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

Business Essay范文-管理多样性和跨文化问题的策略。在当前的商业世界中，时间和距离不是障碍，组织通过绕过限制跨越国界在全球范围内运营。这种组织的工作环境是多元化的，充满了不同技能、文化、宗教、语言、民族、心态等的人。由于这种多元化的团队需要更紧密地合作，并且需要合作才能顺利开展业务，因此有效管理组织中的跨文化环境至关重要。在这篇essay中，我们批判性地分析了多样性如何帮助一个组织在全球市场上保持竞争力，跨文化问题以及在组织中有效管理多样性的重要性。下面就一起来看一下这篇留学生Business Essay范文的全部内容。

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.
在创新技术的帮助下，行业和组织正在快速发展。在当前的商业世界中，这些技术，即使能技术，正在帮助组织跨越界限在全球范围内扩展业务。因此，组织环境因来自不同国家、语言和文化等的人而变得非常多样化。组织需要与来自这种多样化环境的人打交道。在新一代商业或服务业中，即使是在一个项目中，来自不同文化或国家的人们也会一起完成项目。这些人员之间的密切关系对于不间断地继续作业和成功完成这些项目至关重要。这些关系中的一个小问题或错误可能会造成严重的问题，并且对组织运营的影响将非常大。因此，应谨慎处理跨文化环境，以免打破组织运作的脉络。事实是，由于几个原因，一个组织可能会出现几个跨文化问题。因此，在这种情况下，管理者也应该具备管理组织多样性的技能。这项技能非常重要，因为全球化比过去变得越来越重要。
2. Diversity – An enabler for globalization 多样性——全球化的推动者
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.
随着业务越来越全球化，组织的多样性是利用全球业务机会的竞争优势。对这种多样性的良好管理有助于极大地改进团队工作，也有助于提高组织的生产力。Zainuba（1998）指出，通用电气、霍尼韦尔、美国银行等跨国公司一直将多元化领导者作为其组织的高级员工。多元化也具有巨大的重要性，因为它有助于满足一个组织的多元文化客户，也有助于在全球化环境中处理多元化的市场。在多家公司经营业务的公司面临竞争问题。为了理解这些市场和竞争问题，跨文化的合作和理解非常重要。由于这个原因，许多公司将其管理层员工或外国高层管理人员保留在不同的国家或文化中，以了解全球业务并追求市场优势。例如，高露洁公司保留了一名澳大利亚人作为其欧洲分部运营的最高管理人员。通过这样做，这些公司有更好的机会在全球市场上竞争，并有效地帮助全球化。
3. Cross cultural issues:跨文化问题
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.
很明显，当一个多元化的团队一起工作时，由于语言障碍、文化差异等诸多原因，可能会出现许多问题。但在任何组织中，分析这些问题的原因都是至关重要的，并且有必要找出在这种情况下阻碍团队工作的因素。在大多数情况下，文化差异是组织中跨文化问题的主要原因。Hofstede已经确定了导致文化差异的四个不同维度，或对组织中的国家文化差异产生影响的因素。Hofstede将这些维度概括为个人主义/集体主义、权力距离、不确定性回避和男性气质/女性气质。个人主义/集体主义这一维度代表了个人在多大程度上重视他们的自我决定，而不是他们的行为，这是由组织的集体意志决定的。下一个维度是权力距离，它也对跨文化环境造成巨大影响。在低权力距离文化中，员工表现出参与并具有参与式管理风格。另一方面，员工总是倾向于接受上级管理层的指示，并以某种方式行事。男性气质/女性气质被认为是最困难的维度之一。在一个组织中，高度男性化的文化价值观和高度女性化的文化观之间总是存在高度冲突。人们认为，男性文化价值观主要与物质获取和自信有关，而女性文化价值观与关系、人和生活质量有关。因此，在跨国组织中，这些跨文化冲突往往很严重。不确定性回避域表示员工对工作场所不确定性的容忍度。Higgs&Phelps对在英国运营的日本组织进行的研究也证明了这些维度的实际证据。Magdaleno&Kleiner还指出，组织行为和工作环境与国家文化紧密相连。他们通过列举英国、日本和墨西哥等不同国家的不同组织的例子来证明这一点。Magdaleno&Kleiner表明，美国组织的文化趋势是成为大熔炉的一部分，墨西哥组织总是将归属和传统过滤到工作场所，英国组织以同质性为特征，日本组织为女性提供工作机会。因此，考虑到这些文化差异，当一家公司在全球市场上运营时，全球不同的人作为一个团队在一个组织中共同工作，发生文化冲突的可能性是非常自然的，但是，对这一问题的系统和有效的管理可以通过利用组织中不同团队的竞争优势，对提高生产力以及全球市场的创新非常有帮助。
4. Managing Diversity And Cross Cultural Issues:管理多样性和跨文化问题
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.
在这个全球化时代，管理一个组织的多样性至为重要。正如我们前面所讨论的，这种高效的管理对于利用组织中多元化团队的竞争优势，实现成功和通过创新扩大业务非常必要。Aoun在管理多样性国际论坛上所做的一项研究揭示了这样的发现：多样性管理已成为大多数国家的优先事项，尤其是在工作场所和高等教育机构。Lloyd&Trompenaars之间的一次讨论表明，在企业界和日常生活中，乘风破浪的文化正变得极其重要。Kandola&Fullerton表示，管理多样性起源于美国。Maxwell等人解释说，管理多样性的重要性不仅是因为广泛的人口变化，而且还提供了机会均等的方法。Schwabenland&Tomlinson所做的一项研究揭示，当涉及到破坏过程以及组织试图自行组织和管理时，管理多样性可能会成为一些非盈利组织的固有问题。但是，由于多样性带来了可持续的优势，因此有必要通过不同的方式，通过在组织中采用新的战略来有效地管理多样性。Friday&Friday指出，目前大多数组织都实施了企业多样性战略，但没有使用有计划的改变企业多样性。这可能导致多样性倡议无效。
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，有计划的战略管理对于有效管理组织的多样性是必要的。Friday&Friday还声称，计划中的变革多样性战略也将有助于提高长期效率，这对于具有高度多样化劳动力的组织的人力资源管理极为重要。Friday&Friday还从战略制定、实施和战略评估入手，给出了系统的战略管理方法。在战略制定中，我们制定使命、愿景和目标，进行SWOT分析，并制定选择标准，然后选择战略。然后在战略实施阶段，我们分配适当的资源并执行战略。在管理多样性的评估过程中，我们设置了控制流程，审查和访问战略执行情况，并在必要时采取纠正措施。因此，这种多样性的战略管理对于理想地主动处理组织中的跨文化问题非常重要。总的来说，在管理多样性的战略管理中，我们正在经历承认多样性、重视多样性和管理多样性。星期五和星期五还计划了有助于有效多样性管理的八个步骤。这些是接触、体验、理解、尊重、知识、欣赏、改变态度和行为，最后是健康的互动。这有助于在组织中保持健康的多元化团队。接触、经验、理解和知识大体上属于承认多样性的范畴。在曝光下，我们提倡承认一个人知道他是谁，他来自哪里，促进接受他人的文化，揭开面纱并引起公众注意。根据经验，我们坚持个人参与、信息收集、经历、遭遇和实践。知识阶段几乎与此类似。在理解中，它倾向于把握现实，分享独特的见解和感知。现在，在评估多样性时，我们经历了两个阶段，即欣赏和尊重。通过欣赏，我们高度尊重他人的意见，欢迎他们并接受他们的价值和文化。通过给予尊重，我们需要给予个人考虑，尊重文化的价值，关注个人文化的差异，关注个人的文化，最后关注个人的价值。
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组织多样性的一些建议。他建议在组织中建立强有力的企业文化，调整强有力的人力资源战略和政策，然后授权其子公司调整这些战略并在当地实施，以满足国家文化差异。他还建议让全球各地参与制定此类政策，以便在多元化环境中支持企业目标。希格斯还指出，为了更好地管理多样性，有必要确定国家文化差异及其对特定组织的影响，也有必要了解影响企业和组织内国家文化的潜在力量。Choy等人强调了差异化管理方法的必要性，该方法涉及改变当前的管理流程。在差异化管理方法中，管理者需要采取不同的管理风格，以适应商业环境和跨国员工的特点。Choy等人以中国和新加坡之间建立的贸易关系为例证明了这一点，因为这些国家在进行贸易时有不同的哲学、政治和文化观点，因此需要使用差异化管理技术。此外，Janssens等人强调国际组织是多语言组织，需要组织语言多样性以有效管理多样性，从而指出了语言多样性的重要性和管理多样性的重要意义。Fredriksson等人对西门子的案例研究也证明了在多语言组织中管理多样化语言的重要性。在这种情况下，西门子在德国和法国的子公司更喜欢他们的母语，但管理这些冲突并推广英语作为通用语言需要多样化的管理技能，这是高效多样性和跨文化管理的成功证据。在这些情况下，多样性管理变得更加重要，因为我们无法避免这些情况，因为它在全球化时代频繁发生。正如我们前面所讨论的，管理技能需要从组织层面转变为全球思维，通过实践来应对多元文化和多语言环境。这还包括需要实践平等机会理论并由各组织实施。许多研究还证明，管理多样性不仅是为了员工的多元化招聘，而且通过接受和欢迎不同的文化以及奖励不同人才的不同成功方面，为全球所有人提供平等的机会。组织中的这些有效多样性管理减少了国家、文化甚至心理差异的摩擦，从而让位于业务的顺利运营，并为创新和成功提供了竞争优势。
5. Conclusion 结论
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.
在当前的商业世界中，由于技术的发展和创新，组织和行业正在快速发展。作为全球化的一部分，公司在全球范围内经营业务，以扩大业务并寻求世界市场上的机会。这样的工作环境将多样化，来自不同国家的人将拥有不同的哲学、文化、语言、性别、心态、思想等等。为了在全球范围内成功运营一家公司，需要组织中这些人之间的紧密耦合。对于这种紧密耦合，需要良好的关系和信任。但在这些跨国组织中引发冲突的可能性很高。       
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.
与其将这些冲突视为对组织的负面影响，我们需要利用从冲突中发现和利用机会的新趋势，并需要利用多样性的竞争优势，这有助于组织在全球市场拓展业务并追求成功。为此，Essay范文提出一个组织需要有效地管理多样性。管理者需要考虑多样性的多元化管理，而不是组织中遵循的旧管理风格。这种多元化的管理应该注重给每个人平等机会的原则。这也应该包括理解、接受和尊重每个人的想法和方面的过程。公司应为高级和中级管理层雇佣多元化团队，以利用这些多元化的经验和知识来理解和利用市场中的机会。这可以帮助组织通过更好地了解其文化，将其业务植根于其他国家。公司还应专注于为组织中的每个人制定共同的人力资源战略和政策。公司在制定这些政策以获得更好的结果时，还应考虑每个人的想法和意见。对多样性的有效管理将减少甚至避免因跨文化问题而引起的摩擦。对多样性的有效管理也有助于组织更好地理解国家差异，这将更好地帮助组织在全球范围内建立业务，而不会出现太多问题。作为多元化管理的一部分，公司也应该重视语言差异，并需要努力形成共同语言。这是因为大多数跨国组织都使用多种语言。总的来说，多元化管理已经成为一个组织中最重要的过程，因为它直接关系到公司的战略目标和在当前全球化商业世界中的成功。本站提供各国各专业留学生Essay代写和指导服务，如有需要可咨询本平台。