The Importance Of Multiculturalism In Business

Those that go into the business world quickly recognize that each work environment they find themselves in can be total different from another. This can especially be said even of environments within the United States, from region to region. There is definitely a disparity of workplace environments from country to country. Not only can culture drive a varied atmosphere, but the diversity of the personnel making up that environment can equally create a challenge that a leader must be prepared to manage. Recognizing that special care needs to be placed on communication and perception skills is crucial in our present professional domain. Managers of today need to employee tools from the psychological and sociological field to be successful. Having a deep understanding in the differences in culture and diversity in the workplace is critical, especially when debating about accepting a position overseas or assigning an employee to an embedded position abroad. With a broad knowledge of cultural differences and diversity, success as a manager and the stability of a positive work environment can be achieved and maintained without unnecessary effort and focus.

Multicultural teams have become more common in our organizations, and contemporary international management literature has identified that the management of multicultural teams is an

The workforce of every country has started to become more diverse, thanks to the idea of globalization. The idea of the entire world as one small village under a huge umbrella has helped in changing the face of the world. With increasing globalization and huge competition, firma have got in to the habit of making work teams with people from diverse cultural backgrounds, different knowledge levels, area’s of expertise just to improve their performance and increase competitive advantage by improving their operations. (Lincoln, 1979)

As organizations become increasingly global, the success of organizations is dependent on the leader’s skills in merging diverse cultures in building high performance teams across multiple countries. Global organizations are required to adapt to continuous changes in culturally diverse global business environment. Multinational leaders must become adapt to leading a culturally diverse workforce if the organization is to become transcontinental. Therefore, there must be an emphasis on diversity training and cultural sensitivity training across the organization, especially among members of executive leadership. Inclusive leadership has been presented as the most applicable global leadership style as businesses make the transition from a local to global mindset. This synopsis will discuss integrating varied perspective, negotiating strategies and cultural mindsets, and communicating methods that facilitate organizational strategy, This document will conclude with a summarization of this discussion.

Leaders who understand how to work with a diverse groups of individuals will reap the benefits of building relationships with global companies that can lead to outsourcing resources that can aid in greater profit margins (McFarlin, 2016). Leaders who understand the people benefit of globalization will want a divers business culture for it attracts motivated, creative, insightful, adaptable, resilient group of people. (Maddux, Galinsky, 2013). Leaders who can make globalization work in their favor will have a huge competitive advantage by gaining insight into different market cultures from a management and market point of view (McFarlin,

Globalization of the economy and increasing reliance on teams in the workplace has led to a dramatic increase in the number of culturally diverse work teams in companies worldwide. Such teams – with multiple perspectives – can boost firm performance, but that potential comes with some risk.

A second area of research concerning biculturals involves the organizational level of analysis. Cultural diversity can result in contrasting consequences as it may lead to both organizational advantages, such as increased innovation, and to organizational challenges, such as miscommunication, cultural fault lines, and culture-based conflict (Li & Hambrick, 2005; Lau & Murnighan, 2005; Stahl, Maznevski, Voight, & Jonsen, 2010). Friedman and Liu (2009) pointed out potential contributions of biculturals to managerial activities, including team building, decision-making, leadership, and dispute resolution. While the relationship between cultural diversity and team performance

Competition and globalization demands that businesses practice cultural sensitivity when aiming for successful business integration into foreign markets. According to Deresky (2011, p. 31), “competing in the twenty-first century requires firms to invest in the increasingly refined managerial skills needed to perform effectively in a multicultural environment.” Managers and leaders need to develop the ability to motivate and negotiate using appropriate multicultural tools because cultural diversity affects not only business practices but also the

Diversity represents the “multitude of individual differences and similarities that exist among people” (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2013). It pertains to the host of individual differences that make all of us unique and different from one another. Diversity in an organization continues beyond hiring employees of numerous backgrounds, but involves embracing and empowering all minorities. Thankfully, globalization and strategic alliances have transformed business economies drastically to set up complex business environments. These environments include inter-cultural, inter-departmental, cross functional, and inter-disciplinary people working together, as a part of a large team, towards a common goal. The importance of these workgroups can be understood by the strategic role they play in determining organizational effectiveness. Workgroup diversity as a concept has caught the scholarly attention of researchers and academicians as many companies have expanded their businesses to new foreign territories. For the success of these new business ventures they seek greater local participation in their workforce, with respect to the people who are well-acquainted with the culture, ethic, local languages, tastes, preferences and other features unique to these new markets. This has eventually led to the establishment of people from different communities, ethno-socio-economic-politico backgrounds, and cultures to take part equally at a common platform.

This collision of cultures and social norms stand unique from any in our past. Strong leaders have a keen sense for connecting with, communicating, and behaving in a manner that allows the best of all worlds to come forth and prosper. Alon Lisak, Miriam Erez, Yang Sui, and Cynthia Lee authors of “The positive role of global leaders in enhancing multicultural team innovation” (2016) for the Journal of International Business Studies highlight:

With the development of globalization, people live in an increasingly culturally dissimilar world. The changing environment forces international companies to re-construct their strategies and tens of thousands of people leave their countries for better education, career, and life opportunities. In the context, not only international companies but also domestic firms have no other options except hiring people from diverse cultures. It has become a usual phenomenon that a growing number of people with diverse cultural backgrounds exist in different organisations. The activities of human beings are heavily influenced by culture on various levels, e.g. individuals, nations and organizations, the influence of which also takes actions in

If I was hired as a consultant to a leader in a United States corporation to lead a diverse team in the development of a global organization, I would discuss with the leader the data gathered by the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Program (GLOBE) to understand how to effectively create an inclusive culture (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004). Countries, where this corporation is planting the business operations, are Greece, Singapore, Germany, and Iran. Diverse employees will be hired from these countries to work as a global team.

The workplace has become one of the biggest multicultural settings. Almost half of the work force in the United States is made up of minorities. There are many advantages to having this percentage of people from different cultures throughout our workplace. One is the increase in creativeness. Not only in products that are being created but in the developing of an approach to solving problems. "Other cultures can offer insightful alternatives" (EthoConnect). Another way in which the workplace is affected by this is in productivity and attitudes. When people of all cultures pull together to reach a common goal there are less limited boundaries and there are more global understanding that are used to help reach the world's market place; creating a larger market for products. With this change in productivity in the workplace is more desirable and enjoyable for all employees. The market place has become more global based that workers having a diverse culture base is very important to break down barriers in language and knowledge of certain markets. This affects our lives by more companies hiring more international job seekers.

Due to globalization, economical and social reasons multicultural contact is increasing. As human beings we stereotype even without noticing because it is our way to understand the world and make sense of it.

Why does otherism occur? An author such as Shibao Guo (2015) would argue that multiculturalism is inherently divisive, and that when clashing ideals are placed together people are unable to work together. In fact, many scholars believe that these partitions are inevitable. They state that clearly diversity and multiculturalism do cause a case for the us and the us's to arise, and conflict between these two parties is unavoidable. As Harell and Stolle (2010) summarize, when ethnically diverse groups are pitted together, competition for social status and economic stability takes place. In the conflict theory, outgroup distrust and suspicion is furthered by ingroup favouritism and solidarity. The majority does not wish to become like the other, nor does it want the other to place itself in a position where it is able to minimize the majority. As we have discussed, this is exactly what has taken place within Europe. Individuals are under the impression that it is either them, or the “other”, and that both cannot coexist, as cultures and ways of life will inevitably dissolve if they do. After asserting their own identity, the majority loses trust in the minority and is therefore placed in conflict with it. This leads to major issues in social cohesion, giving rise to parallel communities, which are indicative of a lack of outgroup trust, known as ghettos. The ghetto, essentially a slum populated by ethnic minorities, is one example of the myriad of injustices that minorities