The modern American workplace has become culturally diverse as different immigrant communities increased in size. According to the US Department of Immigration, 148,426 immigrants received their residency in 2011 in New York. Because of the increased workplace diversity, businesses have to deal with a variety of cultural awareness and multiple language issues. These are very pressing issues in New York City, the “melting pot” of cultures from all over the world. Each workplace in New York City has at least one employee of a non-American background or a bilingual employee. While exploring the multinational workplace, which consisted of immigrants from a variety of countries, I was able to distinguish three distinctive themes. The first is immigrants’ self-consciousness of having an accent. The second is mixing two languages in speech. The third is the problem of building an effective multicultural team. Full-time employed adults spend at least 40% of their time at work and for many adults it accounts for 100% of their “public” life. Workplace has become a place of social interaction. Vicky Schultz described the importance of the workplace to individual’s growth in her work The Sanitized Workplace as the following: For most people, working isn’t just a way to earn a livelihood. It’s a way … to make friends and form communities … and to know themselves and others in a deep way. … [Workplace] is also a source of citizenship, community, and self-understanding. From this perspective, for immigrants learning the language of the host country is a tool to develop a net of useful social contacts. Cristina Rodriguez states that in addition to its role in developing social bonds, the language use assists with preserving a multilingual en... ... middle of paper ... ...ogy.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/LevAriKeysar.pdf 6. Rodriguez, Cristina. "Language Diversity in the Workplace." www.law.northwestern.edu. Northwestern University School of Law, 2006. Web. 6 May 2012. http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawreview/v100/n4/1689/lr100n4rodriguez.pdf 7. Shultz, Vicky. The Sanitized Workplace. Yale L.J., 2003. 2069-70. Print. 8. Estlund, Cynthia. Working Together: How Workplace Bonds Strengthen a Diverse Democracy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005. 256. Print. 9. Keogh, Jack. "International Teams: Beyond Cultural Difference." www.jackkeogh.com. Keogh and Associate Consulting, LLC, n.d. Web. 6 May 2012. http://www.jackkeogh.com/Multicultural team article by JK.pdf 10. "Masculinity." www.clearlycultural.com. ClearlyCultural.com, 2009. Web. 6 May 2012. http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/masculinity/
Employees require exposure to and training of the different multicultural aspects such as appropriate greetings, celebrated holidays, and traditional customs. “Companies with a diverse multicultural workforce tend to rely on workshops to develop knowledge management skills among people from different backgrounds” (Maham, 2013, p. 1094). Training and education should comprise of universal internal and external awareness and sensitivity; along with individualized cultural needs of the
20. Williams, Mary V. (1997, January). Managing Workplace Diversity. The wave of the 90's. Communication World, 7(1) 16-19.
Diversity is a composite of racial, gender, ethnic, nation origin, cultural, attitudinal, social-economic, and personal differences. With the many legal implications and issues surrounding every aspect of the Human Resource function, the human Resource department must be prepared to resolve issues in a timely and cost efficient manner. With the saturation of laws surrounding personnel, nearly every decision made by the Human Resource Department has the potential for legal suits. Even if the Human Resource department has done everything that is required of them, it can still be costly to defend it. That is why supervisors, managers and workers must be trained on managing diversity in the workplace.
For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author describes the social, cultural and linguistic difficulties encountered in America as he attempts to assimilate to the American culture. Richard Rodriguez by committing himself to speaking English, he lost his cultural ties, family background and ethnic heritage.
As the workplace and marketplace continue to change, more and more companies are educating their employees on cultural diversity awareness. An understanding of the issues that arise due to the differences between gender, age, religion, lifestyles, beliefs, physical capabilities and cultures is needed to bring out the best in all of us. The creativity, flexibility and commitment gained from our interactions with other cultures and peoples will empower us all. Barbara Stern who is vice president of Boston-based Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (HPHC) argues that what has traditionally been a “soft” issue is now becoming a business necessity in terms of better serving customers, understanding markets, and obtaining full benefit from staff talents (Schmerhorn, pp.77).
Mor-Barak (2011), takes a global perspective and defines workplace diversity as “the division of the workforce into distinction categories that have a perceived commonality within a given cultural or national context, and that impact potentially harmful or beneficial employment outcomes such as job opportunities, treatment in the workplace, and promotion prospects-irrespective of job-related skills and qualifications”. This definition provides a broad leeway by not including specific examples of the distiction categories, thus leaves open the opportunity to include relevant categories that match s...
With the advent of the Internet, decreased shipping costs, and the removal of trade barriers, the world market has shrunk in such a way that everyone can be a player. While many businesses thrive solely on serving a small local area, a globalized company has the benefits of increased customer markets, gross production, and brand awareness. Take for example Coca-Cola; this multi-national corporation offers products in countries all over the world, operates in over 200 of those countries with the help of its franchisees, and is the most well-known beverage companies. It is interesting to note however, that as positive as globalization may seem, there are many negative ramifications and a large population of detractors to this movement. While increased product availability is good for profits, if a local market is inundated with imported products, locally grown or manufactured items may be squeezed out, to the detriment of the local economy. Although it is cost effective to have your product produced in another country with low wages, you are essentially taking away jobs from the people of your own country, negatively impacting your national economy. However, if you manufacture your products in a country with higher wages, you must increase your products’ prices which may be harmful to your profits. While maximizing your companies profits is always of great importance, it is essential that you weigh the pros and cons of globalization and its effects on not only your company, but the areas in which you wish to spread.
Diversity as an issue is new. It became an issue when three powerfully significant trends reached their own critical points at about the same time (Fernandez & Barr, 1993):
Brett, J., Behfar, K. & Kern, M. (2006) ‘Managing multicultural teams’, Harvard Business Review, 84 (11), pp.84-91, Business Source Premier [online].
For the purpose of this paper, I will define what the term Diversity means, and then I will concentrate on the diversity as a result of geographic origin or ethnic diversity. I will look at how ethnic diversity is managed generally and then how my employer, deals with the diverse ethnic groups in its organization and what it needs to improve on.
In today’s globalized world, multicultural teams accomplish a significant proportion of organizational work. Multicultural teams are formed because they improve organizational effectiveness in the global business environment. As such, multicultural teams offer huge potential to organizations. The most critical and practical challenge multicultural teams face is managing conflicts across members’ national cultural boundaries. Other cultural challenges in multicultural teams include dealing with coordination and control issues, maintaining communication richness, and developing and maintaining team cohesiveness. For multicultural teams to be effective, members must learn to address the challenges that arise from team members’ differing nationalities and cultural backgrounds.
Nowadays, the phenomenon of globalization has massively affected the social and cultural values and has made an assembled standard of uniqueness and obstacles. Moreover, international organizations such as multinational companies, corporate brandings, non-governmental organizations, and global media play a critical part by quickening communications among social societies worldwide (Ghodrati, Joorabchi & Muati, 2015). Especially for the effect of globalization, world has started become more culturally diverse and incorporated each and another. In today’s workplace, a constructive effect of cultural diversity in the work environment is that employees having a place
Diversity in business today is unavoidable. Due to labor markets, immigration, and the increase in women in the workforce, managers must develop new strategies and behaviors to effectively manage these diverse workers. As culturally different people enter the workforce, organizations need to take advantage of this labor pool. Not only does this resource solve declining labor growth, but it also gives the organization a different perspective in the industry and will potentially bring new diverse customers. Managers who change their interpersonal behavior towards diverse employees and learn to understand the cultural differences between them will undoubtedly increase productivity and gain a competitive edge in the market place.
This challenge involved recognising differences and preferences about structuring of work arising out of cultural differences of team members. Some preferred going via a more analytical approach of problem solving focussing, thereby, on numbers and data rather than a more efficiency focussed way of problem solving. Some preferred a linear checklist approach while others concentrated on a more holistic and methodological approach. Though the challenge of establishing norms for approaching work was also faced by same culture work environments, but those teams were challenged by more routine procedural issues as opposed to fundamental problem solving techniques challenges faced by multicultural work teams.
Increasing globalization needs more interaction among people from diverse cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds. Developing and enhancing on workplace diversity has become an important issue of management today.