Al-Swidi and Mabkhot (2017), idealizes that this style of leadership is unlikely to work with the mature adult employees many of whom clearly and distinctly understand their own interests. Hence employees who are lesser in age will work better under this form of Management rather than the elderly employees who might generate antagonism and resentment instead of gratitude under such form of workplace management.

There are several benefits of training managers who work in culturally diverse work groups. The first major benefit is helping them to communicate properly with people and avoid misunderstanding. This training will not only enable managers to communicate properly but also help others to understand their management style, reward schemes as well as motivating intentions. All these are supposed to have a positive impact up on productivity and efficiency of the company.

Communication challenges in a diverse workplace

Secondly, an organisation where employees have intercultural skills is always having competitive advantage over their Rivals. For evidence if an organisation wishes to open business in China, there chance of success will become high if the proportion of Chinese employees in the project team working in China is higher. This will make it easier for the team to understand the Chinese culture and etiquette which will in turn make the Chinese stakeholders communicate easily with the stakeholders from the organisation’s end.

There are other long term benefits of intercultural training for managers. Under managers who can handle intercultural workforce, employees you can work more flexible and are also open in mind so that they can face challenges under any foreign environment much more easily. 

Conclusion

This report makes an analysis of intercultural working styles.in the first section of this report, the researcher establishes that individual communal culture of the employees have high level of impact upon their working styles. The organisation having such a workforce have benefits as well as challenges also. Work groups with culturally diverse employees are better equipped to handle pressure under foreign conditions. Their skills of situation handling are also high. However, challenges come to them in the form of lack of communication, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation and so on. In the second Section, 4 important management styles, namely autocratic management, democratic management, Laissez-faire management and paternalistic management have been discussed. The evaluation of these four styles of leadership shows that democratic management is best suited to handle a culturally diverse workforce. The last section highlights the benefits of training the managers on intercultural competence. Managers who can handle intercultural barriers properly become successful in developing business relationships, business dealings as well as new business Ventures. 

Reference List

Castelli, P.A., 2016. Reflective leadership review: a framework for improving organisational performance. Journal of Management Development, 35(2), pp.217-236.

Choi, S.B., Kim, K. and Kang, S.W., 2017. Effects of transformational and shared leadership styles on employees’ perception of team effectiveness. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 45(3), pp.377-386.

Dartey-Baah, K., 2015. Resilient leadership: A transformational-transactional leadership mix. Journal of Global Responsibility, 6(1), pp.99-112.

DuBois, M., Koch, J., Hanlon, J., Nyatuga, B. and Kerr, N., 2015. Leadership Styles of Effective Project Managers: Techniques and Traits to Lead High Performance Teams. Journal of Economic Development, Management, IT, Finance & Marketing, 7(1).

Gelaidan, H.M., Al-Swidi, A. and Mabkhot, H.A., 2017. Leadership behavior for successful change management. Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance, pp.1-6.

Gold, J. and Thorpe, R., 2016. Leadership and management development: the current state. In Gower handbook of leadership and management development (pp. 29-48). Routledge.

Mgeni, T.O. and Nayak, P., 2016. Impact of Transactional Leadership Style on Business Performance of SMEs in Tanzania. Amity Business Review, 17(1).

Samad, A., 2015. Towards an understanding of the effect of leadership on employee wellbeing and organizational outcomes in Australian universities. The Journal of Developing Areas, 49(6), pp.441-448.