Strategies for Managing Diversity and Cross-Cultural Issues

Strategies for Managing assortment and go after- ethnic IssuesIn the latest origin world, where time and distance be not barriers, faces run their subprograms a bumble the man crossing the boundaries by bypassing the limitations. The drilling milieu of such(prenominal) organization is change, filled with pack of opposite skill sets, kitchen-gardening, religion, language, ethnic, mentality etc. As this diversify squad fatalityfully to work cobblers lastr and as it pauperisms collaboration for the smooth physical process of business, it is critical to mold expeditiously the cross ethnical environment in an organization. In this essay we critically analyze how innovation helps an organization to be belligerent in the global market, the cross ethnic wagess and the immensity and how to manage salmagundi efficiently in an organization.1. IntroductionIndustries and organizations ar fast increase with the help of innovative technologies. In the current business world, these technologies, the enablers, are fortune the organization to expand the business across the globe crossing the boundaries of limits. As a result of this, the organizations environment is precise much diversified with mint from antithetic countries, language and burnish and so on. Organizations need to deal with state from this diversified environment. In the new generation business or help industry, even in a single project people from unalike culture or countries works together for the project completion. A close relationship between these people is very much essential for the unvarying continuation of the operations and for the made completion of these projects. A small issue or fault in these relations could make a disassemble problem and the disturb of the same on the organizations operations will be very superior. So a cross cultural environment should be carefully handled for not breaking the thread of operation of an organization. The truth is that, th ither could be several cross cultural issues arising in an organization callable to several causalitys. So, in such situations a manager should need skills for managing the sort in an organization as sound. This skill is very much cardinal as globalization has become more than and more relevant than the past.2. mixture An enabler for globalizationAs the business is becoming more and more globalize, mutation in an organization is a competitive advantage for leveraging the luck of business globally (Zainuba 1998). A good anxiety of such vicissitude can help in enormous improvement of squad work and as well as helps in improving the productivity of an organization. Zainuba (1998) points out that multi field companies equal GE, Honeywell, BankAmerica and lot more has kept renewing leaders as their senior take employees in their organization. Diversity as well as has huge wideness as it helps in satisfying multi cultural clients of an organization and also helps to han dle the diversified market place in the globalize environment. Companies who run their business in multiple companies face competitive issues. For understanding those markets and competitive issue, a cross cultural collaboration and understanding is very much of the essence(predicate). Due to this reason many companies has kept their managerial level employees or top level executives in foreign countries to be from a different country or culture to understand the global business and to travel along the advantage of the market. For example, Colgate friendship has kept an Australian as the top level executive for their European division operations. By doing give care this these companies get a separate relegate to be competitive in the global market and helps globalization effectively.3. Cross cultural issuesIt is obvious that when a diversified team work together, overdue to many reasons like language barriers, cultural difference etc, many issues whitethorn occur. But in any organization it is critical to analyze the start of these issues and is obligatory to find out what hinders the team work in such situations. Cultural difference is the major pillowcase of the cross cultural issues in around cases in an organization. Hofstede (cited in Higgs 1993 37) has identified four different dimensions which cause cultural difference or the factors which cause impact on the national cultural difference in an organization. Hofstede (1993) broadly classifies these dimensions as Individualism / collectivism, power-distance, unbelief avoidance and Masculinity / femininity. The dimension individualism / collectivism re commit the design to which individuals are valuing their self determination which is as opposed to their behaviour, determined by collective will of organization. The next dimension which is power-distance also causes huge impact on cross cultural environment. Employee shows involvement in and also has a participative style of management in the low power-distance culture. The other side of this is that the employees unceasingly tend to accept and behave in certain ways as directed by the higher management hierarchy. Masculinity / femininity are considered to be one of the about difficult dimensions. There is incessantly a high run afoul between highly masculine cultural value and highly feminine cultural values in an organization. It is considered that the masculine culture values mostly related to material acquisition and assertiveness where as feminine culture values relates to the relationship and person and the quality of emotional state (Higgs 1996). So these cross-cultural conflicts always tend to be high in a international organization. Uncertainty avoidance domain represents the employee tolerance of question in the work place. A research make by Higgs Phelps (1990) on Nipponese organizations operating in link up Kingdom also proves the working evidences of these dimensions. Magdaleno Kleiner (1996) a lso points out that organizations behaviour and working environment is tightly bring together with the countries culture. They assert this point by well-favoured examples of different organizations based in different countries like UK, Japan and Mexico. Magdaleno Kleiner (1996) demonstrate that the cultural trend of United States organization is to become a part of melting pot, Mexican organizations always filters ascription and tradition into the work place, UK organizations are characterised by homogeneity and Japanese organizations promotes work opportunities for the women. So taking these cultural difference into consideration, when a company is operating in a global market across the globe where different people across the globe work together in an organization as a team, the chance of occurrence of cultural conflict is quite natural, nevertheless organized and efficient management of this issue could be very helpful to increase the productivity as well as for innovation in the global market by leveraging the competitive advantage of diverse team in an organization.4. Managing Diversity And Cross Cultural IssuesManaging diversity in an organization has become the at most importance in this era of globalization. As we discussed earlier this efficient management is very much necessary to leverage the competitive advantage of the diversified team in an organization for achieving success and for the expansion of business through innovation. A study done by Aoun (2007) on international forum on managing the diversity revels the findings that diversity management has become the priority in most of the countries especially in work place and in institutions of higher education. A discussion between Lloyd Trompenaars (1993) suggests that riding waves of culture is becoming extremely important in the corporate world and day to day lives as well. Kandola Fullerton (cited in Maxwell et al. 2001 468) says that managing diversity has its origin in United State s of America. Maxwell et al. (2001) explains that this emerging importance of managing diversity was not only because of the widely spread demographic changes but also it offers equal opportunity approach. A research done by Schwabenland Tomlinson (2008) revels that managing diversity could become inherently problematic when it comes to some organizations like non profitable organizations when involving the process of undermining and when organizations efforts to organize and manage by themselves. But as diversity gives sustainable advantages, it is necessary to manage it efficiently through different ways by adopting new strategies in the organizations. Friday Friday (2003) points out that most of the current organizations implemented corporate diversity system but have not used planned change-corporate diversity. This could cause diversity initiatives to be ineffective. So a planned strategical management is necessary for efficiently managing diversity in an organization. Fri day Friday (2003) also asserts that planned change-diversity strategy will also help in long term effectiveness and this is extremely important for managing human imagination in organizations with highly diversified work force. Friday Friday (2003) also give systematic strategic management approach starting from strategic formulation, implementation and strategic evaluation. In strategic formulation we develop the mission, vision and the goal, conduct the rise analysis and also set the criteria for selection and then select the strategy. because in strategic implementation phase we allocate appropriate resources and head for the hills the strategy. In the evaluation process of managing the diversity, we set the control process, review and portal the strategic execution and takes corrective actions when ever it is necessary. So this type of strategic management of diversity is very much important for ideally relations with the cross cultural issues in an organization proactive ly. In general, in this strategic management for managing diversity, we are going through the process of Acknowledging diversity, valuing diversity and managing diversity. Friday Friday (2003) also projects eight steps which contribute to the efficient diversity management. These are exposure, experience, understanding, compliancy, knowledge, appreciate, modifying attitudes and the behaviours and at long last healthy interaction. These could help in maintaining a healthy diversified team in an organization. Exposure, experience, understanding and knowledge broadly come under acknowledging diversity. to a lower place exposure we promote the practice of acknowledging a person to know who he is, where he is from, promoting to receive others culture, unmasking and public noticing. Under experience, we insist face-to-face involvement, information gathering, living through, encountering and doing. Knowledge phase is almost similar to this. In understanding, it tends to grasp the real ity, share unique insights and share perception. Now in valuating the diversity we go through two phases that is, Appreciating and giving respect. By appreciating we give high regards to others opinion, welcoming them and evaluate the worth of their value and culture. By giving respect we need to give personal considerations, afford tribute to the value of culture, pay difference to persons culture, Pay attention as well to the persons culture and in the end regarding a persons value.Higgs (1994) suggest certain tips for the efficient management of diversity in an organization. He suggests to built a strong corporate culture in the organization, adapt a strong human resource strategy and indemnity and then empower the subsidiaries of its own to adapt these strategies and implement it locally so that it cam meet the national cultural difference. He also suggests involving all locations globally for the formulation of such policies so that it supports corporate goals in a diversif ied environment. Higgs (1994) also suggests that for better management of diversity, it is necessary to identify the national cultural differences and its impact on a particular organization and the also necessary to develop an understanding of potential strength which influences corporate and the national culture with in an organization. Choy et al. (2010) stress the need of differentiated management approach which involves changing current management process. In differentiated management approach managers need to take a different managerial style which adapts to the business environment and the characteristics of multinational staffs. Choy et al. (2010) proves this with the example of established trade relation between chinaware and Singapore where they needed to use differentiated management technique as these countries had different philosophies, political and cultural view for doing the trade. Also Janssens et al. (2004) points out the importance of diversity of languages and the importance of managing it by stressing the point that international organizations are trilingual organizations where language diversity needs to be organized for the effective diversity management. A case study on sec by Fredriksson et al. (2006) also proves the importance of managing diversified languages in a multilingual organization. In this case, Siemens subsidiaries in Germany and France preferred their native languages but managing those conflicts and promoting English as common language needed diversified management skills and was successful evidence of efficient diversity and cross cultural management. Diversity management becomes much more important in these situations as we cannot avoid these situations because it occurs frequently in globalization era. As we discussed earlier, managerial skills need to be shifted from an organization level to a global cogitateing, by practicing to deal with the multicultural and multilingual environment. This also includes the n eed of practicing the equal opportunity theory and to be implemented by the organizations. many studies also proves that managing diversity is not only for diversified recruitment of staffs, but also giving equal opportunity for everyone globally by accepting and welcoming different culture and by rewarding for different successful aspects of different talents. These kinds of effective diversity management in an organization reduces the grinding of national, cultural and even mental differences as well thus by giving way to a smooth operation of the business and by giving competitive edge for innovation and success.5. ConclusionIn the present business world, due to the technology developments and innovation organizations and industries are fast growing. As a part of globalization, companies operate their business across the globe for expanding the business as well as to pursue the opportunity available in the world market. Such a working environment will be diversified with people from different countries with different philosophies, culture, language, gender, mentality, thoughts and lot more. For the successful operation of a firm globally, it requires a tight coupling between these people in an organization. For this tight coupling, a good relationship as well as trust is required. But chances of causing conflict in such multinational organizations are high. Instead of finding these conflicts as a prejudicial impact on organization, we need to use the new trend of finding and utilizing opportunity from the conflict and need to leverage the competitive advantage of diversity which helps organization to expand business in the global market and to pursue success. For doing this an efficient management of diversity is required in an organization. Managers need to think about the diversified management of the diversity rather than the old management styles followed in the organizations. This diversified management should localize on the principle of giving equ al opportunity to everybody. This should also involve the process of understanding, accepting and respecting everybody thoughts and aspects. Companies should engross diversified team for higher as well as middle level management to understand and leverage the opportunities in the market by using the experience and knowledge of these diversities. This could help organizations to root their business in other countries by a better understanding of their culture. Companies should also focus on developing a common human resource strategy and policy for everyone in the organization. Companies should also include every bodys thoughts and opinion plot developing these policies for better outcome. An efficient management of diversity will stop reducing or even avoiding the friction caused due to cross cultural issues. An efficient management of diversity could also help an organization to better understand the national difference and this will better help an organization to establish bus iness across globe with out much issues. As a part of diversified management, companies should also give importance to language differences and need to try to make a common language. This is because most of the multinational organizations are multilingual. In general, diversity management has become the at most important process in an organization as it is directly linked with the companies strategic goals and success in the current globalize business world.