Write a profile describing a leader in a diverse organization

Module 3 - Trends and Cultural Diversity

What's the benefit of studying this topic?

Diversity interacts with economic opportunities as well as risks. As a manager you offer added value when you understand how to track macro-economic /population trends while also integrating knowledge of and respect for different cultures.

Module 3 Global Demographic Trends and Cultural Differences

INTRODUCTION:

Recent globalization requires leaders and managers to consider cultural diversity as a part of their responsibilities. They are charged with creating work settings that promote knowledge and respect for not only their customers and clients, but also for their workers who produce the goods and services offered.

At-A-Glance Definitions:

Culture: Something that ties or links a group of people together as a society, tribe, or community. It is learned and shared by older members of a group who pass on beliefs to younger members. Culture is also revealed in traditions, celebrations, and social expectations (such as customs or habits, morals, or laws), which provides a structure or way of seeing and making sense of the world. Culture is a “way of life” for a group of people.

Cultural intelligence: The ability to display intercultural competence within a given group through adaptability and knowledge. See Hofstede’s Dimensions of Difference below.

Diversity activities (diversity policies, programs/initiatives within business and professional settings): A term used to identify information dissemination and training in smaller and larger enterprises. Diversity activities recognize and respect differences among workers due to ethnicity, race, gender, age, and sexual orientation by gathering data, holding workshops and events, and establishing affinity groups. US Diversity programs began in response to government affirmative action policies and civil rights laws/court decisions banning discrimination in the 1960-70s.

Globalization: The decrease of distance for trade and development of goods, services, as well as human interests. “Globalization refers to the process of integration across societies and economies. The phenomenon encompasses the flow of products, services, labor, finance, information, and ideas moving across national borders (Encyclopedia of Management, 2009, p. 341).

Homophily: The tendency of individuals to associate with others who are similar to them.

Stereotypes: “A form of categorization that organizes our experience and guides our behavior toward various groups within society. . . Stereotypes, like other forms of categories, can be helpful or harmful depending on how we use them” (Adler, 2008, p. 76, 77).

Global Complexities and Controversies

 Among people migrating, about 57% will seek to live in high income countries (such as North America, Europe, Japan and Australia). International migrants now make up 10% of the population of developed countries, with women accounting for half of those migrating.

 The US is number one for receiving immigrants with more than 1.9 million holding legal resident status, and approximately 11.9 million nonofficial immigrants in 2011.

 Trading blocs: Whether international trade is more focused on regional rather than global integration. Trading blocs, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the European Union (EU), the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC), and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), support regional cooperation between geographical neighbors (Encyclopedia of Management, 2009)

 Impact on poorer countries

 Flow of capital  Migration  Diffusion of technology  Sustainability  Reconfiguration of culture

Skill Profile of the Effective Global Manager (Encyclopedia of Management, 2009)

 The ability to envision and implement the strategy of thinking globally while acting locally  Being able to manage change and transition  Being able to manage cultural diversity  The ability to design and function in flexible organizational structures  Being able to deal with stress and ambiguity  Having the skills required to work with others—especially in team setting  Being able to communicate well, and having a command of more than one language  Having the ability to learn and transfer knowledge in an organization  Entering into trusting alliances and operating with personal integrity and honesty  Being able to turn ideas into action  Having a stateless perception of the world  Being able to take risks and to experiment

Managing Organizational Diversity

The Society for Human Resource Management recommends the following components for a successful diversity initiative:

1. Get executive commitment. Enlisting the visible support and commitment of your organization's CEO is fundamental to a successful diversity initiative.

2. Articulate the desired outcomes. Be explicit about how support and commitment are to be shown and from whom it is expected.

3. Assess the climate, needs, and issues at your organization. The use of focus groups can help clarify the obstacles. It will prove helpful to determine where your organization currently is on the diversity continuum before determining what interventions need to be taken.

4. Create and maintain open channels of communication with employees at the launch of your diversity initiative and throughout the process. Communication is crucial to the success of your diversity plan and should occur not only at the beginning of a diversity initiative, but also throughout the process.

5. Consider forming a diversity taskforce to widen your support base. This group can help analyze assessment data and make recommendations to top management.

6. Develop a mechanism for dealing with systemic changes and procedural problems. Once identified, obstacles and problems must be addressed. For example, your company may be committed to hiring persons outside of the dominant culture, but has difficulty promoting those same persons once they are with the organization.

7. Design relevant, interactive, applicable training. The purpose of good training is to not just increase awareness and understanding about diversity, but also to develop concrete skills that employees can use to deal with workplace diversity, its implications, and its effects.

8. Evaluate and measure each component of your diversity initiative (training, taskforce, mentoring initiative, employee networks, etc.). Set measurable criteria and determine what you would like to accomplish and how you will gather data.

9. Ensure integration and accountability. Integrate the concepts, skills and results of your diversity efforts into the fabric of the organization and hold management accountable for encouraging diversity throughout the organization.

(Gale Virtual Reference Library, “Diversity” Encyclopedia of Management, 2009, p. 197-200)

Economic Stability Is a Global Issue

 In spite of the global crisis, lower and middle income countries continued to develop. China led with a 7.4% expansion of GDP followed by India with almost 6%, 2011.

 High income economies continue to account for most of the manufactured goods and their export (approximately 73% of goods were manufactured in these countries during 2006), but Asian/Pacific countries improved their shares of manufactured products with China taking the lead.

 Investment correlates with rapid growth for many economies. Between 2000 and 2007, investment rates rose 6%

in Asian/Pacific regions and more than 10% in SE Asia. Economies in Latin America and the Caribbean were lower, and high income areas had the least savings.

 Macroeconomic stability is a cornerstone of development; the 2008-09 economic crises generated renewed interest in sound fiscal policy among business and government leaders, which continues 2012 (World Bank).

Gathering /Researching Demographic Trends: An ongoing task for managing in a diverse, global setting:

Web-based resources provide snapshots of important trends. With data being widely available, there are increased expectations for managers to understand demographic and economic trends. Here's a suggested set of resources to help with tracking data.

Organization Primary Mission Types of reports Links for locating data

World Bank To assist globally by paying particular attention to the advancement of less developed countries.

Data and Research section of website compiles reports on populations, economic changes by year and by special interest (such as environment or technology)

http://www.worldbank.org/

WBSITE/EXTERNAL.DATASTATISTICS/

Google options using terms of country and population (Google and the World Bank have a partnership to provide specific data and information, which helps in organizing/retrieving from more than 65,000 documents.

World Economic Forum

To strive towards global development emphasizing values along with rules. Work utilizes corporations/their leaders; governments and their leaders, as well as attention to a civil society.

Offers an annual Global Competitiveness Report and ranking of countries, based on multiple factors and an extended review process. Also offers understanding about issues such as gender gap, and tourism impact.

http://www.weforum.org

United Nations To govern internationally with the primary purpose of fostering peace.

Offer population by age and country; see Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED); Other reports such as country loss and gains (Population Div; Statistics Div; IOM (Office on Migration)

http://www.un.org

Google OCED for several links to population data, these data banks can be tailored to provide profiles by country or across several countries.

US Census Bureau, International Data Base

To serve by offering quality data about people throughout the world.

Provides past, current and forecasting information about population changes

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/index.php

World Trade Organization

To negotiate agreements for reducing obstacles to international trade.

Offers trade profiles, in which the user customizes various factors to make tailored comparisons

http://www.wto.org/

select statistical data base

Business Insights: Essentials

NA Data profiles of companies by name, major brand, industry sector

Available through UMUC online library

Current Research for Understanding Cultural-Business Interactions

Globalization continues to expand and it impacts cultures: With more than 800 studies and articles since 2005, business awareness of cultural influences on enterprise globalization has intensified. But the practical application of these ideas suggests questions rather than answers because there is now more need for specific, situational, and practical applications due to global interconnectivity. The questions include:

 Can professionals be screened for likely success in a diverse, multinational or global work setting?  What priority should HR units give to cross-cultural skills and work performance?

 How should corporate strategy address both multi-national cultural values and company mission? What are the ethical issues and roles for corporate social responsibility?

 How does a manager decide priorities within local markets, while also implementing company priorities and values

Hofstede Cultural Dimension Research (Launched in 1980)

With sponsorship of IBM, one of the first multinational corporations, Dutch anthropologist Geert Hofstede designed a survey to use data from 100,000+ respondents in 50+ countries. Survey data continues to be added to the database. With a strict protocol to assure validity, Hofstede and his researchers identified five major categories in which cultures differ: power distance, individualism/collectivism, career success and quality of life, uncertainty avoidance, and short- longer time orientation. Hofstede's five-dimension model is the most widely applied for distinguishing culturally driven values within diverse work groups for the purpose of cultural comparisons within large groups or countries.

 Power Distance: “How willing are employees to accept that their boss has more power than they have? . . . Do employees do their work in a particular way because the boss wants it that way (high power distance) or because they personally believe that it is the best way to do it (low power distance)?” (Adler, 2008, p. 54). On the Hofstede scale, the U.S. is low, France is high.

 Individualism/Collectivism: On the Hofstede scale, the U.S. is high, Mexico is low.

 Career Success and Quality of Life: On the Hofstede scale, the U.S. is high, France is low.

 Uncertainty Avoidance: On the Hofstede scale, the U.S. is low, Japan is high.

 Sort-Longer Time Orientation: On the Hofstede scale, the U.S. is low, Japan is medium.

Later, Hofstede and his colleagues identified an additional dimension: Confucian dynamism.

 Confucian Dynamism: measures the employees’ devotion to the work ethic and their respect for tradition. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan are typical examples of high ratings in this dimension.

GLOBE Research (Began in 2004)

Building on Hofstede's dimensions, House and his researchers aimed to identify appropriate leadership for assuring success in settings dominated by specific country cultures. In addition to the dimensions proposed by Hofstede, GLOBE researchers proposed several others, including In-Group Collectivism, Gender Egalitarianism, Assertiveness, Performance Orientation, and Humane Orientation. Six categories of leadership overlap the early culture categories identified by Hofstede. For instance, charismatic and autonomous leading can be effective when working with culture values for higher power distance; team leadership can be helpful when working within a collectivist culture; and self- protective leader attributes can be useful when there's a higher awareness of uncertainty.

GLOBE researchers further divided the data from their study in 62 countries into regional clusters: Anglo, Germanic Europe, Latin Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Confucian Asia, Southern Asia, Latin America, and Nordic Europe (Northouse, 2013, p. 390).