Business Essay范文：Strategies for Managing Diversity and Cross-Cultural Issues

Business Essay范文-管理多樣性和跨文化問題的策略。在當前的商業世界中，時間和距離不是障礙，組織通過繞過限制跨越國界在全球范圍內運營。這種組織的工作環境是多元化的，充滿了不同技能、文化、宗教、語言、民族、心態等的人。由于這種多元化的團隊需要更緊密地合作，并且需要合作才能順利開展業務，因此有效管理組織中的跨文化環境至關重要。在這篇essay中，我們批判性地分析了多樣性如何幫助一個組織在全球市場上保持競爭力，跨文化問題以及在組織中有效管理多樣性的重要性。下面就一起來看一下這篇留學生Business Essay范文的全部內容。

In the current business world, where time and distance are not barriers, organizations run their operations across the globe crossing the boundaries by bypassing the limitations. The working environment of such organization is diversified, filled with people of different skill sets, culture, religion, language, ethnic, mentality etc. As this diversified team needs to work closer and as it needs collaboration for the smooth operation of business, it is critical to manage efficiently the cross cultural environment in an organization. In this essay we critically analyze how diversity helps an organization to be competitive in the global market, the cross cultural issues and the importance and how to manage diversity efficiently in an organization.
1. Introduction 引用
Industries and organizations are fast growing with the help of innovative technologies. In the current business world, these technologies, the enablers, are helping the organization to expand the business across the globe crossing the boundaries of limits. As a result of this, the organizations environment is very much diversified with people from different countries, language and culture and so on. Organizations need to deal with people from this diversified environment. In the new generation business or service industry, even in a single project people from different culture or countries works together for the project completion. A close relationship between these people is very much essential for the uninterrupted continuation of the operations and for the successful completion of these projects. A small issue or fault in these relations could make a sever problem and the impact of the same on the organizations operations will be very high. So a cross cultural environment should be carefully handled for not breaking the thread of operation of an organization. The truth is that, there could be several cross cultural issues arising in an organization due to several reasons. So, in such situations a manager should need skills for managing the diversity in an organization as well. This skill is very much important as globalization has become more and more relevant than the past.
在創新技術的幫助下，行業和組織正在快速發展。在當前的商業世界中，這些技術，即使能技術，正在幫助組織跨越界限在全球范圍內擴展業務。因此，組織環境因來自不同國家、語言和文化等的人而變得非常多樣化。組織需要與來自這種多樣化環境的人打交道。在新一代商業或服務業中，即使是在一個項目中，來自不同文化或國家的人們也會一起完成項目。這些人員之間的密切關系對于不間斷地繼續作業和成功完成這些項目至關重要。這些關系中的一個小問題或錯誤可能會造成嚴重的問題，并且對組織運營的影響將非常大。因此，應謹慎處理跨文化環境，以免打破組織運作的脈絡。事實是，由于幾個原因，一個組織可能會出現幾個跨文化問題。因此，在這種情況下，管理者也應該具備管理組織多樣性的技能。這項技能非常重要，因為全球化比過去變得越來越重要。
2. Diversity – An enabler for globalization 多樣性——全球化的推動者
As the business is becoming more and more globalize, diversity in an organization is a competitive advantage for leveraging the opportunity of business globally (Zainuba 1998). A good management of such diversity can help in enormous improvement of team work and also helps in improving the productivity of an organization. Zainuba (1998) points out that multinational companies like GE, Honeywell, BankAmerica and lot more has kept diversity leaders as their senior level employees in their organization. Diversity also has huge importance as it helps in satisfying multi cultural clients of an organization and also helps to handle the diversified market place in the globalize environment. Companies who run their business in multiple companies face competitive issues. For understanding those markets and competitive issue, a cross cultural collaboration and understanding is very much important. Due to this reason many companies has kept their managerial level employees or top level executives in foreign countries to be from a different country or culture to understand the global business and to pursue the advantage of the market. For example, Colgate Company has kept an Australian as the top level executive for their European division operations. By doing like this these companies get a better chance to be competitive in the global market and helps globalization effectively.
隨著業務越來越全球化，組織的多樣性是利用全球業務機會的競爭優勢。對這種多樣性的良好管理有助于極大地改進團隊工作，也有助于提高組織的生產力。Zainuba（1998）指出，通用電氣、霍尼韋爾、美國銀行等跨國公司一直將多元化領導者作為其組織的高級員工。多元化也具有巨大的重要性，因為它有助于滿足一個組織的多元文化客戶，也有助于在全球化環境中處理多元化的市場。在多家公司經營業務的公司面臨競爭問題。為了理解這些市場和競爭問題，跨文化的合作和理解非常重要。由于這個原因，許多公司將其管理層員工或外國高層管理人員保留在不同的國家或文化中，以了解全球業務并追求市場優勢。例如，高露潔公司保留了一名澳大利亞人作為其歐洲分部運營的最高管理人員。通過這樣做，這些公司有更好的機會在全球市場上競爭，并有效地幫助全球化。
3. Cross cultural issues:跨文化問題
It is obvious that when a diversified team work together, due to many reasons like language barriers, cultural difference etc, many issues may occur. But in any organization it is critical to analyze the cause of these issues and is necessary to find out what hinders the team work in such situations. Cultural difference is the major cause of the cross cultural issues in most cases in an organization. Hofstede (cited in Higgs 1993: 37) has identified four different dimensions which cause cultural difference or the factors which cause impact on the national cultural difference in an organization. Hofstede (1993) broadly classifies these dimensions as Individualism / collectivism, power-distance, uncertainty avoidance and Masculinity / femininity. The dimension individualism / collectivism represent the extent to which individuals are valuing their self determination which is as opposed to their behaviour, determined by collective will of organization. The next dimension which is power-distance also causes huge impact on cross cultural environment. Employee shows involvement in and also has a participative style of management in the low power-distance culture. The other side of this is that the employees always tend to accept and behave in certain ways as directed by the higher management hierarchy. Masculinity / femininity are considered to be one of the most difficult dimensions. There is always a high conflict between highly masculine cultural values and highly feminine cultural values in an organization. It is considered that the masculine culture values mostly related to material acquisition and assertiveness where as feminine culture values relates to the relationship and person and the quality of life (Higgs 1996). So these cross-cultural conflicts always tend to be high in a multinational organization. Uncertainty avoidance domain represents the employee tolerance of uncertainty in the work place. A research done by Higgs & Phelps (1990) on Japanese organizations operating in United Kingdom also proves the practical evidences of these dimensions. Magdaleno & Kleiner (1996) also points out that organizations behaviour and working environment is tightly coupled with the countries culture. They assert this point by giving examples of different organizations based in different countries like UK, Japan and Mexico. Magdaleno & Kleiner (1996) demonstrate that the cultural trend of United States organization is to become a part of melting pot, Mexican organizations always filters ascription and tradition into the work place, UK organizations are characterised by homogeneity and Japanese organizations promotes work opportunities for the women. So taking these cultural difference into consideration, when a company is operating in a global market across the globe where different people across the globe work together in an organization as a team, the chance of occurrence of cultural conflict is quite natural, but systematic and efficient management of this issue could be very helpful to increase the productivity as well as for innovation in the global market by leveraging the competitive advantage of diverse team in an organization.
很明顯，當一個多元化的團隊一起工作時，由于語言障礙、文化差異等諸多原因，可能會出現許多問題。但在任何組織中，分析這些問題的原因都是至關重要的，并且有必要找出在這種情況下阻礙團隊工作的因素。在大多數情況下，文化差異是組織中跨文化問題的主要原因。Hofstede已經確定了導致文化差異的四個不同維度，或對組織中的國家文化差異產生影響的因素。Hofstede將這些維度概括為個人主義/集體主義、權力距離、不確定性回避和男性氣質/女性氣質。個人主義/集體主義這一維度代表了個人在多大程度上重視他們的自我決定，而不是他們的行為，這是由組織的集體意志決定的。下一個維度是權力距離，它也對跨文化環境造成巨大影響。在低權力距離文化中，員工表現出參與并具有參與式管理風格。另一方面，員工總是傾向于接受上級管理層的指示，并以某種方式行事。男性氣質/女性氣質被認為是最困難的維度之一。在一個組織中，高度男性化的文化價值觀和高度女性化的文化觀之間總是存在高度沖突。人們認為，男性文化價值觀主要與物質獲取和自信有關，而女性文化價值觀與關系、人和生活質量有關。因此，在跨國組織中，這些跨文化沖突往往很嚴重。不確定性回避域表示員工對工作場所不確定性的容忍度。Higgs&Phelps對在英國運營的日本組織進行的研究也證明了這些維度的實際證據。Magdaleno&Kleiner還指出，組織行為和工作環境與國家文化緊密相連。他們通過列舉英國、日本和墨西哥等不同國家的不同組織的例子來證明這一點。Magdaleno&Kleiner表明，美國組織的文化趨勢是成為大熔爐的一部分，墨西哥組織總是將歸屬和傳統過濾到工作場所，英國組織以同質性為特征，日本組織為女性提供工作機會。因此，考慮到這些文化差異，當一家公司在全球市場上運營時，全球不同的人作為一個團隊在一個組織中共同工作，發生文化沖突的可能性是非常自然的，但是，對這一問題的系統和有效的管理可以通過利用組織中不同團隊的競爭優勢，對提高生產力以及全球市場的創新非常有幫助。
4. Managing Diversity And Cross Cultural Issues:管理多樣性和跨文化問題
Managing diversity in an organization has become the at most importance in this era of globalization. As we discussed earlier this efficient management is very much necessary to leverage the competitive advantage of the diversified team in an organization for achieving success and for the expansion of business through innovation. A study done by Aoun (2007) on international forum on managing the diversity revels the findings that diversity management has become the priority in most of the countries especially in work place and in institutions of higher education. A discussion between Lloyd & Trompenaars (1993) suggests that riding waves of culture is becoming extremely important in the corporate world and day to day lives as well. Kandola & Fullerton (cited in Maxwell et al. 2001: 468) says that managing diversity has its origin in United States of America. Maxwell et al. (2001) explains that this emerging importance of managing diversity was not only because of the widely spread demographic changes but also it offers equal opportunity approach. A research done by Schwabenland & Tomlinson (2008) revels that managing diversity could become inherently problematic when it comes to some organizations like non profitable organizations when involving the process of undermining and when organizations efforts to organize and manage by themselves. But as diversity gives sustainable advantages, it is necessary to manage it efficiently through different ways by adopting new strategies in the organizations. Friday & Friday (2003) points out that most of the current organizations implemented corporate diversity strategy but have not used planned change-corporate diversity. This could cause diversity initiatives to be ineffective.
在這個全球化時代，管理一個組織的多樣性至為重要。正如我們前面所討論的，這種高效的管理對于利用組織中多元化團隊的競爭優勢，實現成功和通過創新擴大業務非常必要。Aoun在管理多樣性國際論壇上所做的一項研究揭示了這樣的發現：多樣性管理已成為大多數國家的優先事項，尤其是在工作場所和高等教育機構。Lloyd&Trompenaars之間的一次討論表明，在企業界和日常生活中，乘風破浪的文化正變得極其重要。Kandola&Fullerton表示，管理多樣性起源于美國。Maxwell等人解釋說，管理多樣性的重要性不僅是因為廣泛的人口變化，而且還提供了機會均等的方法。Schwabenland&Tomlinson所做的一項研究揭示，當涉及到破壞過程以及組織試圖自行組織和管理時，管理多樣性可能會成為一些非盈利組織的固有問題。但是，由于多樣性帶來了可持續的優勢，因此有必要通過不同的方式，通過在組織中采用新的戰略來有效地管理多樣性。Friday&Friday指出，目前大多數組織都實施了企業多樣性戰略，但沒有使用有計劃的改變企業多樣性。這可能導致多樣性倡議無效。
So a planned strategic management is necessary for efficiently managing diversity in an organization. Friday & Friday (2003) also asserts that planned change-diversity strategy will also help in long term effectiveness and this is extremely important for managing human resource in organizations with highly diversified work force. Friday & Friday (2003) also give systematic strategic management approach starting from strategic formulation, implementation and strategic evaluation. In strategic formulation we develop the mission, vision and the goal, conduct the SWOT analysis and also set the criteria for selection and then select the strategy. Then in strategic implementation phase we allocate appropriate resources and execute the strategy. In the evaluation process of managing the diversity, we set the control process, review and access the strategic execution and takes corrective actions when ever it is necessary. So this type of strategic management of diversity is very much important for ideally dealing with the cross cultural issues in an organization proactively. In general, in this strategic management for managing diversity, we are going through the process of Acknowledging diversity, valuing diversity and managing diversity. Friday & Friday (2003) also projects eight steps which contribute to the efficient diversity management. These are exposure, experience, understanding, respect, knowledge, appreciate, modifying attitudes and the behaviours and finally healthy interaction. These could help in maintaining a healthy diversified team in an organization. Exposure, experience, understanding and knowledge broadly come under acknowledging diversity. Under exposure we promote the practice of acknowledging a person to know who he is, where he is from, promoting to receive others culture, unmasking and public noticing. Under experience, we insist personal involvement, information gathering, living through, encountering and doing. Knowledge phase is almost similar to this. In understanding, it tends to grasp the reality, share unique insights and share perception. Now in valuating the diversity we go through two phases that is, Appreciating and giving respect. By appreciating we give high regards to others opinion, welcoming them and accepting the worth of their value and culture. By giving respect we need to give personal considerations, pay tribute to the value of culture, pay difference to person’s culture, Pay attention as well to the person’s culture and finally regarding a person’s value.
因此，有計劃的戰略管理對于有效管理組織的多樣性是必要的。Friday&Friday還聲稱，計劃中的變革多樣性戰略也將有助于提高長期效率，這對于具有高度多樣化勞動力的組織的人力資源管理極為重要。Friday&Friday還從戰略制定、實施和戰略評估入手，給出了系統的戰略管理方法。在戰略制定中，我們制定使命、愿景和目標，進行SWOT分析，并制定選擇標準，然后選擇戰略。然后在戰略實施階段，我們分配適當的資源并執行戰略。在管理多樣性的評估過程中，我們設置了控制流程，審查和訪問戰略執行情況，并在必要時采取糾正措施。因此，這種多樣性的戰略管理對于理想地主動處理組織中的跨文化問題非常重要。總的來說，在管理多樣性的戰略管理中，我們正在經歷承認多樣性、重視多樣性和管理多樣性。星期五和星期五還計劃了有助于有效多樣性管理的八個步驟。這些是接觸、體驗、理解、尊重、知識、欣賞、改變態度和行為，最后是健康的互動。這有助于在組織中保持健康的多元化團隊。接觸、經驗、理解和知識大體上屬于承認多樣性的范疇。在曝光下，我們提倡承認一個人知道他是誰，他來自哪里，促進接受他人的文化，揭開面紗并引起公眾注意。根據經驗，我們堅持個人參與、信息收集、經歷、遭遇和實踐。知識階段幾乎與此類似。在理解中，它傾向于把握現實，分享獨特的見解和感知?，F在，在評估多樣性時，我們經歷了兩個階段，即欣賞和尊重。通過欣賞，我們高度尊重他人的意見，歡迎他們并接受他們的價值和文化。通過給予尊重，我們需要給予個人考慮，尊重文化的價值，關注個人文化的差異，關注個人的文化，最后關注個人的價值。
Higgs (1994) suggest certain tips for the efficient management of diversity in an organization. He suggests to built a strong corporate culture in the organization, adapt a strong human resource strategy and policy and then empower the subsidiaries of its own to adapt these strategies and implement it locally so that it cam meet the national cultural difference. He also suggests involving all locations globally for the formulation of such policies so that it supports corporate goals in a diversified environment. Higgs (1994) also suggests that for better management of diversity, it is necessary to identify the national cultural differences and its impact on a particular organization and the also necessary to develop an understanding of potential strength which influences corporate and the national culture with in an organization. Choy et al. (2010) stress the need of differentiated management approach which involves changing current management process. In differentiated management approach managers need to take a different managerial style which adapts to the business environment and the characteristics of multinational staffs. Choy et al. (2010) proves this with the example of established trade relation between China and Singapore where they needed to use differentiated management technique as these countries had different philosophies, political and cultural view for doing the trade. Also Janssens et al. (2004) points out the importance of diversity of languages and the importance of managing it by stressing the point that international organizations are multilingual organizations where language diversity needs to be organized for the effective diversity management. A case study on Siemens by Fredriksson et al. (2006) also proves the importance of managing diversified languages in a multilingual organization. In this case, Siemens subsidiaries in Germany and France preferred their native languages but managing those conflicts and promoting English as common language needed diversified management skills and was successful evidence of efficient diversity and cross cultural management. Diversity management becomes much more important in these situations as we cannot avoid these situations because it occurs frequently in globalization era. As we discussed earlier, managerial skills need to be shifted from an organization level to a global thinking, by practicing to deal with the multicultural and multilingual environment. This also includes the need of practicing the equal opportunity theory and to be implemented by the organizations. Many studies also proves that managing diversity is not only for diversified recruitment of staffs, but also giving equal opportunity for everyone globally by accepting and welcoming different culture and by rewarding for different successful aspects of different talents. These kinds of effective diversity management in an organization reduces the friction of national, cultural and even mental differences as well thus by giving way to a smooth operation of the business and by giving competitive edge for innovation and success.
希格斯提出了有效管理組織多樣性的一些建議。他建議在組織中建立強有力的企業文化，調整強有力的人力資源戰略和政策，然后授權其子公司調整這些戰略并在當地實施，以滿足國家文化差異。他還建議讓全球各地參與制定此類政策，以便在多元化環境中支持企業目標。希格斯還指出，為了更好地管理多樣性，有必要確定國家文化差異及其對特定組織的影響，也有必要了解影響企業和組織內國家文化的潛在力量。Choy等人強調了差異化管理方法的必要性，該方法涉及改變當前的管理流程。在差異化管理方法中，管理者需要采取不同的管理風格，以適應商業環境和跨國員工的特點。Choy等人以中國和新加坡之間建立的貿易關系為例證明了這一點，因為這些國家在進行貿易時有不同的哲學、政治和文化觀點，因此需要使用差異化管理技術。此外，Janssens等人強調國際組織是多語言組織，需要組織語言多樣性以有效管理多樣性，從而指出了語言多樣性的重要性和管理多樣性的重要意義。Fredriksson等人對西門子的案例研究也證明了在多語言組織中管理多樣化語言的重要性。在這種情況下，西門子在德國和法國的子公司更喜歡他們的母語，但管理這些沖突并推廣英語作為通用語言需要多樣化的管理技能，這是高效多樣性和跨文化管理的成功證據。在這些情況下，多樣性管理變得更加重要，因為我們無法避免這些情況，因為它在全球化時代頻繁發生。正如我們前面所討論的，管理技能需要從組織層面轉變為全球思維，通過實踐來應對多元文化和多語言環境。這還包括需要實踐平等機會理論并由各組織實施。許多研究還證明，管理多樣性不僅是為了員工的多元化招聘，而且通過接受和歡迎不同的文化以及獎勵不同人才的不同成功方面，為全球所有人提供平等的機會。組織中的這些有效多樣性管理減少了國家、文化甚至心理差異的摩擦，從而讓位于業務的順利運營，并為創新和成功提供了競爭優勢。
5. Conclusion 結論
In the present business world, due to the technology developments and innovation organizations and industries are fast growing. As a part of globalization, companies operate their business across the globe for expanding the business as well as to pursue the opportunity available in the world market. Such a working environment will be diversified with people from different countries with different philosophies, culture, language, gender, mentality, thoughts and lot more. For the successful operation of a firm globally, it requires a tight coupling between these people in an organization. For this tight coupling, a good relationship as well as trust is required. But chances of causing conflict in such multinational organizations are high.
在當前的商業世界中，由于技術的發展和創新，組織和行業正在快速發展。作為全球化的一部分，公司在全球范圍內經營業務，以擴大業務并尋求世界市場上的機會。這樣的工作環境將多樣化，來自不同國家的人將擁有不同的哲學、文化、語言、性別、心態、思想等等。為了在全球范圍內成功運營一家公司，需要組織中這些人之間的緊密耦合。對于這種緊密耦合，需要良好的關系和信任。但在這些跨國組織中引發沖突的可能性很高。       
Instead of finding these conflicts as a negative impact on organization, we need to use the new trend of finding and utilizing opportunity from the conflict and need to leverage the competitive advantage of diversity which helps organization to expand business in the global market and to pursue success. For doing this an efficient management of diversity is required in an organization. Managers need to think about the diversified management of the diversity rather than the old management styles followed in the organizations. This diversified management should focus on the principle of giving equal opportunity to everybody. This should also involve the process of understanding, accepting and respecting everybody thoughts and aspects. Companies should hire diversified team for higher as well as middle level management to understand and leverage the opportunities in the market by using the experience and knowledge of these diversities. This could help organizations to root their business in other countries by a better understanding of their culture. Companies should also focus on developing a common human resource strategy and policy for everyone in the organization. Companies should also include every body’s thoughts and opinion while developing these policies for better outcome. An efficient management of diversity will allow reducing or even avoiding the friction caused due to cross cultural issues. An efficient management of diversity could also help an organization to better understand the national difference and this will better help an organization to establish business across globe with out much issues. As a part of diversified management, companies should also give importance to language differences and need to try to make a common language. This is because most of the multinational organizations are multilingual. In general, diversity management has become the at most important process in an organization as it is directly linked with the companies strategic goals and success in the current globalize business world.
與其將這些沖突視為對組織的負面影響，我們需要利用從沖突中發現和利用機會的新趨勢，并需要利用多樣性的競爭優勢，這有助于組織在全球市場拓展業務并追求成功。為此，Essay范文提出一個組織需要有效地管理多樣性。管理者需要考慮多樣性的多元化管理，而不是組織中遵循的舊管理風格。這種多元化的管理應該注重給每個人平等機會的原則。這也應該包括理解、接受和尊重每個人的想法和方面的過程。公司應為高級和中級管理層雇傭多元化團隊，以利用這些多元化的經驗和知識來理解和利用市場中的機會。這可以幫助組織通過更好地了解其文化，將其業務植根于其他國家。公司還應專注于為組織中的每個人制定共同的人力資源戰略和政策。公司在制定這些政策以獲得更好的結果時，還應考慮每個人的想法和意見。對多樣性的有效管理將減少甚至避免因跨文化問題而引起的摩擦。對多樣性的有效管理也有助于組織更好地理解國家差異，這將更好地幫助組織在全球范圍內建立業務，而不會出現太多問題。作為多元化管理的一部分，公司也應該重視語言差異，并需要努力形成共同語言。這是因為大多數跨國組織都使用多種語言?？偟膩碚f，多元化管理已經成為一個組織中最重要的過程，因為它直接關系到公司的戰略目標和在當前全球化商業世界中的成功。本站提供各國各專業留學生Essay代寫和指導服務，如有需要可咨詢本平臺。