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Theories of cross cultural management
Cultural diversity in an organization
Cultural diversity in an organization
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Advantages and disadvantages of working in a bi-cultural managerial team. // Bi-culturals are individuals who have deeply internalized two cultural schemas. A cultural schema is a set of knowledge about values, norms, and beliefs for a given culture. Bi-culturals are an increasing workforce demographic, and hence a growing part of multicultural teams. Their innate skills that result from being bicultural may help solve central problems in multicultural teams, including managing conflicts and boundary spanning across cultures. 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. For instance, lets take into consideration this …show more content…
A well-managed bi-cultural team is proven to be a success because when people from different backgrounds bring their own unique cultural experiences to the situations they face in their companies and this broader perspective of viewpoints tends to allow for a better ultimate resolution, however if those teams are not managed properly, and if the size of those teams are not managed, and the individuals are not catered to, the cons may outweigh the
Being bi-cultural has placed me in a perplexing portal between two separate worlds, with their own unique ideology, thinking, traditions and
Attaining results from a team consisting of members likely spread across vast distances is an increasingly difficult task without taking advantage of the necessary resources available for distance collaboration. Several factors are taken into consideration when building an effective team. Creating a team out of a group of people who come from a variety of backgrounds is not an easy task because group members must first learn how to collaborate as a team before they can even consider completing a project together. Teams have a clear purpose with defined roles for each of its participants. Collaboration with the use of technological resources comes into play when a team consists of members spread out geographically. Realizing the strengths of each team member as well as the resources that are available is essential to a team’s success.
Hyun, Jane. “Leadership Principles for Capitalizing on Culturally Diverse Teams: The Bamboo Ceiling Revisited.” Leader to Leader. 16 Mar. 2012: 14-19. Web. 2 Apr. 2014 < http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ltl.20017/abstract >
“Management has shifted from concentrating on strategy, structure, and systems to purpose (economic and social), process (dynamic relationships, culture, and values), and people (now being seen as the biggest strategic asset of the organization).” (Gaunt, 2007). Tactics is defined as the art or skill of employing available means to accomplish an end. This is exactly what one must do when thinking of managing a diverse group especially one on a global scale. If one is a chief executive officer of a company in the United States how does one properly manage and account for all resources halfway across the world? If left to chance there is the possibility of risking millions if not billions of dollars. If one does not view human resources as prime capital the view of success is already skewed. A business is only as strong as its people. These laborers may seem insignificant, but they are strong enough to bring business to a standstill if not taken care of properly. Where most officers lose sight is that just because of the lack of communication, or education that these people are replaceable. People are not cogs in a machine that can merely be replaced if worn. The natives of these lands have histories steeped in culture, and customs that must be observed or one will never receive the maximum desired result. Once you have attained a good sense of what diversity is a capable business owner must pass this vision onto his management to maximize its effectiveness. “Today's managers also need strong human capital, as well as financial capital, development skills and experience covering employee engagement, building effective cultures and behaviors to implement strategy, and the ability to make effective organizational change”(Gaunt 2007).
Understanding the impact of globalization on cross-culture communication is imperative for organizations seeking to create a competitive advantage in the global market. Regional, ethnic, and religious cultures account for differences with countries; ethnic and religious groups often transcend political country borders. These groups form minorities at the crossroads between the dominant culture of the nation and their own traditional group culture (Hofstede, et., al, 2010). An effective global leader, when crossing country and cultural borders a transformation should occur asking ourselves, who we are and how we see ourselves. Global businesses must understand how to communicate with employees and customers from different cultures in order to fulfill the organization’s mission and build value for stakeholders (McCall & Hollenbeck, 2002). To achieve goals and avoid cultural misunderstandings, leaders should and need to be culturally sensitive and promote creativity and motivation through flexible leadership. Cross-culture leaders should be culturally sensitive and promote creativity and motivation through flexible
The purpose of creating teams is to solve a problem or issue through the use of diverse ideas and solutions. There are many times in life, whether at work or at school that one will encounter a diverse mix of personalities. Workplace diversity is everywhere, from the small corner business to the fortune 500 company, and is one of the most important challenges facing companies today. This mix of diverse personalities, gender, race, experience, and culture is what makes a team successful. This is an example of a heterogeneous team. On the other hand, a team with the same make-up, or homogeneous, has limitations on creativity, viewpoints and ideas. This paper will look at cultural diversity and demographic characteristics, specifically age, gender, expertise/ experience and how each plays an integral part in the construction of a high performance team.
Whereas teams’ diversity and flexibility can bring added value to the organization, it can also bring challenges as it is extremely important that organization has access to right resource in right time and place. Management of teams with increasing diversity requires understanding and taking into consideration of the general context of the changes taking place in today's global heterogeneous organizations (Sadri, & Condia, 2012). “Surface-level or demographic diversity refers to the extent to which a unit is heterogeneous on characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, functional background, and organizational tenure” (Mohammed, & Angell, 2004, p.1015). Surface level or highly visible reactions are easily observed and measured. Whereas, patterns of human behaviors in organizations may be derived from deep-seated needs, lifetime experiences, or/and personal value systems. “The culture of a company is its collectio...
The cross cultural differences could be one of the difficult tasks to deal with. Managers need to operate with a vast variety of employees who posses distinguished beliefs, values and attitudes, Most of the times, seeing things different than us. For a successful manager, it is essential to have positive thinking and keeping in mind that there is a solution to every issue (The Wisest, 2011).
The use of culturally diverse business teams is an increasingly common situation in today’s world; especially as the world continues to become a global village. Leveraging on the cultural diverse backgrounds and experiences of members of such teams can be a source of improved performance which can ultimately reflect a competitive advantage in the business market. As Symons and Stenzel (2007) aptly state, “culturally diverse teams are more likely to engage in innovative `out-of-the-box' thinking, given their different life experiences in diverse social environments.” Another pointer to suggest that multicultural teams tend to be a source of competitive advantage in business is found in the paper by Di Stefano and Maznevski (2000) where they state that “multicultural teams have an enormous wealth of material with which to create innovative approaches to complex organizational challenges.” They furthermore state that “today’s business cannot flourish without the creative value afforded by high performing global teams.”
Recent years, organisation are much more relay on diversity teams to developing products, making decisions and also gain the business success (When and how), therefore diversity team are becoming a very important element for the organisations. In USA, diversity usually refer to demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and ethnicity, however, diversity is not only refer to demographics, it also means the diversity in psychological characteristics like skills, personality, abilities, and education backgrounds (book diversity). Although team diversity leads to some benefits like the positive organisational cooperation, share the knowledge and experience, it can also leads some problems to the organisation, such as the tension between members
To be successful in such type of new environment, managers must learn to value and respect cultural styles and ways of behaving those differ from our styles. They should be able to relate the cultural diversified workforce to the growth of organization. Managing workforce diversity should be considered an opportunity to venture into new markets. By valuing and managing diverse workforce, it is possible to enhance creativity, flexibility, and rapid response to change. Managers, to utilize the potential of diverse workforce, must look through in every business function like recruitment, selection, placement, development, succession planning, performance appraisal and
Mosakowski, E. (2000). “Creating Hybrid Team Cultures: An Empirical Test of Transnational Team Functioning”. Academy of Management Journal, pp: 26 – 49.
The combination of the best things in the world, the crystallization of culture and wisdom of people all over the world—that is a multicultural society, full of different languages, clothing, customs, and ways of thinking. To work together and learn from each other in order to make the world better, which is what the world should look like. Indeed, some people argue that there are lots of conflicts within multicultural societies like discrimination and terrorists. However, those are definitely occasional, and the mainstreams of multicultural societies are cooperation, integration, and development as a whole.
The journal article is titled “Creating Hybrid Team Cultures: An Empirical Test of Transnational Team Functioning” authored by, P. Christopher Earley and Elaine Mosakowski from Indiana and Purdue University respectively. The journal provides information on a study that was carried out to measure the impact of heterogeneity and performance of an international organization. The journal tests the relationship between heterogeneity of a team specifically on the issues of cultural differences and the effectiveness of such a team. The main argument is that transnational teams once they have successfully overcome the challenges of heterogeneity will create a certain culture that is unique to them through which effective evaluation and performance is achieved. This type of a culture that the team attains is referred to as a hybrid culture (Earley & Masokwoski, 2000). The journal therefore contains three studies that test the relationship between team heterogeneity and effectiveness.
Sonderberg, A-M & N Holden. (2002), Rethinking cross cultural management in a globalizing business world' International Journal of Cross Culture Management 2(1): 103-121