Cross Cultural Management

Week1Module.html

• Overview
• Activities
• Lecture
  • Managing Diversity
  • Understanding Cultures
• Review

Week 1 Instructional Materials

Culture and a Diverse Workforce

Welcome to MGMT 339: Cross-Cultural Management.

I’m glad that you are here and looking forward to a great session. We begin the session with foundation information on diversity. Chapter 1 focuses on diversity within the United States; it provides statistical data on the various elements of diversity. Then we examine diversity as it relates to the US workplace. As we move forward into chapter 2, we build on that foundation knowledge and begin to understand the basics of culture. We end the week with you completing a self-awareness activity – your cultural profile. The assignment will help to understand your cultural heritage and identity. This understanding helps as we move forward in the next few weeks and explore many cultures and areas of diversity.

Weekly Objectives

1. Describe the diverse workplace.
2. Compare and contrast the multicultural aspects of the modern workforce.
3. Explain the impact of culture.

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Activities

Learning Resources

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Instructional Materials
• PPT slides for Chapters 1 and 2

Graded Activities

• Discussion 1.1
• Discussion 1.2
• Assignment 1

Ungraded Activities

• Discussion Academic Honesty

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If you have questions regarding any of these activities, make sure to post those questions in the Open Forum.

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Succeeding in a Diverse Workplace

Managing Diversity Well

Why should companies want to encourage diversity within their organizations? The textbook outlines ten advantages for companies that champion a multicultural approach. Click on the heading for each section below to learn a little more.

Attracting and Retaining the Best Available Human Talent  (What does this mean?)

Organizations need to change their attitudes regarding new hires; the organization will have to change to continue to attract new talent to the team.

Retaining quality employees is as important as hiring talented new people. The organization must be committed to training and re-training all employees. The image presented in the interview (as a potential employee) must be continued for an employee to stay with an organization.

Almost 5/6 of new employees will be women and minorities in the coming decades and most want something extra from their careers. They expect employers to understand that they have personal and family commitments outside of their employment. They want more control over their destiny and flexibility regarding their jobs. (This may require employers to re-examine standard benefits packages, one-size fits all benefits will no longer work.)

• Vacation time without pay
• Time off for sick child
• Flex scheduling
• Job-sharing
• Work from home part-time or full-time
• Taking the time to learn about the individual employee and their culture.  Do not just tolerate the diversity embrace it!

Reducing Costs

Organization have large expenses because of grievances, complaints, lawsuits, and employee turnover costs. Turnover costs can include money spent on advertising/recruiting, interviewing, background checks, hire/orientation.

The cost of turnover per person has been estimated at $5,000 to $10,000 for an hourly worker and $75,000 to $200,000 for an executive at the $100,000 salary level.

Increasing Organizational Flexibility (What does this mean?)

Organizations may pool resources and create relationships with their customers and suppliers. Differences in corporate cultures can put an enormous strain on these working relationships. Increased application of multicultural skills and knowledge can help to alleviate the potential issues between the various corporate cultures and individuals.

Attracting and Keeping customers and Suppliers

Work-teams require creative thinking from all its’ members. This means that all members must be comfortable contributing to the group and the group must be receptive to all ideas. A diverse team allows for greater opportunity to look at work challenges from new perspectives and possibly take the organization ahead of its competition.

Greater Market Share

Diverse employees help to attract and retain diverse customers. Their experiences and perspectives can certainly be valuable in building sales. This diversity is the best way to be sure the organization remains flexible enough to capture diverse markets.

Using diversity to improve marketing skills within ethnically diverse domestic markets can help a company to market more effectively internationally too. Diverse employees can prevent many awkward public relations problems too.

Improving the Quality of Management

Diversity can prod managers to learn fresh approaches to business problems, to see issues from new perspectives, and to add new contacts to their networks of activities. Exposure to diverse colleagues can help a manager develop breadth and openness. We all like to be appreciated for our uniqueness and to be treated with respect!

Problem-solving and Innovating More Powerfully

Diversity impacts a greater variety of perspectives, higher level of critical analysis of alternatives, lower probability of “group think,” and many alternative solutions.

Increasing Productivity

All of the above benefits will lead to a general increase productivity. However, diversity will also lead to the individual employees increase in productivity. As individual team members learn more about each other, they feel more valued as an individual.

Contributing to Social Responsibility

The organization becomes an agent for change, or a catalyst to promote diversity. It becomes the model that other organizations want to benchmark.

Bottom Line: Increase Profits

From an organizational standpoint it is all about increasing profits.

Reference: N. Carr-Ruffino (2015). Managing Diversity. New York: Pearson Publishing

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Understanding Cultures: Your Own and Others

Culture is the collective programming of individual’s minds that determines how a group of people perceives reality. In fact, we the people in a culture collectively agree on what reality is. We agree on the beliefs that form the foundation of the culture, on which beliefs are most important, and on what the culture values the most. We agree on the norms, the do’s and don’ts, the rules, by which people will live and be judged. And these basic agreements differ from culture to culture.