Managing in a Global Context - Essay Example

Abstract

Diversity in a workplace implies bringing together those with different religion, age groups and backgrounds into a productive and cohesive unit. The article examines the management of diversity at Rabobank, which applied the practice in its human resource management department. The study was mainly on the management of ethnic minorities in the bank and the methods that were applied to attract them to work in the bank. It was determined from the research that a workplace that have a culture of allowing employee turnover, low morale, discrimination, harassment and disruption of teams results into loss of production.

Management of diversity in workplaces is considered a strong management tool that started in the 1990s and has changed the management practices of many organizations. The application of diversity has been advantageous to many organizations. From the practice, teams have been made more flexible, innovative, and hence increased productivity that translated to increased performance of organizations. Examination has been given to minority groups in workplace in terms of segregation and wage difference. There are also focuses that have been given to conflict and diversity or problem-solving capabilities and cognitive heterogeneity. The results have mainly translated to discrimination in the workplace and the effect of this to organization performance.

From the research that was done on the bank, it was determined that there is a multifaceted initiative, which in its application does not fit efficiently into the hypothesis that was developed for the study. The hypothesis that was developed stated that proper management of diversity improves innovation, creativity and productivity, which in turn lead to competitive advantage of an organization. Diversity has had positive effect to the competitive advantage of the bank through increasing the market share among all the ethnic groups in the country.

Diversity is effective in those areas such as large cities where there is existence of a big ethnic market and it is in the areas that organizations can benefit. When developing marketing strategy for an organization: both in the local and international context, a successful strategy will be that which work to attract different ethnic groups so that there is increased selling of products.

In the research, diversity was mainly applied in large cities. This brought the concern of whether it is not able to work in rural areas and in small cities. Diversity was mainly applied in big cities to determine the innovations and the improvements that the bank was able to make and not for the improvement of teamwork.

Businesses that are not able to manage diversity suffer social and economic consequences. Individuals who are isolated or are marginalized by their co-workers because of their ethnic and cultural differences become less active in production and innovation of the business. The outcome in the situations is low innovation that leads to low productivity (Subeliani and Tsogas, 2005). Businesses that have implemented effective diversity strategy have leading edge in the retention of workers and increased productivity since the workers are willing to carry out innovative productivity.

According to Iles and Kaur Hayers, 2007, managing diversity for success is an implementation that is beyond valuing the differences that individual have or developing the right human resource policies. The strategy takes into consideration the rate of globalization in the world economy and changes that occur in the population of countries. Business managers, who recognize the changes as a chance of their business to increase growth and productivity of their businesses will invest the right resources and time needed to develop, implement them and have the right monitoring to ensure they are effective (Subeliani and Tsogas, 2005). The managers will have positive effect on their businesses.

Cox and Blake, 2011 argue that managing diversity in every workplace should be part of cultures in organizations. Steps were developed to ensure that there is well management of diversity in organizations. The four-step process involve determining the economic consequences that the business have, development of an effective strategy that is used to manage the diversity, implementing the action plan for change in organizations and evaluating the diversity strategy. In the first step, businesses that have not developed a good strategy for the management of diversity is likely to experience loss of productivity, employment law mistake loss of opportunities and employee turnover (Greenberg and Baron, 2003). Decision makers have the responsibility of developing an effective strategy for management of diversity for success.

The next step involves development of effective strategy for the management of diversity for success. To develop effective strategy, factors that are considered include communication with employees which h varies according to location and the number of employees, assigning responsibility where there are those that are med responsible for the development of the strategy; implementation and monitoring to determine that all the factors are considered in the business process. There is also proper allocation of resources where the budget is shifted to ensure that all the diversity actions have been met. There is also need to establish a task force and build accountability.

The third step is implementation of the action plan developed for change. In the process, the components of the strategy vary according to the corporate strategy and the goals of the organization. The process is where there is conducting the initial diversity assessment. There is conducting an assessment to ensure that all in the organization are aware of the importance of diversity in the workplace. After conducting the assessment, there is setting of diversity business goal and then providing training to the employees to make them aware of the diversity goals and objectives. The last step is monitoring the implemented strategy to determine its effectiveness and if it achieves the set objectives.

Diversity for success in businesses

When diversity is considered in a workplace, the advantages that are achieved include new language skills among the employees, new attitudes, increased productivity, increased creativity, global understandings and new solutions to problems in the organizations. Creativity in organizations is increased through diversity since people with different problem solving skills come together and work towards a common goal (Morrison, 2012). The more ideas that are obtained from different people lead to a workable solution. Increased exposure due to diversity leads to increased production. When a workplace is diverse, there are different people from different backgrounds and different cultures who use different production techniques. When the techniques are put together, the production increases. The people also have different skills that can be important in production. The production of the business also is increased since the people in the working environment are from a multigenerational work environment. They will be able to deal with different production problems.

New attitudes due to diversity are brought to an organization when there are people from different cultures. There are cultures that are found to be important in the production and selling of the organization and they are adopted to increase the production. The workers that had negative attitude towards certain cultures will then are able to change their attitudes. In many instances, many countries around the world consider time as being important for building relationships and for getting to understand the others better.

Language skills are important in the productions and growth of an organization. It is important in the current growing global economy. When an organization will need specific language skills in its activities such as global selling, the diversity in the organization will be important and the activities will be met (Morrison, 2012). Building good relationship with the others calls for learning their language become important. It is of an increased competitive advantage especially for those organizations that involve in international trade when they know the language of the foreigners.

Job promotion is also an advantage of diversity in a workplace. It is through diversity in the workplace that an organization will be able to reach foreign markets. Global markets then create two opportunities for the organization including employee development and opportunities for promotions (Morrison, 2012). When an organization is able to reach the global markets, the marketplace opens the doors for those employees who have different cultural understanding. Business reputation is also built through diversity in the workplace (Greenberg and Baron, 2003). Diversity is achieved since there is commitment to achieve through outreach in the recruitment efforts. When an organization is known due to its ethics and fairness in its employment, it will be able to attract a large pool of qualified applicants.

Mutual respect is also important for the productivity of an organization. When employees in an organization respect each other, they will have increased cooperation and work together as a team. When employees with different cultural practices work together, the work a synergistic environment is attained. Such a work environment increases innovation activities and there is increased problem solving skills.

Conclusion

Managing diversity is a complicated phenomenon. For an organization to achieve sustainable competitive advantage in its operations there is need to have continuous monitoring and change of strategies towards diversity and also update to founding principles. There are organizations where diversity has not effectively worked. In this, there is need of cross culture training that will enable development of diversity skills. Human resource management should take into consideration corporate culture to achieve diversity goals and objectives. The management also should carry out change in a systematic approach to make the organizations to be those that are recognized as social systems with the full components to capture the power of diversity.