Multicultural Tensions in Workplace Samples †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about theMulticultural Tensions in Workplace. Answer: Introduction A global organization based in Australia is facing issues related to multicultural tensions in workplace with adverse consequences like high turnover, low morale among employees and low productivity. The firm has global partners from different countries across the globe which means employees need to coordinate on several projects with teams in countries like Mexico, China, India and the United States. The management team of the firm is willing to adopt new policies and practices to address the present multicultural issues of the firm. Changes are required in the long term strategies of the firm that would foster collaboration among multicultural teams. Team members of the firm are from different cultural background, are in different time zone and speak different languages which make it difficult for the firm to manage its culturally diverse workforce. Surface level diversity is the observable differences between individuals in a workgroup due to difference in ethnicity, age, race, ge nder, sexual orientation whereas deep level diversity includes values, psychological beliefs and attitude (Ang and Van Dyne 2015).The Australian firm has to face issues related to both surface level and deep level diversity. The issues faced by the organization in Diversity Fatigue are not addressed, like the organization has not responded to women and minorities advancing into leadership. Leadership style adopted by the firm is authoritarian with strict control points that result in multicultural tensions. Summary of Two Firms from MBA presentations Key Findings about McDonalds Presentation The work culture of McDonald fosters both surface level and deep level diversity .Mc Donalds is worlds renowned food service and retail sector and serves 69 million customers daily in approximately 36,900 outlets in 100 countries as of 2016. How McDonalds embraces and values Cultural Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence and Diversity Cultural Intelligence Cultural intelligence is the ability to work effectively across cultures (Scott-Halsell et al. 2013). McDonalds has a strong culture at workplace that enables the organization to stay focused, define goals and deliver. McDonalds promote communication and diversity. The cultural promise of McDonalds is reflected in the communication strategy of the brand with the audience and in recruitment, retention and development of its employees. Mc Donalds embraces the changing needs of employees, customers and marketplace. Cultural promise is rooted in the business model of McDonalds. Emotional Intelligence Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Engagement are key contributors towards the performance of individual as well as organizational performance (Ct 2014). Human Resource Management The Key Ingredients for success of Mc Donalds are as follows Mc Donalds integrate emotional intelligence into the culture of leadership and focuses on practical and real world training. The key goals identified my leaders of McDonalds are to be a learning organization, to support the development of employees and to blend the employee and customer experience. Soft skill can be linked with the Emotional Intelligence of a person (Murphy 2014). Soft skills define leadership and creativity. Soft skills can be of six major types which are communication skills, problem solving skills and the decision making skills, self-management skills, professional skills, leadership skills and teamwork skills (Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee 2013). Mc Donalds can reduce loss of the production and progress by implementation of these soft skills. But great experiences cant be delivered only by soft skills. McDonalds can leverage the soft skills of employees with the use of people profit chain, increase of emotional engagement and with the principle of fusion. Diversity Management McDonalds has spent billions of dollars in Diversity Management programs which is available for all staffs. In the organization, equal opportunities are provided to people from diverse backgrounds and communities. McDonalds has adopted diversity as a strategy and has created a strategy for measuring accountability and managing a diverse workforce which has phenomenal effect on its operating income and business growth. The organization addresses diversity the same way it addresses challenges and opportunities. Diversity programs in McDonalds are not cost centers but they are profitable investments that drive innovation. These programs promote inclusion and decrease the fatigue factor. Diversity is perceived as a challenge in McDonalds. Awareness about diversity is created among workforce and the diversity training in McDonalds addresses relevant issues at workplace, builds skills of employees and focuses on practical training of the employees to improve their performance. Incivility and McDonalds Incivility is an inappropriate behavior that exists in workplace, for instance, negative behavior like complaining and gossiping, Physical Assault like inappropriate touching and harassing and Discrimination like yelling and threats (Huff 2013).Customer based business organizations like McDonalds must focus on Choice of staff, ongoing training, and minimum standards, code of conduct and constant revision of policies and standards for excellent customer service. In McDonalds, customer service often doesnt meet standards. In McDonalds staffs are young in age and inexperienced and do not how to handle intense situation in the domain of customer service. Thus the organization should monitor the behavior and actions of employees and should obtain feedback from customers. Asiana Airlines In San Francisco in USA, the Asiana airline crashed in July 2013. Pilot mismanagement and confusion caused the crash of Flight 214 of Asiana airlines. Passengers of Asiana airlines suffered due to the communication failure in the accident of 2013. After t five months of crash of Flight 214, Soo Cheon Kim was introduced as the CEO of Asiana airlines. High level of diversity adversely affects firms like the Asiana airlines, for instance, increased cases of human error resulting in crashes and larger planes are adverse consequences of high level of diversity in the airline. Cultural intelligence and diversity was not incorporated in the culture of Asiana airlines which caused the crash of Flight 214 of Asiana Airlines in 2013. Crew Resource Management CRM) is vital for an organization like Asiana Airlines to reduce devastating effects of human error. Team spirit needs to be the core of the CRM training program. Lack of adequate Crew Resource Management knowledge among personnel is one o f the reasons that should lead to enhancement of cultural intelligence in a firm like Asiana Airlines Crew Resource Management. There was lack of proper Leadership in Asiana Airlines which lead to the failure of implementation and cultural embracement of CRM which lead to the 2013 crash. For successful CRM program, team-building culture must be both implemented and embraced (Rouhani 2013). The CRM related program which was not supported by the management of Asiana airlines is the training program. According to the Asian culture, supervisors make decisions and defer those to people. Pilots of Asiana Airlines were accustomed to military order which means strict discipline and control. Authoritarian leadership must be decreased in the management structure of Asiana airlines. Analysis The Australian firm finds it difficult to manage teams spread across different countries. Team members have to work in a virtual environment and have to rely on videoconferencing, email and intranets as the medium of communications. The team members of the Australian firm are from different cultural background and ethnicity. The firm has to handle issues like the difference in time zone and lack of effective communication while managing the virtual teams. The team goals and objectives cant be effectively communicated in a virtual team. The performance standards are often not clearly communicated among team members dispersed in various countries. Team members of the Australian firm stay in different countries and hardly get a chance to meet each other physically. These results in communication gap, misunderstandings and confusion and remote team members often feel isolated. The Australian firm faces issues to create cohesion and collaboration among team members which is essential for the high performance of a team because face-to-face team meetings are not possible. Monitoring, control and performance management are areas where the Australian form requires improvement. The team members belong to different countries and thus their values and work culture is different. For instance, the Americans are individualistic in nature and prefer to communicate directly while in Asian countries group cohesion and subtle communication is preferred. This results in difficulty in conflict management across geographically dispersed teams (Schutte, Malouff and Thorsteinsson 2013). To manage a diverse workforce across multicultural regions, cultural intelligence must be fostered among employees. Cultures can be of three different types- corporate culture, personal culture and national culture (Crowne 2013).The Australian firm has to manage these three cultures. Cultural intelligence gives positive direction for an organization and its workforce. Thus to manage teams from multicultural background, the Australian firm must focus on a clear communication strategy and must deliver cultural promise like that of McDonalds. Biases and discrimination should be avoided in the Australian firm and equal opportunities should be given to team members. These are practices that are adopted by global firm McDonalds and adoption of these practices can resolve the issues of the Australian firm. Emotional intelligence is the ability to discern and understand emotions. Unity is the common effect of Emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence. To manage the multicultural teams of the Australian firm, employees should be trained to be culturally and emotionally intelligent. The Australian firm should invest in diversity management programs like the global firm McDonalds. The diversity management program must focus in cultural training among the team members of the geographically dispersed team. The diversity management program, emotional and cultural intelligence must be integrated in the entire business process of the Australian firm which include people, process and technology which is similar to the global firm Mc Donalds approach of managing a diverse workforce. The Asiana airlines management structure lacked proper leadership and communication gap resulted in flight crash. Thus to reduce the communication gap among the multicultural team members, they should be trained to handle incivility and should act in an emotionally intelligent manner. The integration of emotional and cultural intelligence and diversity management programs of the Australian fir m must focus on goals, building trust, mastering conflict, achieving commitment and embracing accountability among the geographically disperse team. Diversity management program will enable the team members of the Australian firm to build trust. Lack of trust among team members are the cause of problems like high turnover, low employee morale and low productivity. Also, leadership style is of paramount importance in determining the success of an organization (Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee 2013).It is clearly reflected from the case of Asian airlines. Thus, the Australian firm must incorporate transformational leadership style instead of authoritarian leadership style (Fullan 2014). The leaders of the organization must support the team members and an open communication model must be adopted. The performance standards and the methods of performance management must be clearly communicated among team members (Keung and Rockinson-Szapkiw 2013). Recommendations It can be recommended that the Australian firm must embrace and implement Cultural Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence and Diversity management program in its business process in order to handle multicultural teams. Team members should get a chance to meet each other face-to-face and thus the Australian firm must promote physical transfer in a different country instead of working in virtual groups. Diversity management program will definitely not be a cost-center for the Australian firm; rather it will be an intelligent investment. The Australian firm must implement a clear communication strategy to build trust among team members. Leaders of the firm must adopt transformational leadership style and avoid biases and discrimination. References Ang, S. and Van Dyne, L., 2015.Handbook of cultural intelligence. Routledge. Ct, S., 2014. Emotional intelligence in organizations.Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav.,1(1), pp.459-488. Crowne, K.A., 2013. Cultural exposure, emotional intelligence, and cultural intelligence: An exploratory study.International Journal of Cross Cultural Management,13(1), pp.5-22. Fullan, M., 2014.Leading in a culture of change personal action guide and workbook. John Wiley Sons. Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R.E. and McKee, A., 2013.Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Press. Huff, K.C., 2013. Language, cultural intelligence and expatriate success.Management Research Review,36(6), pp.596-612. Keung, E. and J. Rockinson-Szapkiw, A., 2013. The relationship between transformational leadership and cultural intelligence: A study of international school laders.Journal of Educational Administration,51(6), pp.836-854. Murphy, K.R., 2014.A critique of emotional intelligence: what are the problems and how can they be fixed?. Psychology Press. Rouhani, A., 2013. An investigation into emotional intelligence, foreign language anxiety and empathy through a cognitive-affective course in an EFL context.Linguistik online,34(2). Schutte, N.S., Malouff, J.M. and Thorsteinsson, E.B., 2013. Increasing emotional intelligence through training: Current status and future directions.International Journal of Emotional Education,5(1), p.56. Scott-Halsell, S.A., Saiprasert, W. and Yang, J., 2013. Emotional intelligence differences: Could culture be the culprit?.Journal of Teaching in Travel Tourism,13(4), pp.339-353.