Introduction
In today’s global economy,
working with people from different cultures is
becoming the norm. Although this brings many rewards it also introduces
challenges for both workers and
management alike. All managers
know that motivating their staff is the
key to a successful business. To do this, they
must understand what drives their staff. But what if their staff, seem to think and
behave in unexpected ways? This can
happen when people from very different cultures work together. Organizations are beginning to realize
the importance of training their
managers to become inter-culturally competent in order to ensure their staff continue to be
motivated and productive. The current
paper is discussing how cultures influence working styles, it also discusses
different management styles and their relations to managing across cultures and
the importance of training managers to become inter-culturally competent.
Discussion
According to Kittler, Rygl and Mackinnon, (2011) Culture is a very
important tools in the social construct and this makes it a powerful issue in
business organizations due to the increasing cultural diverse and the high
multicultural workforce. In a work environment that is full of cultural
diversity, there should be high intense management for such working across
cultures in order to make good use of the diversity of cultures within the work
environment and find good effective solutions for the challenges facing
managers in this regard. According to Massingham, (2005) working in a work
environment that is multicultural can influence the work and the working style
due to the different challenges found in such environment, this can be
resulting from the different communication patterns of employees as this can
cause misunderstanding and then fights and problems. This then can lead to
failure of the business and loss. This was confirmed by Owens, (2000) the
conflicts in a multicultural work environment can be caused due to different
languages used or due to differences in religions and tradition. He also
asserted the important of understanding the way different cultures can affect
the working styles and managing them by effective leaders.
Many authors have discussed how cultures influence working styles such
as Matic, (2008) as he referred to the cultural differences in employee work
values and how they affect the work flow and as a result the working styles, he
referred to cross cultural understanding by management and realizing the
different cultural dimensions related to the workforce in order to unify a
language for communication. He explained that it is important to determine each
culture work values in the work environment as low understanding of those
values can cause stress on the job and lead to low working relationships among
employees and each other as well as with their managers. These passive
relationships decrease communication and then result in low achievement and
affect the company's decision making process as there is low agreement on the
way decisions are made.
In management, there can be cross
cultural differences based on the cultural diversity in the work place. There
should be specific management styles that can be effective in dealing with
conflicts related to cultural differences within the work environment.
According to Kawar, (2012) in multinational corporations, there are many cross
cultural differences that need to be regarded by management and management
styles can be changed based on the way these differences affect the work.
Management style used in a business organization should be chosen based on deep
analysis for the different cultures and cultural background of employees in the
work environment, the manager should understand how individuals and employees
are regarded in their cultures first and then to study the power distance in
each culture and how managers can deal with employees from this perspective.
Issues such as masculinity should be realized. The management style should be
that one focuses on the intercultural communication between employees, for
example, when there are different languages used with employees, managers can
choose one specific language such as English in order to avoid miscommunication
and misunderstanding. Religion and politics issues shouldn't be discussed within
the work environment. The influence left by cultural diversity in the business
organization can be positive according to Wilson, (2005) as this can increase
the competition within the workplace and employees and make them motivated to
prove everyone is good at different skills and experiences. Then cooperation
and team work should be well applied in order to avoid conflicts and stress
resulting from such competition.
Management styles should focus on the model of culture in the business
organization such as the time focus and time orientation, space and power,
structure and communication and action and competition concepts in different
cultures existed within the organization. (Kawar, 2012) According to () it is
good to apply openness management styles in corporations that include different
cultural backgrounds as these styles can make managers more flexible with
employees, understand differences in reactions and communication styles and can
enable them to alter between motivation techniques with different employees
from different cultural backgrounds. This was mentioned by Gallant, (2013) who
also asserted the need to realize differences in multicultural corporations
such as issues of individualism versus collectivism as in some cultures the
group work is preferred then individual work while not in others, another issue
is the power distance and how power is managed within the organization, the
uncertainty avoidance is also important as management has to deal with changes
either as challenges or as normal events. Masculinity versus femininity is also
another important issue that has to be managed by the specified management
styles as in some cultures there is no focus on such difference and equality in
sex is stressed.
To become intercultural competent, a manager of a business organization
that is of different employees from different cultures is in need for training.
According to Bell et al, (2006) managers are the most important people in the
business organization who need training on dealing with different multicultural
employees as they can make communication easier, find solutions for the
problems resulting from the misunderstanding of others' cultural details. Many
authors have discussed how to train managers to deal with cultural diversity
and according to Hunt, (2007) managers can join training programs that focus on
how to manage cultural diversity in the workplace and how to use it for motivating
employees and improving their performance in the workplace. Patrick and Kumar,
(2012) discussed the challenges that managers face in a workplace that has
cultural diversity and referred to the need for training managers to deal with
this in the individual and organizational levels, they explained that managers
have to understand all about the different cultures existed in the workplace
such as lifestyles, traditions, social status, languages, religions and other
related issues that may cause problems in the workplace. They are also in need
for learning new communication techniques such as presentations, writing
reports, holding meetings and making open discussions with employees. They
referred to the CEO diversity communication process model that focus on
techniques of encoding and decoding and the effect of them on employees'
behaviors, they can be focused on via communication in order to help employees
use one unique language as cross cultural communication can be helpful in this
regard. Managers can hold meetings with all employees from different cultures
and make them each present a culture and all details about it as this makes
other employee understand the different ideas and means of communication
related to the different cultures. They confirmed that a strong diversity
communication program can focus on training managers through main steps that
can include having a good communication framework, choosing a suitable
leadership style, recognizing managers' role in managing cultural diversity,
designing informational and transformational programs, using different media
tools to make employees more understanding for each other and using diversity
as a business strategy. Training the managers can help them motivate different
employees from different cultures to communicate together and understand the
differences in cultures as managers can realize the different needs of
employees and try to make them closer and more confident by having full
realization and awareness of others' cultures and how to respect them and deal
with differences in cultures.
Conclusion
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