Cross-Cultural Management Issues Recommend Solutions

In today’s ever-changing and highly integrated world, corporations have a growing need to hire and maintain an exceedingly diverse and multicultural workforce. With globalization, multinational corporations have a great opportunity to work with people from different cultures and with a diverse pool of skills. However, there is a major cost of working in a foreign culture. Several problems arise when managing a culturally diverse workforce; management needs to solve them. Understanding different cultures improves employees’ efficiency and productivity. However, many issues in cross-cultural analysis arise because of the lack of understanding of other cultures and at times about that very culture we live in. This can result in confusion. This confusion results in distortions about the very cultures we are trying to understand. The paper will highlight several theoretical and practical cross-cultural management issues recommend solutions.

CROSS-CULTURAL MANAGEMENT ISSUES

A culture is a set of values which defines a way of life. It explains what a society considers good or bad and right or wrong.therefore culture is a value system. Using this value system, helps in understanding the cultural norms, thinking patterns and the social aspect of people’s lives. Understanding culture is a process and it is important to know that culture cannot be understood if one igmore’s the context in which culture is regarded. For example, above 18, it is considered normal in American culture ot drink however, in a Muslim society, generally it is not acceptable. However there are exceptions like an American can drink in a party if foreign delegates in a Muslim society so the context (party of foreign delegates) is essential when studying cultures....

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...nce of context in understanding a different culture. Causes of cultural paradox include cultural myopia, lack of cultural experience, and failure of schools to explain the complexities of other cultures. Among individuals certain factors, lead to a paradoxical behavior. Understanding a culture is not possible without considering context. Though sophisticated stereotyping and schemas are helpful in understanding a culture, they are not sufficient. We need attributional knowledge, and a factual and conceptual understanding to understand a culture. This simply means that one should have a clear understanding that any characteristic can be applied to anyone. This can be done through practice and by using the Cultural Sense Making Model. With thorough understanding of our own culture and by considering context, we can have a better understanding of a different culture.