Cultural Diversity at the Workplace
The past decades have seen a world becoming more and more interrelated. Globalization has accelerated in all aspects of our life and resulted in the increase of cultural interactions and spread of the cultural evolution and diffusion on a global scale.
People from different countries and with different cultural backgrounds started working together, leading to an increase of communication across cultures. As a result, the necessity of a deeper understanding of other cultures, what Harris, Moran and Moran refer as “handling two swords at the same time” has strongly arose (Harris,Moran and Moran).
The increased awareness of how culture affects behavior, morale and productivity at work brought the challenge to provide global managers advices that enable them to know how to work in different business environments.
In 21st century, just walking in the shoes of people from different cultures, is no more effective. In order to become a global businessperson it’s necessary to have the ability to change cultural modes as occasion warrants. The aptitude to adapt with such differences is called cultural intelligence.
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Good communication and strong trust represent two of the most important keys in leadership, how to deal with them within a diversified and dispersed workforce has become, today, a new challenge.
Differences between cultures may create communication barriers, that could affect the effectiveness of relationships. A clear example of this, is represented by Ross’ experience, his values, being deeply part of his consciousness, don’t allow him to be aware of the possibility that they might not be shared by people of other cultures, as a result he shows not to be able to understand the cultural standing points of the other part, the local employees.
His possibilities of successfully understanding a different cultural environment are dramatically reduced by the lack of examination of fijians cultural values, in addition he seems not to see how
People from different countries and with different cultural backgrounds started working together, leading to an increase of communication across cultures. As a result, the necessity of a deeper understanding of other cultures, what Harris, Moran and Moran refer as “handling two swords at the same time” has strongly arose (Harris,Moran and Moran).
The increased awareness of how culture affects behavior, morale and productivity at work brought the challenge to provide global managers advices that enable them to know how to work in different business environments.
In 21st century, just walking in the shoes of people from different cultures, is no more effective. In order to become a global businessperson it’s necessary to have the ability to change cultural modes as occasion warrants. The aptitude to adapt with such differences is called cultural intelligence.
(*)
Good communication and strong trust represent two of the most important keys in leadership, how to deal with them within a diversified and dispersed workforce has become, today, a new challenge.
Differences between cultures may create communication barriers, that could affect the effectiveness of relationships. A clear example of this, is represented by Ross’ experience, his values, being deeply part of his consciousness, don’t allow him to be aware of the possibility that they might not be shared by people of other cultures, as a result he shows not to be able to understand the cultural standing points of the other part, the local employees.
His possibilities of successfully understanding a different cultural environment are dramatically reduced by the lack of examination of fijians cultural values, in addition he seems not to see how