Diversity and Virtual Team

Diversity is the state of being different or having variety. Diversity is more than having individuals who represent different ethical backgrounds. Diversity is also comprised of having a variety of individuals who represent differences in ages, race, physical abilities and even gender. Being diverse is an essential part of operating a business. Employers have the ability to solicit creative ideas and implement them into successful business solutions when they have a diverse pool of people to receive feedback from. The workforce today has a wide range of diversity qualities. Within the workplace everyone has to communicate with one another. Communicating in

Multicultural teams have become more common in our organizations, and contemporary international management literature has identified that the management of multicultural teams is an

I would help Andy developing some of his diversity skills like teamwork. I would involve him in every single activity and giving him feedback. He might learn from his mistakes, but at the same time he can develop his interpersonal relations and communication. He could learn a lot of things or strategies to apply in the future because we learn from students and from colleagues. He also should enhance the ability to appreciate and mantein pride in his background and culture. In a diverse society, many people like to show how proud they are of their culture and background. Developing relationships with people is a good opportunity for Andy to show his culture. At the same time he is developing the ability to deal effectively with barriers to success

Diverse teams are often perceived as difficult to manage because of possibility of conflict. Ensuring the team works together efficiently and keeps a positive relationship with one another can make it easy managing diversity. One of the specific parts of managing a team with diversity would be properly assigning them tasks. Members in a diverse group are chosen because they are simply different from the rest. “They have different skills, different perspectives on problems, different personalities, and different backgrounds” (Herrenkohl, 2006, p.g. 27).

Managing a multicultural team therefore is a challenge for managers who will meet a worst situation unless realizing the importance of culture and diversity and taking actions to deal with them.

Managing a diverse workforce assists in creating a vivacious and assorted business team with opportunities and challenges for people of all aptitudes and experiences, besides host country nationals. In addition, by managing a diverse workforce assists in the facilitation of change in a country’s normal operating business practices. According to Hofstede’s dimensions of culture model, one could better understand the challenges faced by multinational managers in regards to human resource management, leadership style, motivational assumptions, decision-making, organizational design, and how culture can affect strategy implementation (Cullen & Parboteeah, 2014, p. 52). Furthermore, one can imagine how important manger actions and behavior are in educating future business leaders on how important it is to have a global mindset (“Social,” 2014). Lastly, although some consider the challenges mentioned obstacles, one could also consider finding opportunities in learning and progressing as a manager by being flexible and knowledgeable about different business possibilities and styles.

These types of teams are called as virtual teams. The virtual team can also be called as Geographically Dispersed team (GDT) (Stephen C. Betts M. D., 2006). By having these kinds of teams, the organization is benefitted by recruiting the best people for the team regardless of the geographic location. In today’s scenario, in many virtual teams people work from their home also. There are different types of virtual teams which are as follows:

The increasing number of multinational companies, the expand global market place and the diversity of the customers across cultures require new points of view. More and more companies use multicultural teams to develop new products or business solutions. Multicultural teams are task oriented groups of people from different cultures. Well managed multicultural teams thanks to the different point of views of their team members can superior national teams in the number of possible alternatives and solutions. But diversity is a “double- edged sword”: means positive dynamics and problems caused by cultural clashes. Managing these teams became a main subject of human resource

Organizations have been becoming increasingly diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. This diversity brings substantial potential benefits such as better decision making, greater creativity and innovation, and more successful marketing to different types of customers. But, increasing cultural differences within a workforce also bring potential costs in higher turnovers, interpersonal conflicts, and communicational breakdowns. The utilities of diversity training and the essential managerial skills required for effectively managing diversity will also be discussed.

Managers should encourage teamwork and reward the team for their accomplishments. Also, they should remove any inter-departmental barriers.

YRMC cannot provide culturally competent care without ensuring that team members are culturally competent and diverse. “In recent years a body of research has revealed another, more nuanced benefit of workplace diversity: nonhomogenous teams are simply smarter. Working with people who are different from you may challenge your brain to overcome its stale ways of thinking and sharpen its performance” (Rock & Grant, 2016). Diversity goes beyond the knowledge of customs, beliefs, and values of racial classification. A culturally competent and diverse team also includes religious affiliation, sexual orientation, physical size and appearance, socioeconomic status, employment, and occupation. To be successful analyzing the needs of the community and establishing a policy that will satisfy those needs demands a diverse team. Though our team is small, the members include a Caucasian female, Hispanic male, Native American female, African American male, and a Asian male.

Multicultural business teams gather people who share different culture and speak different language. The important fact is that successful, famous companies only choose teams which are efficient and ready for work. The main topic of this seminar paper is how to manage multicultural team with success.

Digitalisation and globalization brings the Diversity so called ‘’double-edged sword” everywhere. Diversity can be defined as acknowledging, understanding, accepting, and valuing differences among people with respect to age, class, race, ethnicity, gender, disabilities, etc. (Esty et al. 1995). The meaning of diversity within the workplace is not limited to those attributes which are observed but also include invisible characteristics such as differences in educational background, creativity, comprehension, learning style, and problem-solving ability (Nafukho et al., 2011).In order to respond to rapidly changing and challenging business environments, organizations have increasingly adopted work teams to increase organizational flexibility and innovation (Lovelace, Shapiro, & Weingart, 2001; West, 2004) and they also continue to rely on teams within the workplace to achieve goals through task performance (Garrison et al., 2010; Jackson et al., 2003; Klein et al., 2011; Mannix and Neale, 2005; van Knippenberg and Schippers, 2007) because Teams are generally a small groups of people with complementary skills, who work together as a unit to achieve a common purpose for which they hold themselves collectively accountable (Wood et al. 2004). It is well reflected that Team-based organizations can promote innovation through the effective cross-fertilization of ideas because work teams help integrate various types of information and perspectives that are conducive to high-quality

It is promising that multi-cultural team provides the opportunity to create a flexible and open environment for management, where managers would be easy to activate the creativity of team members and construct a cooperative model to deal with team targets.

As for 2006 and above, there are many problems regarding multicultural diverse team in global organization. Ironically, Presidents and CEO of the organization are willing to talk about diversity when their managers do not have much confidence in implementing diversity workforce in an organization. Managers are afraid that they may fail in terms of productivity when multicultural diverse team is applied.