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The Impact Of Cultural Diversity On An Organization

Decent Essays

Past experiences have demonstrated that cultural diversity in an organization can lead to issues. For instance, the implementation of a strategy in a context different from where it has been created can be difficult, conflicts between subsidiaries and the headquarters can exist, or management of intercultural teams can be problematic. Walmart in Germany is a relevant example of the cultural context importance when it comes to HRM. In fact, in 1997 and 1998, Walmart acquired two companies in Germany but it was a failure. It can be explained by the fact that feedback of the employees was ignored by managers. For example, in the morning they had to do exercise while singing the name of the brand. This practice may be a morale booster in the United States but in Germany it was seen in a really bad way, such as the practice of spying on colleagues, what can surely be related to the country’s history, among others examples. The US management practices was not in accordance with the German cultural context. (Macaray, 2011)
That is why intercultural management cannot be ignored when it comes to the organization performance, and the ‘universal best practice’ approach to HRM have to be critically considered because what is appropriate to a specific environment will not systematically be for another.
Before, intercultural management did not existed. The universalist approach, which is inspired by the success encountered by Taylor and Ford’s concepts until the 1950s, asserts that the

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