The Brockton Neighborhood Health Center

Cross cultural conflict can also be a factor in the workplace. The United States is an extremely diverse place, as a conglomeration of people from different races, religions, cultural backgrounds, personalities, educational experiences and learning styles. This diversification leads to more women, various ethnic groups, and immigrant workers working together in a more diverse tapestry of associates even when the corporation is located and operating only in the United States. In increasingly diverse corporate America, doing

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.

Humans are creatures that are vulnerable to differences in general, but in the presence of these differences, people will unknowingly gain some benefit. The following problems and opporrtunities that exist in working in a multicultural environment.

Those that go into the business world quickly recognize that each work environment they find themselves in can be total different from another. This can especially be said even of environments within the United States, from region to region. There is definitely a disparity of workplace environments from country to country. Not only can culture drive a varied atmosphere, but the diversity of the personnel making up that environment can equally create a challenge that a leader must be prepared to manage. Recognizing that special care needs to be placed on communication and perception skills is crucial in our present professional domain. Managers of today need to employee tools from the psychological and sociological field to be successful. Having a deep understanding in the differences in culture and diversity in the workplace is critical, especially when debating about accepting a position overseas or assigning an employee to an embedded position abroad. With a broad knowledge of cultural differences and diversity, success as a manager and the stability of a positive work environment can be achieved and maintained without unnecessary effort and focus.

Words, expressions, and gestures possess dissimilar meanings among different cultures. There is potential for the intended meaning to be misconstrued by the other party, which will result in friction among the groups. Another threat is the potential of cultural shocks, in which certain members of a diverse setting may not be able to adjust or understand the other cultures. In an organization where this is most likely to occur, dissatisfied employees may respond with high rates of absenteeism or turnover. Lower performance on the job may also result, which would have a significantly negative effect on the well being of the company. Diversity has been proven to foster the productivity of teams. However, this diversity also increases the number of ideas raised, and can be more time consuming to reach a consensus regarding particular decisions or suggestions.

This research did not only use the preferences of superiors employed in multicultural environments, when analyzing, but explored the role of each individual’s culture in defining a possible resolution. “If managers insist on their cultural preferences as the way to resolve disagreements, more disagreements will emerge because of misunderstood processes for resolving disagreements. The results of this study suggest that effective conflict resolution may need to begin with the recognition of different cultural preferences for resolution strategies. Only then can further attempts at resolution proceed effectively. In other words, focus on the "where" before jumping into the "how."”(Adams, p.110)

Cox and Blake (1991), maintained that cultural diversity would impact six areas of organizational effectiveness, including the capability to attract human resources, cost, innovation, creativity, and problem solving, marketing, and flexibility. The revealing fields studied were innovation and creativity, problem solving, and structural flexibility, this was accomplished through information and decision making processes. Creativity and innovation can be supported by "diversity of perspectives and less emphasis on conformity to the norms of the past" (Cox and Blake, 1991, p. 47), which will increase the ability of the organization to create and innovate. The problem-solving contention maintains that better decisions would be produced through additional perspectives developed in various problem solving groups (Cox and Blake, 1991). Finally, the flexibility argument designates that multicultural management practices would result in changes that meant "that the system will become less determinant, less standardized, and therefore more fluid" (Cox and Blake, 1991, p. 47). These fluctuations are likely to increase the

Cultural diversity can be defined as the existence of a variety of cultural or ethnic groups within a society. On the surface, many may think cultural diversity in the workplace is pretty self explanatory. However, if you go a little deeper you will find that diversity in the workplace not only consists of culture, but also race, religion, communication, background, and demographics all which play an important role in what configures the differences within a workplace. Understanding the root of why people act a certain way, have a specific dress code, or how they approach conflict may possibly be the difference between an innovative, productive work environment and an inefficient, non productive work environment. It’s important that those in the workplace try their best to get along and not pass judgment on those who seem different from first glance. Ensuring cultural understanding makes sure that entire chain of command operates smoothly to allow the business to perform at maximum potential.

     Finally, the individual needs to be comfortable when dealing with the dynamics of diversity. This person will need to utilize a process framework in addressing diversity. This means take the time to understand both sides of the story before deciding who was wrong. Sometimes a saying may be interpreted wrong because it may be acceptable in one culture but not the other. A diversity mature individual will take the time to ask questions to better understand the situation, and then provide a solution to help both parties resolve the matter in a peaceful way. This technique will allow employees to regain focus and continue performing at peak levels.

Disagreement in the workplace is can be a skill which enriches discussion in problem-solving meeting and can be applied when negotiating power between interlocutors (e.g., Rahim, 2011). Other research explains that disagreement can be acceptable and useful in some situations and does not accordingly indicate a face-threatening act (e.g., Tjosvold, 2008). Disagreement also has been connected to cultural differences and how cultural background, experiences, and expectation affect our understanding and judgment of disagreement (e.g., Paramasivam, 2007). “From this point of view disagreement or conflict resolution has been associated with notions such as ‘concern for self’ vs. ‘concern for others’ (e.g., Gabrielidis et al.,1997)” (Angouri &

“THERE IS A COMMUNICATION PROBLEM WHEN PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT CULTURES AND BACKGROUNDS DO NOT TAKE DIVERSITY INTO CONSIDERATION”

The importance of understanding cultural, ethnic and gender differences by managers and professionals in a business setting is essential to make the work environment comfortable. In every culture there are basic standards of thinking, and acting and these cultural differences strongly influence workplace values and communication. What may be considered acceptable and natural in the workplace for one person may be unacceptable for another person. People from diverse cultures bring new ways of thinking, creativity and language skills needed to survive in today’s work force. In many

In this assignment, we aim to investigate in which extent an organisation must appreciate cultural differences before entering a market.

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.

The world’s increasing globalization requires more interaction among people from a wide variety of cultures, values and backgrounds. People no longer live and work in a one-dimensional marketplace- they are living in a highly complex and competitive environment that has growing demands of innovation in order to perform successfully amongst other industries. Business and organizations need to respond to this new diverse landscape, and the best corporations increasingly align with it. A strong diversity initiative and inclusion in an organization is crucial in remaining competitive in the current business world. Diversity is in the workplace is claimed to foster and spark creativity and innovation in employees. On the other hand, it is perceived to increase conflict and communication in an organization. Thus, in theory, diversity is allegedly advantageous to worker productivity, though counterproductive in work-group processes and dynamics. However, there is a lack of validity and reliability in the empirical research conducted to support this assumption.