HR Management and Cultural Diversity in the Workplace (GC0625)

Table of Contents

Introduction.

Frameworks in cross-cultural management

The positive impact of diversity in the workplace.

The negative impact of diversity in the workplace.

Conclusion.

References.

Introduction

Diversity management is a significant issue in the achievement of organisational goals and objectives (Mullins, 2014). For managing diversity effectively and efficiently organisations need to include the natural environment, accepting and appreciating humanity, cultural interdependence, respects towards individual knowledge and experiences, qualities and skills (Britton and Gold, 2013). In addition, management must understand and recognize discrimination in workplaces based on cultural, personal, and institutional issues.

Further, organisations augment difficulties for others and build associations across cultural differences and eliminate the discrimination defined (Patrick and Kumar, 2014). As a result, the importance and impact of culture and cultural diversity are increasing immensely in the way of moving the organisation from the domestic to the global market (Adler, 2013). Thus, businesses need to learn cultural traditions, etiquettes, courtesies of competitors and their mind-sets, managerial viewpoints, national character. This understanding provide opportunities for business collaboration and extension in the global market (Shaw and Power, 2014). This essay critically evaluates and analyse workplace diversity and its impact on the overall success as well as the sustainability of business organisations.

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Frameworks in cross-cultural management

Cross-cultural management focuses on the attitudes and behaviours of people in business organisations. This also guidelines to the managers on how to manage the employees and stakeholders who come from diverse cultures (Mullins and Laurie, 2014). Cross-cultural management explains organisational behaviours based on countries as well as cultures to improve the interaction of business stakeholders, most importantly employees. However, one of the bigger challenges of managers and leaders in business organisations is to adapt to the diverse workforces and the less productive employees (Britton and Gold, 2014). Thus, several cultural orientations have motivated the researchers towards cross-cultural management in the workplace (Torrington et al., 2013). Consequently, different cultural dimensions have been developed overtimes, were most widely used framework used in analysing cross-cultural management have been developed by Hofstede, Adler, Trompenaars, and Schein, which are shown in diagram 1.1 below:

Among the different frameworks developed over time for cross-cultural management, Hofstede’s cultural dimension and Alder’s fundamental strategies for cross-cultural management are widely used. Hofstede’s cultural dimension analyses six factors to overcome cultural differences in workplaces. These are power distance, individualism, masculinity, long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance, and indulgence (Hofstede, 2015). On the other hand, Alder’s five strategies are cultural dominance, cultural compromise, cultural avoidance, cultural accommodation, and cultural synergy. Among these five strategies, cultural synergy is most desirable because it is required to work on different cultural values n (Kamal and Ferdousi, 2014)

The positive impact of diversity in the workplace

Diversity and Employee Morale

Shaw and Power (2014) stated that cultural diversity changes the relationships among staffs as well as the nature of the workplace. If the changes in cultural diversity in the workplace are not managed and maintained appropriately, it may de-motivate the employees and may cause stress and poor staff morale and negative working relationships. According to Mullins and Laurie (2014), staffs come from diverse culture may feel uneasy and unwelcome, if they are not managed and convinced properly. Therefore, it is essential for organisations to effectively conduct training and development programmes to improve staff morale and work environment (Torrington et al., 2013). In addition, staffs with low morale may have a poor relationship with other staffs and managers. In this case, the manager should strictly follow the company policies and have to motivate the de-motivate the employees who come from diverse backgrounds (Patrick and Kumar, 2012)………..

Human Resource Management