MGMT7107 : Managing Across Cultures : Business Environment

Answer:

Introduction:

In today’s fast changing environment and changing demand of customers, it is required by the organization to keep the employees from the different cultural background. It helps the company in getting various new ideas from the different kind of people. The team members from different nationalities offer the organization best talent pools. Besides this, it also creates the problem for the manager to understand the mind-set of all those people and work according to that. In the first section of the report, the discussion is carried on the problems that a manager faces in managing the team of different cultural background. In order to address the problem, intercultural training can help the employer as well as employees to know the importance of working in diversified team. It is important for the organization to get various advantages globally. In this way, the discussion continues by explaining how a manager should manage the team of different cultural background people.

Issues faced by the manager in managing a team from the different cultural background

In today’s business environment, there are various people working in an organization who all are from the different cultural background. Language is the most important issue that is faced by the manager. It is the duty of the manager to communicate with its staff continuously regarding policies, changing expectation in allocating any task or responsibility (Ting-Toomey and Dorjee, 2018). It might happen that the manager does not know the language of all cultures. In this case, it becomes difficult for a manager to communicate effectively with the team members. Besides this, cultural clashes occur at the workplace as every employee has different goals and value of motivation. People from different cultural background also have a different meaning of professionalism to become a good employee. For example- In Asian culture, when the junior employer asks anything from the manager, it is treated wrong on the other side western people treat this as engaged (Thomas and Peterson, 2017).

In the complex business environment, various changes occur in the environment. It is becoming a challenge to manage the different culture, values, and beliefs of people in a team. Due to the globalization, the workforce is getting diverse with a mix of geographies, language, as well as culture. The mix of these creates the wide range of adaptability and expertise in the company but it also presents unique challenges for today’s management and its manager. There are various changes occur in an ever-changing environment. The job of the manager is to bring those changes by assisting the team (Tjosvold, 2017). Sometimes it happens that people made the group of their own culture and region as their ideas and norms are somewhat matches with each other. In case, if one people resist the changes then all the group members who belong to that group are resisting it. Therefore, it becomes a challenging task for the manager to accept those changes to the diversified team members. It is required by the organization to brought group projects for the team members so that their communication skills can be improved (Van and Berends, 2018). While working in a team, various people belong to the different cultural background. In this case, the manager in the organization faces a challenge to bring together the different cultural background people and their belief system. Usually, it is seen that the manager uses only that language where it is operating its business. In such cases, people from the different country feel hesitated to express their ideas, as they are not much familiar with that language. Organization behaviour and communicational values are also one such issue that is faced by the manager. For example, if an organization is operating in Australia, its cultural values will be according to that. In such a case, employees from a different culture will take some time in understanding the values of the organization (Kinloch and Metge, 2014). This creates a problem for the manager to make them understand the values of the organization. A people are from the different cultural background, everybody has different terms or signs to understand the concept. It becomes a problem for the manager to explain something because some people can take the meaning of those in another sense. It creates an issue for the manager to make them understand the meaning of those signs according to their understanding.

How a manager should manage the team of different cultural background

It is essential for the managers to effectively manage the diversified team. In order to understand the knowledge, background, and skills of the staff, the manager should take some time. The conversation with team members will help the manager to know the similarities and differences in the cultural values and backgrounds of its staff. Besides this, a manager should embrace the value of diversity in an organization that will assist the employees in working as a team. This will keep increasing the productivity of employees (Deresky, 2017). It can also start team sessions to discuss the values and ideas as well as where people will be allowed to discuss their culture, history, and heritage. If managers will focus on the diversity in the workplace, it will not be able to generate the desired outcomes. Therefore, a manager should foster the inclusion by knowing its employees better and further become collaborative by using their skills (Foster, 2014).

It is seen that employees are likely to produce more positive outcome when they are allotted task of their interest. Some people in a team like to take research work, some want to suggest creative ideas, some people like to manage resources. In this way, the manager should assign the roles in this way only so that they can keep connected with each other (Levi, 2015). Among all the steps, the manager should identify the effective communication channel that is acceptable by the employees. For example, some employees can communicate better in the team while some as an individual or some employees are comfortable in face-to-face communication. According to their own cultural preferences, they socialize with those people whose nature and culture is common with them. Managers should motivate the team member to collaborate with the different cultural background people and express ideas with each other. It should also recommend not just communicating with their community people, nationality and own age group (Geary, 2017).

Democratic management style will help the manager to motivate its employees. By taking this approach, the manager takes the decision by consulting with its employees. Having an open door policy helps the team members to be more comfortable with the manager. In this way, the manager can make the employees understand the barriers of not communicating effectively with the other people because of their different culture (Moran, 2015). The manager should learn, act, and take concern for the diversified team. Problem solving is the major aspect through which teams come to know each other and help them by solving problems. In this way, the manager can incorporate a task in which the manager will give a problem that needed to be solved by the group. Employees of different cultural background will be put in a group and ask to share the ideas of each other. Managers to manage the team members of different cultural background should adopt this technique (Homan, et al, 2015).

In can also provide diversity training to its employees in which employees will be taught the different cultural background aspects. In the training programme, employees will learn the importance of working in a diversified team. In this training programme, it can set the policies for team members to create a positive work environment where they will not create a separate group based on their sex, culture, and religion (Snell, Morris and Bohlander, 2015). It might happen that team members may need some extra time to understand its team members, so the manager should give the team to members to understand each other. In this, it can also organize an activity in which people will exchange their ideas. It is seen that the managers often misunderstand the meaning of diversity because either they fear from it or they do not take time to understand the meaning of it. Due to this, they are not able to lead the diversity team members properly (Koehl, 2012). Besides this, leaning will also lead the manager in adopting effective practices of management. Authors in the journal have stated that quality management in cross-cultural perspective. It stated that there are many manufactures in developing countries who are aware of the different quality management practices. Therefore, it is also important for companies to understand the quality management concept to manage the diversified cultural people in organizations (Brennan, 2013).  

Conclusion:

In the limelight of the above discussion, it can be concluded that a team of different cultural background people provides various advantages to the organization. It can help the organization to get various new innovative ideas due to different people working in the organization. Diversified team enables an organization to recognize people as individuals not as stereotype.  It sometimes creates difficulty for the manager to understand the members due to the different skill mind-set or language. It is seen that team members make their own group based on same culture or same nationality. Therefore, it becomes an issue for manager. When a manager brings any change in the organization, it sometimes resists by the various people due to the resistance of one person from that group that they formed. In order to address these problems, diversity training can provide a great help to the manager to better understand the employees, importance of working in a cross-cultural team.

References:

Brennan, A.V. (2014).Quality Management: a cross-cultural perspective. Retrieved from: file:///C:/Users/System04098/Downloads/2741054_723739541_Omanwww.emeraldinsight.comQual%20(5).pdf

Deresky, H. (2017). International management: Managing across borders and cultures. United Kingdom: Routledge.

Foster, E.C. (2014). Human resource management. In Software Engineering (pp. 253-269). Apress, Berkeley, CA.

Geary, A. (2017) The benefits and challenges of having a diverse team. Retrieved from: https://blog.jobbio.com/2017/02/14/the-benefits-and-challenges-of-having-a-diverse-team/

Homan, A.C., Buengeler, C., Eckhoff, R.A., van Ginkel, W.P. and Voelpel, S.C. (2015). The interplay of diversity training and diversity beliefs on team creativity in nationality diverse teams. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(5), p.1456.

Kinloch, P. and Metge, J. (2014). Talking past each other: problems of cross cultural communication. New Zealand: Victoria University Press.

Koehl, C. (2012). Managing Diversity: 10 Steps to Multicultural Team Success. Retrieved from: https://trainingmag.com/managing-diversity-10-steps-multicultural-team-success/

Levi, D. (2015). Group dynamics for teams. London: Sage Publications.

 Moran, F. (2015). 5 Essentials to managing multicultural teams. Retrieved from: https://www.fastcompany.com/3058037/5-essentials-to-managing-multicultural-teams

Snell, S., Morris, S. and Bohlander, G.W. (2015). Managing human resources. United Kingdom: Routledge.

Thomas, D.C. and Peterson, M.F. (2017). Cross-cultural management: Essential concepts. London:  Sage Publications.

Ting-Toomey, S. and Dorjee, T. (2018). Communicating across cultures. New York: Guilford Publications.

Tjosvold, D. (2017). Cross-cultural management: foundations and future. United Kingdom: Routledge.

Van Aken, J.E. and Berends, H. (2018). Problem solving in organizations. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.