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Key Topics
Requirement
Critical analysis of existing initiatives related to cultural diversity issues.
Solution
Introduction
Diversity in the workplace is a reality of business environment today. It is not a liberal ideological movement that can be supported by few and resisted by few. It needs to be well managed then only it can lead to increased success. Otherwise, miss-management will bring challenges to the organization and obstacles will be created which may hinder the ability of the company to succeed. How to manage this diversity is a big question before all organizations because this is an opportunity for the organizations to utilize the benefits from diverse workforce who carries with them new ideas, new ways of doing work, innovative programs, etc. Diversity is gaining importance in the workplaces because the globalization and migration are growing and culturally diverse workforce is being recruited in organizations. Diversity is about the differences that separate or differentiates one person from another (Biggerstaff & Hamby, 2004). When diversity is talked regarding culture, it is the external aspect. Cultural diversity may be beyond the visible differences. Cultures can be distinguished by symbols, values, and norms. Symbols are easy to identify, for example, a person wearing a cross in the neck can be easy identified and can be analyzed that he comes from a Christian society, or he follows Christianity. But values and norms are internal. Norms are inbuilt in a person since childhood, for example, a person following Hinduism in India is taught to remove his footwear before entering the temple. So it becomes a norm for him, and it remains with him wherever he goes. He need not be reminded of it again and again in life ever nor can it be changed. Similarly values are also internal to every person. The management of workplace diversity is a comprehensive managerial process that develops such an environment for all employees in which that feel comfortable to work.
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With advances in technology people from various parts of the world have come closer. Various ways are being investigated by the organization to serve these people. This helps the organizations not only to retain their constituents but also to attract more qualified workers. Organizations who implement necessary policy and procedures can maintain a competitive edge over their rivals, thus increasing their effectiveness. To achieve this success and maintain the competitive edge over your counterpart's one can utilize the skills of the workforce. By using innovative strategies and expanding your outlook over the increasing richness of diversity, one can be successful. Today the organizations have become more heterogeneous with a mix of people in terms of gender, age, educational background and regional area. Earlier diversity had narrow view limiting to race and gender but with increasing globalization the view has broadened itself that is encompassing those characteristic that affect the thinking ability and way of doing things. Today managers not only focus on the employees of their organization but also the customers they serve. Public and private sectors are focused on the causes related to diversity. It is being recognized as an importance resource to the organization as it maintains a competitive edge but also excellent consumer services. Diversity also causes certain problems that are as follows:
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1. Communications become more difficult. Employees from various cultures have failed to understand each other. Firms which are operating in different language areas have seen to find difficulty in communicating with local employees as they speak a different language.
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2. It also enhances ambiguity, complexity, and confusion within an organization
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3. When over generalizations of organizational philosophy, strategies and practices and procedures take place, diversity cause problems.
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4. Due to cultural differences time taken to reach a single agreement is long, delay in decision making which can lead to process.
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5. Also, cultural diversity increases the complexity and problems in developing overall organizational procedures.
But, diversity management enables to take advantage of the growing cultural diversification that results from the internationalization of business by maximizing their potentials. Through with effective diversity management, diverse teams aims at achieving greater innovation and creativity, enabling them to outperform homogeneous teams. It has also tended to attract and retain an adequate and qualified workforce. It is also found that a diverse workforce has a better quality solution to the brainstorming task, displays more cooperative behavior than homogenous groups and can raise organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability. In addition to the full utilization of the skills and potential of all employees, implementation of effective diversity management practices have contributed to organizational success by enabling access to changing marketplace by mirroring increase diverse markets and improving corporate image.
Literature review
It is seen that groups and organizations interact and when they have incompatible objectives conflict occur. Conflict can be good or bad. If handled skillfully and creatively it results in maturity, empowerment of every individual in the organization. But when it is handled unskillfully it has detrimental effects. Conflicts can occur due to the difference in gender, educational difference, interest, communicational style, regional area differences. It further affects the quality and performance of the organization. In a research by Medina, it is proved that conflicts are essentially important for the performance of the team. If such clashes convert into emotional conflict, it damages organizational culture and reduction in performance (Hasan and Imran, 2009) stated that conflict leads to annoyance and tension among the members of a team. Conflicts are hard to manage and result in pressures. It is found that conflicts normally occur between supervisors and frontline workers (Passas and Caetano, 2005). Divergence in opinions, actions deprives energy of individual for solving conflicts or counter its effect in achieving organizational objectives. Diversity management leverages and utilizes difference in thoughts believes and creativity contributing to organizational objectives thus giving them a competitive edge (Morrison, 1992).A good diversity practice has a positive correlation with the profits. (Gilbert and Ivancevicer, 2000) stated that with increasing diversity it's important for the organization to inculcate proper policies and develop equal growth opportunities.
Stereotyping and biases have justified the gender inequalities, and thus higher status is given to males (Leonard and Devine 2003). If gender issue isn't dealt with the workforce diversity seems ineffective (Brown, 2008). Performance can be improved by giving equal job opportunities (Kochan Thomas, 2002). Muller in 1998 states that women diversity in organization attains to tap the local markets. In a research gender, diversity and team cooperation show a positive gender diversity (Jackson, 2003). The gender diversity at non-managerial and managerial levels are cooperative. It may not necessarily bring commitment, motivation or reduce conflict. Also, it has been seen that proper training builds a strong bond among employees.
Age heterogeneity also has potential benefits (Gelner and Stephen, 2009). It is based on productivity effects and arises when the interaction between different age groups possessing skills and perspective take place. Age discrimination is the least unfair treatment that occurs for an old person. For decisions involving hiring, performance ratings, salary it has been seen that young men are preferred over old or middle-aged employees. Most of the old or aged people in an organization have been subjected to stereotyping. Stereotyping is negative and in a view that old people are less productive, flexible, unfriendly with technology as given in theories of Rosen and Jerdee (Rosen and Jerdee, 2003). Few more researchers like Weiss and Maurer have found that stereotyping may not be as impactful on the age of an old person (Weiss and Maurer, 2001). Unlike another cultural categories, age is normally related to experience. Individuals still include people of varied ages in their group, they see old age people as their mentors or guide who constructively help in a decision-making process.
Employers normally reject employees whose education is inadequate (Tracy and David, 2011). Different mobility rates are expected by different educational background (Daniel, 2009). He also stated that more educational level enhances the productivity and people with higher educational level have higher wages. Higher the proportion of educated employee a workplace contribute to more economic growth (Daniel, 2009).
Current employees can also help you recruit a diverse team. Individuals within the organization who represent groups you're interested in recruiting may know qualified individuals who fit your desired profile. Organizations sell the company to potential job candidates. Indigenous people's group could talk with candidates as well as community and educational groups about your organization, what it's like to work there and how they have advanced in the company. It's not enough to locate potential diverse new hires; it's also important to persuade qualified candidates to work for the organization. The techniques applied can be 1.Tout your company progress in hiring for diversity: it's important to pin out qualified candidates who have achieved so far. This can be done by increasing the age of women in middle and upper management. 2. Emphasize the advantages of working for the organization: explain those advantages to diverse job candidates. It's not only important to recruit the diverse employees but also to retain them.
Organizations sell their products and services to customers from various countries employ individuals from different nationalities and use suppliers from around the world. They compete against rivals coming from many points on the globe, forge the joint-venture partnership with companies in other countries, and assemble virtual teams comprising employees from far locations. Research says that often employees from different countries use English to discuss the important points of business together. But because comprehension of English can vary greatly, misunderstandings can happen. Also, the negotiating styles vary widely across cultures. In some counties negotiation open talks by emphasizing the negative aspects of the bargaining so far; in others, the positive. Diversity related tensions and fears escalate fear, productivity and morale can suffer, and organizations miss out the advantages that diversity provides. One can surmount such challenges if:
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One can correct any misperception one might hold about the difference.
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Deal effectively with diversity-related conflicts
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Foster a workplace that embraces differences as much as similarities
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Tap diversity’s value
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Recruit and retain diverse workforce
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Improve ability to communicate with peers, employees, customers, and vendors from different cultures.
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Place Your OrderIBM
This company is the top provider of computer products in the world. It competes in a market where the competitors make servers, mainframes, storage systems, etc. It is a company that has operations in the international market. It provides the world's largest service component. The company is also the second largest provider of software and deals in semi-conductors too. Almost three lakh employees’ work here worldwide and it takes help of the acquisition strategy to augment the business of software and services.
Issue of cultural diversity in IBM:
IBM observed some differences in the values, beliefs, attitude, behaviors, customs and habits of the workforce and found them diverse in these aspects. It faced the challenge to manage this diversity among its workforce and in rebuilding the culture of its organization in line with the international expectations so that it becomes able to achieve the long-run success (Podsiadlowski, Gröschke, Kogler, Springer & van der Zee, 2013). Then there were other issues like managing the expatriates and repatriates, designing the training programs by considering the culture differences of employees, introducing cultural integration programs in the company, development of global managers with professionalism, addressing cross-cultural sensitivity, etc.
Initiative by IBM to address the issue of cultural diversity
To manage the culturally diverse workforce, IBM developed some strategies to shape the thinking of employees about the various business and growth opportunities. IBM saw the cultural diversity as the bridge, and it applied various staffing approaches like ethnocentric, polycentric, geocentric and region-centric. In the geo-centric approach, the workforce from different countries is considered irrespective of their nationalities. Cultural diversity is obvious in companies who operate in home and host countries (Kreitz, 2008). Here, the manger has to use innovative strategies to gain success in hiring those people who are suitable and are culturally adaptable and can handle overseas assignments. So IBM selects employees who have expatriate experience of some years and can handle multilingual aspects, can communicate well with other employees, is a team player and can mentor whenever required.
Different strategies can be represented as follows:
The company established various aspects in the diversity management initiative in which the strategies of the above diagram were applied. The above strategies were applied so that employees could fulfill their international work assignments and they can manage their family and career effectively.
The professional growth and employee development also depends on the social life of employees and their work life. This impacts the satisfaction level of employees, their morale and their level of commitment. The company has imparted various internal training programs and has invested in their orientation to manage the culturally diverse workforce (Childs Jr., 2005). The aim of this initiative is to reduce the discrimination among the employees, and their talents are improved so that the company has a competitive advantage in the era of globalization. Secondly, to attract, direct and maintain the most important resource of organizations.
Critical analysis of initiative.
Effectively managing the diversity can be regarded as the core competency of companies which can be used to assess the performance of executives in line with other functional parameters expected. The success of a company is determined when the candidate suits the job prescribed; he is able to adjust in a new and different work environment, and other employees of the company are able to accept him. Though the company is able to implement the initiative successfully, the changing work environment, different cultural values, various specifications of consumers, the unstable political environment has not let the initiative reach to the expected levels. It has failed to attract the global customers as the diversified workforce has not been competitive enough (Richardson, 2005). Since the extent of workforce diversity is more, so the company was not able to manage to build a homogeneous culture which could be shared with the majority of the heterogeneous workforce and adapt and accept it. The transparency that was required lacked in the initiative. The team spirit and trust were also missing, and the support of top management was not provided properly.
Diversity management has enabled people to be more creative, and they have improved their problem-solving skills too. The cultural diversity strategy has been successful as the company has developed a good reputation as a global employer. It has been able to cater the needs of customers all over the world. The effective design and implementation of the initiatives have led to more adaptability, flexibility and positive reaction of the workforce of this company. In the initiative, the company was able to engage the employees from all levels, even the executives participated. Other people also acted as partners in the plan for diversity management initiatives. The initiative was integrated with the management practice in an effective manner. The leaders were able to communicate their support for these initiatives clearly, and they took steps to improve it at every level. The goals for managing cultural diversity were linked to the broader goals of the business. Some of the proactive training programs were also held aiming at managing the cultural diversity in the company. The employees who were ambiguous about their position in the company were able to gain information about their career development opportunities, and the company was able to think globally and build this as part of their future success.
Conclusion:
The organizations try to understand various issues related to the diversity of culture and programs. The company IBM has displayed very good initiatives and has introduced good initiatives to change. They began from the points that were different but to a great extent it has succeeded in introducing and implementing an effective diversity management program and people of this organization have developed a lot with these initiatives (Shen, Chanda, D'Netto & Monga, 2009). These initiatives have become a part of strategic planning of the company. There is also a possibility that when goodwill exists in the market, the organization does not have to worry about the negative trend in the market. When a company sincerely commits itself to managing diversity, develops a strategy which is well defined, strong leadership is adhered to then these can become real motors of change in the company. In this global arena which is increasing at a fast pace, the strategic goals of diversity are essential for organizations if they want to remain competitive, and it is also good for the business.
References:
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Biggerstaff, G., & Hamby, L. (2004). Diversity—an evolving leadership initiative. Nurse Leader, 2(4), 30-32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2004.05.005
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Childs Jr., J. (2005). Managing workforce diversity at IBM: A global HR topic that has arrived. Human Resource Management, 44(1), 73-77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hrm.20042
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Human Resource Management, 20(2), 235-251. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585190802670516
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Kreitz, P. (2008). Best Practices for Managing Organizational Diversity. The Journal Of Academic Librarianship, 34(2), 101-120. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2007.12.001
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Podsiadlowski, A., Gröschke, D., Kogler, M., Springer, C., & van der Zee, K. (2013). Managing a culturally diverse workforce: Diversity perspectives in organizations. International Journal Of Intercultural Relations, 37(2), 159-175. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2012.09.001
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Richardson, P. (2005). Managing cultural diversity. Engineering Management, 15(2), 24-27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1049/em:20050207
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Shen, J., Chanda, A., D'Netto, B., & Monga, M. (2009). Managing diversity through human resource management: an international perspective and conceptual framework. The International Journal Of Human Resource Management, 20(2), 235-251. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585190802670516
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