Steps to Promote Cultural Diversity
Discuss about the Corporate Social Responsibility Work of Business.
The intention behind the case study here is to study and analyse the document titled “Leading for Change-A blueprint for cultural diversity and inclusive leadership 2016” and the speech by Doctor Soutphommasane, Race Discrimination commissioned titled “Cultural diversity in the workplace 2015”.
The case study here in the first replace reflect on the biggest problem which is related to cultural diversity in the Australia, which is one of the biggest multi-cultural country in the world. Further, the action to solve the problem will also be discussed.
The second problem identified in the case study is how can leaders influence and promote cultural diversity in the organization while handling the resistance of the employees in workforce diversity.
The third problem identified in the case study is establishing the importance of cultural diversity in the workforce. This will help in understanding the rationale behind increasing the workforce diversity in the leadership roles in the organizations.
The intention behind the paragraph here is to help in understanding why it is important for leaders to understand the importance of cultural diversity in business organization.
AHRC (2016) leading for change publication identifies the problem that leads do understand the importance of cultural diversity in the business organization. The problem here is that leaders prefer people with fairer skin and wants to see people with less cultural differences in the leadership role (Luthans & Doh, 2018).
It has been mentioned in leading for change that at the federal level, Racial discrimination act prohibits unfair treatment because of race, colour, ethnicity and national origin. It is also mentioned that it takes more than rules and regulations to set the rules in place. Culture of inclusion has to be followed to make sure that no racial discrimination takes place in the organization.
It is mentioned that cultural diversity expedite the process of decision making and also helps in enhancing the level of creativity in the organization.
In conclusion it can be said that cultural diversity is the need of hours and in Australian organization there is lack of cultural diversity in the workplace. Hence, steps have to be taken by leaders to ensure high cultural diversity in the organization.
This paragraph will focus here on a course of action for leaders to influence and push for increased cultural diversity in the organization.
The AHRC (2016) leading for change proposes that in order to promote cultural diversity steps has to be taken by the senior management. Once they are convinced, even the middle level managers will start promoting cultural diversity thus increasing workforce diversity in the organization.
Creating an Inclusive Workplace Environment
It is mentioned that in order to promote cultural diversity, mentoring and sponsorship is highly important to give impetus to cultural diversity in the organization. This will help the employees in gaining confidence so that they can contribute towards the goals of the organization.
Modern day business organization are moving forward on the path of globalization, thus in order to do that they need a workforce which is highly diverse and culturally strong. This workforce in diversity helps in clearing the air of obstacles in the earlier phase and paves down the path of sustained growth. Organization can benefit immensely from workforce diversity as they can deploy the people who are working in the leadership position at headquarters to set up a base in their own land (Deal & Peterson, 2016).
In order to foster relationships in the organization and adopt openness towards diverse culture, it has to be established that organization value alternate perspectives in the organization and see it in a positive light. People coming from diverse background have a different way to look towards a situation; this can help the organization in developing an open perspective about the situation and the things at hand. People will become more and more open and contribute in a free environment towards the objectives of the organization. Thus, gradually move towards the leadership position in the organization (Boekhorst, 2015).
As mentioned in the earlier section, diversity in the workforce leads to enhanced productivity in the organization and also helps to bring out the best ideas in the table. The leadership has to make sure that they peak the newly joined talent, irrespective of the difference in culture, and solely on the grounds of capabilities, potential and the skill set. This will motivate and influence other employees to perform at their very best and doing away with the problem of nurturing diverse talent in leadership. Mentoring and sponsorship of people from diverse culture background, will be a motivation factor for lower performing employees, thus giving them a push to perform at their optimum levels to ensure success of the business organization(Bierema, 2016).
Customer often feels more confident and positive when they are communicating with leadership of their own origin or having some similarity. It builds the trust and relationship with the customers and also helps in global business expansion. In the work environment as well, people get to learn more about the knowledge and the culture of the group of people, this helps in their personal development. It also gives them the opportunity to learn about diverse cultures which is extremely great for their professional development (Thomas & Peterson, 2017).
Effective Communication and Language Skills
Thus, it can be easily said that cultural diversity is extremely important and must to have attribute in today’s modern day organization. It not only builds the reputation of the organization and makes it look more attractive to the employees, it certainly adds up to the productivity of the entire organization. Employees working under culturally different leadership get to absorb the differences in the culture, in a way they can pick up a thing or two from different culture and use it in their personality. As pointed out earlier, culturally diverse workforce helps in making better and informed decision by looking at the problem in an alternate way, thus helping the organization to move on the path of sustained growth and development.
Leadership has to make the organization and the rest of the employees understand the importance of different culture and it perceived benefits both for the organization and the employees. This knowledge will help managers to position the relevance of culturally diverse group in the organization and more and more people will accept it with no objections. Culture of an organization is predominantly reflection of its people, thus, more diversity implies better culture thus effective leadership (Landy & Conte, 2016).
There are no two doubts that accepting people from different cultural background is a tricky task at hand, until and unless people know the advantage of cultural diversity, they would never welcome the change. Thus, it is important to take step by step measures to make cultural diversity welcome in the organization. Hence, leaders have to understand the above resistance and make relevant changes and measures to deal with the resistance in an effective manner. Understanding the cultural differences opens up the room for development; leaders then have to facilitate bridging the gap between the differences in culture, so that people can openly accept people from different cultures (Hewlin, Dumas & Burnett, 2017).
It is most often seen that people across different cultures have different working abilities with respect to time. For instance Chinese are more active in the morning hours and Americans are more productive in the evening, thus allowing for flexibility in the timing will help to nurture cultural diversity in leadership. People will find this change welcoming and will start contributing towards the success of the organization. It will also give impetus to employees from varied cultural background that the leadership is most definitely taking efforts to promote, mentor and nurture them by brining flexibility in the workplace (Sekaran & Bougie, 2016).
Developing Cross-Cultural Communication Skills
As mentioned earlier, people perceive employees from different culture as a threat to their position and do not like them. It is seen that in Australia leadership prefers people who have fair skin; this makes it difficult for Asian and OECD countries to occupy position of leadership in business organization. This has to be changed in business organization; leadership has to ensure that they change the status quo in the business organization. Make the culture more open in the business organization and make it more conducive to people with talent, capabilities and skill set rather than use some form of bias to create discrimination in the organization (Allen, Porter & Angle, 2015).
Most definitely it is not an easy task for a person to come from a culturally different background and fit into a culture which is absolutely rigid; these culturally diverse people form a minority group in the organization. Leadership has to make sure that these people feel welcome in the organization despite all such differences. In order to do so, they have to mentor them and make them understand the differences in the culture, which can quite possibly be the reason for resistance in the organisation. Mentorship and sponsorship of such individuals will boast the motivation level of other culturally diverse group in the organization, and they will feel a sense of empowerment in the organisation (Rhode & Packel, 2014).
Thus, it can be easily said that the change always has to begin from the top; it is the duty and onus of the leadership to ensure that they motivate and influence the people from diverse cultural background to come out in the open and perform at their best. At the same time, they have to ensure that cultural bias and differences are reduced to a minimum by giving the employees a deep understanding of different cultures and their contribution in the success of the business organization.
Workforce diversity in leadership will help in raising the creativity levels in the business organization. It is quite often seen that when people are coming up from diverse background, they are able to contribute towards a given problem in a different light altogether. This pushes the envelope of creativity in the entire organization. More so, the learning ability of the existing workforce also increases because of this, thus ensuring sustainability in the growth of the entire organization (Mills, 2017).
It has been over and over emphasized that organization or groups which have high cultural diversity or workforce diversity are able to arrive at a decision much sooner than any other combination(Bolman & Deal, 2017).. It is a fact that when individuals come up different background, they have understanding of vast topics and things, which helps to bring down best thoughts on the table, leading to better and faster decision making in the modern day organizations(Antonakis & Day, 2017).. It has also been seen that a group of people drawn from a diverse pool of people is any day superior to a group drawn from talented individual thinkers involved in solving complex problems. Thus, it becomes a prerequisite for leadership to take into account the cultural diversity as strength in the organization (Scott & Davis, 2015).
Business organizations which have high diversity in the workforce are perceived to be attractive employer to the potential employees. Employees see workforce diversity as a positive thing in the organization as they know the organization does not hold any bias against any caste, culture, race, ethnicity, gender, language and so on. Generation Y and Millennial value such organization with high workforce diversity and would want to work in such an amazing learning environment, by learning from people belonging to diverse backgrounds. It also helps in attracting the best talent in the industry, as there is no bias and the employees are simply selected on the basis of their strength, capabilities and what they can possibly bring to the table (Miner, 2015).
Employees coming from different backgrounds bring with them the ability to look at a situation in a different manner. Diversity in workforce helps in looking at an issue with different perspective thus widening the horizon of the entire group. It is the ability of the organization to harness the strength of every individual and use it as the overall strength for the organization. At the very same time, employees who are exposed to varying cultures and work environment have more probability of growing in their professional environment. It also does away with the problem of looking at the issue with the same perspective due to limited approach; diversity ensures that such problems do not become a source of trouble for the organization (Moran, Abramson & Moran, 2014).
References
Allen, R. W., Porter, L. W., & Angle, H. L. (2015). Organizational Dynamics and Intervention: Tools for Changing the Workplace: Tools for Changing the Workplace. Routledge.
Antonakis, J., & Day, D. V. (Eds.). (2017). The nature of leadership. Sage publications.
Benn, S., Edwards, M., & Williams, T. (2014). Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge.
Bierema, L. L. (2016). Women’s leadership: Troubling notions of the “ideal”(male) leader. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 18(2), 119-136.
Boekhorst, J. A. (2015). The role of authentic leadership in fostering workplace inclusion: A social information processing perspective. Human Resource Management, 54(2), 241-264.
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. John Wiley & Sons.
Deal, T. E., & Peterson, K. D. (2016). Shaping school culture. John Wiley & Sons.
Fullan, M. (2014). Leading in a culture of change personal action guide and workbook. John Wiley & Sons.
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Hewlin, P. F., Dumas, T. L., & Burnett, M. F. (2017). To thine own self be true? Facades of conformity, values incongruence, and the moderating impact of leader integrity. Academy of Management Journal, 60(1), 178-199.
Landy, F. J., & Conte, J. M. (2016). Work in the 21st century, Binder ready version: An introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology. John Wiley & Sons.
Luthans, F., & Doh, J. P. (2018). International management: Culture, strategy, and behavior. McGraw-Hill.
Mills, A. J. (2017). Man/Aging Subjectivity, Silencing Diversity: Organizational Imagery in the Airline Industry. The Case of British Airways?. In Insights and Research on the Study of Gender and Intersectionality in International Airline Cultures(pp. 367-392). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Miner, J. B. (2015). Organizational behavior 1: Essential theories of motivation and leadership. Routledge.
Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing cultural differences. Routledge.
Rhode, D. L., & Packel, A. K. (2014). Diversity on corporate boards: How much difference does difference make. Del. J. Corp. L., 39, 377.
Scott, W. R., & Davis, G. F. (2015). Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural and open systems perspectives. Routledge.
Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Thomas, D. C., & Peterson, M. F. (2017). Cross-cultural management: Essential concepts. Sage Publications.
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