Managing Diversity

This week module was managing diversity.

As we’ve seen last week diversity is the differences that exist within people; these differentiations are due to many facts and affect people’s values, perceptions, attitudes, characters, reactions, and many others.
We then made an exercise of exploring diversity; I explored my workplace and my area of work in both dimensions of diversity.
Although in my work place differences are most of the time easily notices or passed by, making this exercise I realized that they where more differences that the ones I already knew, and I really took a bigger look about the huge tolerance, respect and acceptance that had to have my coworkers in order to have a great environment.
This week we went beyond diversity and read about managing diversity, we made a “zoom” about my perception and conclusion of the exercise.
The Bibliographical reference was Chevrier, Sylvie. 2003. Cross-cultural management in multinational project groups Journal of World Business 38:141-149.
This paper studied 3 different international project groups in order to find the actual practices in managing diversity and be able to create a new and better strategy.
Three dominant strategies that where perceived in these cases, they where used by the leader in an implicit or explicit way.
1. Drawing upon individual tolerance & self control: this strategy is almost like a “no strategy” situation; managers don’t pay attention to the cross culture differences and expect self control, patient and some “obvious” special qualities of their team to “work in peace”.
2. Trial & error processes coupled with personals relationship: in this approach relationship is the key, getting to know and to communicate differently with the co-workers, would make the work easier. Learning what partners like and dislikes can create a better environment in the future.
3. Setting up transnational cultures: in order to join together the parts of the project, managers implement international cultures as a resource, such as professional or corporate culture. National habits are replaced by the habits directed by these cultures.

All thought these strategies are not totally satisfactory for managers the lack of better solution makes them use any type of possible solution. The article proposes a better a new strategy for managing diversity in the most proper way.
According to them there must be a cultural mediator in cross-cultural teams, bases on 2 basic assumptions.

1. Understanding the context of the team members is key to success.
2. Interaction results don’t come naturally.

The strategy is based on studying hypothetical situations in order to create collective solutions that transform in understanding and involvement.


The following questions where proposed by the teacher in order to help us make the proper analysis:
· How diversity is managed within organizations?

I think these answer is part answered by the article cases. However as the document highlights there is a lack of standardized, practical and effective solutions, and although I believe there proposal can be very useful and functional, it requires a lot of time which is not an “available resource” now days. Diversity must be managed, that not a lie, but Managers must create a “diverse friendly” environment within their organization even if the company doesn’t have diversity. Sooner or later that company will have to face globalization and obviously diversity.

In fact I can not assure anything but I will say that 80% of the companies are now facing a big grade of diversity, Chevrier article was written in 2003 and a lot has happened since. Now days rules and regulations demand diversity in companies and the 20% of possibility I left for non diversified companies is actually pretty big.


· What is the future of cultures? Are cultures being homogenized? Or are they falling apart?

Just a decade or so ago, sociologists and best-selling authors such as Benjamin Barber, author of Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and TribalismAre Reshaping the World (Ballantine 1996), were concerned about a homogenization of global culture dominated by the United States and its powerful entertainment industry. It was feared that Hollywood and Baywatch were taking over the global culture.
It turns out that local cultures are more robust than was thought. People are quite capable of taking the aspects of global culture they like, ignoring the rest, and holding tight to what they love about their native cultures. (Hines, October 2008)


Over the years these questions have been asked many times by many people and we still have different cultures and not a homogenized one. The constant interrogation about the future of culture owns its origin to globalization and technology. But even though these questions have many different answers the context is completely different. A decade ago globalization was not “the monster” that is today and technology didn’t believe it could reach the levels of today.

I think these questions are very subjective and all thought my answer it’s based on some data it’s constructed on my own experience.

Today the world is the total market of the companies, globalization and technology connects us every day a little more. Consumers are interacting with each other even if they don’t speak the same language or live in the same region. The flow of information is increasing in an exponential way.

People find their “equals” online; now it’s easy to find people with the same likes and dislikes and necessities to buy. It’s not rare to enter a blog and ask if someone has use, or uses a product, or talk about music, hobbies, etc. “the sky is the limit” and people can have “personal advisors” all over the world for anything they want, and they recommend anything to anyone.

Fashion trends are now global trends, products can be found in any place, any state, and any country. Consumers are more demanding and are becoming more “intelligent”, more rational. The same is happening with culture; people see different traditions, values and rituals every day, whether is in TV, Internet, in schools, Universities or workplace.

Since the “global world” started, nations have been able to keep their culture, because people took aspects of other cultures they like, but never took all of them, so till today, they have only modified their culture, but never homogenized it; till today we could positively say that cultures have evolved.

But then again, globalization and technology are growing every day, so does it mean that the future of these evolved cultures is hazy and unclear?

In the article Global Trends in Culture, Infrastructure, and Values. Andy Hines, shares some illustrating data: Just 19% of the global population is on the Internet, and half the world’s population has mobile phones… Add cultural multipolarity to media spread, and the result is cultural flow. In the coming years, expect to see new ideas, including products and services, coming from practically every corner of the planet. An early indicator may be the growing numbers of teens and young adults who think of themselves as global or planetary citizens. With so many communications options open to Gen Y, youths of today are making online friends around the world. My colleagues and I discovered this to be true when we conducted a study for MTV about the “Future of Happiness” with the Associated Press (AP). We came across an interesting quote from one of the five dozen 12- to 24-year-olds we interviewed, who said: “I’ve never met my best friend.” That is, the young Gen Yer had never met face-to-face with the person he has been communicating with for years by e-mail. Additionally, a survey conducted by AP of 1,280 youths found that 25% of Gen Yers surveyed made no distinction between online friends and the ones they saw every day. Although they reported that they do not see technology as a replacement for face to-face contact, they certainly see the Internet as means to access a greater range of friends and ideas.

I know that these figures are very overwhelming and can be a little shocking, but for me they show a reality that will become bigger but that as a result will only generate acceleration on the cultural flow. The fact that we Gen Yers consider our selves citizens of the world does not mean we will have the same culture.
Culture has many factors of influence besides interactions and connectivity. Factors like demography, natural resources, economic capacity and many more are key pillars of cultures. Its right to think that cultures will be quite similar in some aspects but the probability of having a single culture is almost cero.
Not even the European Union has managed to have a homogenized culture, it’s not easy to eliminate a history that weights that much.

Bibliography
Chevrier, Sylvie. 2003. Cross-cultural management in multinational project groups Journal of World Business 38:141-149.

Quoted Articles
Hines, A. (October 2008). Global Trends in Culture, Infrastructure, and Values. The Futurist , 18-24.