Discussing Cultural Assessment Tools For Organizational Culture And Diversity

The positive impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can contribute creativity to a high-performance team. Membership diversity offers a rich pool of information, talent, and varied perspectives that can help improve team problem solving and increase creativity (Hunt, J., Osborn, R., Schermerhorn, J., 2005). Cultural diversity contributes various group input and group dynamics to the team. These two factors are essential in the high performance of a team. Cultural diversity can develop a high-performance team by allowing the diverse potentials of a team to operate. The negative impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can develop numerous of conflicts between team members. Conflicting interaction can limit or decrease the effectiveness and efficiency of productivity. There should be an awareness of the diverse culture values in order to prevent these conflicts.

The culture of team is weak, as there are no established norms and values or ground rules. As such, there was a discrepancy in the development of the team during the norming stage, as discussed previously. The team also engaged in a cultural clash in terms of industry areas, country/ethnic differences, and subcultures. The MGI founders related to a creative and artistic industry, while the students were business focused. The cultural differences manifested themselves in terms of language and expectations. And finally, within the subgroups were individual subcultures, which lead to a difference in values, roles, purposes, and goals especially when disagreements between these subcultures occurred (Hofstede, 1998). Multicultural teams can be more

Module 2 - DQ 2: There is a host of cultural assessment tools available to organizational leaders. Which of these is the most useful to a novice leader? Why?

Levitt (2014) defines culture as the coherent, learned, shared views of a group of people and about life’s concerns that ranks what is important, furnishes attitudes about what things are appropriate, and dictates behavior. Macy’s corporate culture possesses a diverse leadership team to target their diverse customers and locations. Diversity, based on experiences and passion, gives the Macy’s leadership team new perspectives to promote successful business. Levitt (2014) suggests organizational diversity can be considered as a mixture of people with different group identities working in the same social system. A multi-cultural team of Americans, Italians, Germans and Swiss would adapt well in the rich bouquet of culture in Zurich, Switzerland. As a new team leader, the biggest concern would be establishing integrations between the different cultures working together at Macys.

All Organisations posses a distinct form of culture with some having more than a single culture. This culture is usually very difficult to measure, change and most especially change.

The organization culture as a leadership concept has been identified as one of the many components that leaders can use to grow a dynamic organization. Leadership in organizations starts the culture formation process by imposing their assumptions and expectations on their followers. Once culture is established and accepted, they become a strong leadership tool to communicate the leader 's beliefs and values to organizational members, and especially new comers. When leaders promote ethical culture, they become successful in maintaining organizational growth, the good services demanded by the society, the ability to address problems before they become disasters and consequently are competitive against rivals. The leader 's success will depend to a large extent, on his knowledge and understanding of the organizational culture. The leader who understands his organizational culture and takes it seriously is capable of predicting the outcome of his decisions in preventing any anticipated consequences. What then is organizational culture? The concept of organizational culture has been defined from many perspectives in the literature. There is no one single definition for organizational culture. The topic of organizational culture has been studied from many perspectives and disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, organizational behavior, and organizational leadership to name a few. Deal defines organizational culture as values,

Nursing continues to strive towards excellence in delivering culturally competent healthcare. Through this journey of excellence, improvements can be made by continued education and awareness. Awareness of areas I need growth in builds on my existing knowledge and skills. In this paper, I will identify areas of weaknesses and strengths in my cultural competency skills as well as strategies that will improve my transcultural nursing care. I have identified these areas using the Cultural Diversity Self-Assessment. Achieving a total score of 104, this tool has allowed me to target my weaknesses and create a plan to increase my competence in those areas. I have also been able to identify my strengths in cultural competence.

Corporate culture is an intricate component of an organizations identity. Fortune 500 corporations have used corporate culture as a trademark. Best Buy, a leading electronics corporation, leverages its brand by promoting the “Geek Squad.” Walmart Corporation requires all associates to dress in dark blue shirts and beige slacks. This document will discuss cultural assessment tools used in assessing organizational culture and gaps within formal groups, leadership styles and techniques that influence social culture and diversity within formal workgroups, description of social culture that influence productivity within diverse workgroups and social culture and diversity of formal group members and the influence on organizational culture. The document will conclude with a summary of this discussion.

Our assignment, Diversity Awareness, was to take the self-assessment on page 55 of our textbook, calculate our scores, and then read the definition of our score provided in the book. The purpose of this self-assessment was to gain insight on our personal views about diversity. By gaining insight to our personal views we will hopefully be able to identify our weaknesses, take the necessary corrective actions, and become more culturally competent people. According to our textbook my score of 32 means I have a "high diversity awareness and I am comfortable with many different types of people and in many types of situations" . (Phillips|Gulley, pg. 55)

According to the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Public Statement on Cultural Competence in Evaluation, focusing on cultural sensitive enhance the quality of care. AEA mentioned that “Culturally significant factors encompass, but are not limited to, race/ethnicity, religion, spirituality, social class, caste, language, lineage, disability, sexual orientation, age, gender, geographic region, and socioeconomic circumstances” (American Evaluation Association (AEA), 2011); thus, concerning to difference in cultural is a significant aspect which all health care providers should put the first priorities. Therefore, focusing on cultural aspect strategy is the best fit with the essential practices for cultural competence acknowledged by the AEA.

There are many reasons that change can or must occur within and organization. The key will be in understanding the organization and the prospective change. According to Mangundjaya (2015) "there are many variables that can influence the success of organizational change, such as the content of the change, the process of the change, individual characteristics, leadership, external environment and organizational context" (p. 67). Organizational change has the potential to successfully align an organization with its goals or completely derail any future success and progress. It is important that the organization takes the proper steps to prepare for, implement, and evaluate change.

In this paper I will discuss how a team/group can become a high-performance team/group, examine the demographic characteristics and culture diversity and the impact on the team/group behavior. I will also describe how demographic characteristics and cultural diversity contribute to or detract from high-performance groups or teams.

Diversity in culture and demographic characteristics can be a negative impact or be one of the team's greatest strengths, depending on how the team as a whole functions and applies these different “routes to success”. A group can become a high performing team by understanding how cultural and demographic differences influence group behavior. The groups must realize that they can benefit from their diversity to their advantage and into a high performance team.

Study in organizational culture began in the early 1980s. Organizational culture is “work group culture” and involves organization’s personality. Organizational culture includes shared philosophies, ideologies, beliefs, feelings, assumptions, expectations, attitudes, norms and values (Fred Lunenburg, Allan Ornstein, 2012, p. 55). Most organizational cultures include observed behavioral regularities, norms, dominant values, philosophy, rules, and feelings. Organizational cultures includes certain input such as the energy imported by organizations from the environment in the form of information, people, and materials (Fred Lunenburg, Allan Ornstein, 2012, p. 55). This input energy must guide organizational behavior toward shared goals and process. Organizations produce an output because of the input into the

Many opportunities are associated with a culturally diverse workplace and global expansion may have potential to provide just such a diverse work group. Cross-culturalism in business can provide leaders and employees with a wonderful opportunity to work with people from different backgrounds and cultures. In addition, “the more opportunities for business leaders to interact with people from different cultures, the more likely they will be to have positive attitudes from different cultures and identify, learn and apply diverse culturally-appropriate business behaviors” (Caligiuri & Tarique, 2012, p. 614). Culturally diverse environments offer a multitude of benefits including “the variety of perspectives, skills and personal attributes” (Matveeve & Nelson, 2004, p. 254). Moreover, multicultural teams have potential to “generate more ideas of higher quality in brainstorming tasks” (Matveeve &