Diversity in the Global Environment: a Reflection on Personal Socialization - Essay Example

Diversity in the Global Environment: A Reflection on Personal Socialization *for you to complete, please Diversity and Integration have become key concepts in the business landscape globally. Due to the increasingly multinational nature of business, and indeed all aspects of industry, education, politics and economics, it is essential that management is able to take diversity into account, and develop strategies to assist in integration. Because we all are influenced by our backgrounds and childhood upbringing, it is important that anyone planning to move into a management arena, anywhere on the planet, understands the effect that preconceptions and even prejudices about groups of people have. Further, understanding one’s own preconceptions and developing strategies to overcome these in a management setting, are vital to becoming effective in such environments. Hence this paper focuses on a personal reflection of my own early influences, and how these may have formed in me certain preconceptions and prejudices. Recognizing and acknowledging such ways of thinking will enable me to strategize and thus overcome any prejudice, and enable me to work toward a management style which embraces diversity, to be able to contribute effectively to any multicultural team in business. The diversity of the modern world is perhaps fairly well-illustrated in my personal circumstances. I am an Indian national, studying in the United States, hoping to pursue a career in management. It is very likely, also, that my career will not be restricted to either my home country, or even the country in which I am furthering my education: rather, it is probable that I will travel to many countries during my career, and interact with many nationalities, cultures and social groups. Any aspiring businessperson today is likely to have to embrace the diverse nature of business in a global economy in order to reach full potential. Since my aspirations are to be active in a global business environment, and to succeed in that environment, I will also have to become such a person. In business, it is necessary to understand and appreciate cultural influences, languages and terminologies. This is true if a product or service is to be sold to a particular group of people, or if an identifiable group – identifiable by its racial, language, cultural, even religious or gender characteristics. And it is true also if such a group, or groups, are to be managed in a workplace. In both situations, success can be determined by the ability to avoid being discriminatory, or avoid communicating the wrong messages. My feeling is that a company should create a work environment that not only accepts, but embraces equal opportunity without consideration of gender, race, nationality, sexual orientation, disability, age or religion. Given the international nature of business today, it is probable that many workforces would be composed of a combination of any – if not all – of the above. Further than that, accepting and encouraging diversity in a business may allow for the company to find the most skilled workers for a particular job – the pool of employable people becomes global, rather than just local or national. If a company environment is comfortable for everyone – no matter their origins – staff is retained, and no sense of discriminatory practice will cause people to stay in the employment of firms which make them feel included. The image of a company can also be enhanced by non-discriminatory practices: both in the local community and in the wider corporate world. Companies that embrace diversity would be more inclined to do business with other companies having the same sort of ethos. In fact, by allowing discrimination within a company, the market itself shrinks, as no one would do business with a company discriminating internally against a group you consider yourself part of. Globalization is an accepted fact of modern business life. The trend is evident in almost every facet of business, but also general lifestyle, with people such as me choosing to study abroad, companies employing personnel from across the world, and migration becoming easier and more popular. As economies change, and with the effects of the recent major recession, work is being sought across the world not just in the individual’s local area. Communication is also so affordable and technologically advanced that people from all over the world are accessible to one another. Companies no longer operate exclusively within the borders of a country. It has even become easier for a company to move its entire operation to a region where market conditions are more favorable to business. Anyone in management today must be sensitive to many different cultures, and be aware of the effects and requirements of multi-cultural and diverse customers, and personnel. This trend brings with it numerous challenges for management and managers. Internal communication suddenly becomes complicated, as the language and idiom of the manager may not always be understood by everyone. The cultural, religious, moral, or values-based sensitivities of staff and client base may be inaccurately gauged and offense be caused. On a more personal level, an individual may feel like an outsider, if he/she is not part of a dominant group within the company. He/she may feel misunderstood because of a behavior that is culturally very natural, and even on as simple a level as the food they bring for lunch. Complicated cultural rituals and traditions may not be understood by the person assigned a post in the same company, but in a new country. Again, offense could be caused by innocent behavior. It cannot be easy to manage a situation in which a very diverse staff is required to become integrated into a company ethos, while each individual’s background and sensitivities have to be considered. The potential for conflict and unhappiness is clear. A management strategy that enables this diversity to benefit the company has to be carefully implemented. The advantages of diversity within a working group are, I believe, numerous if diversity and integration are managed. Each of us has to though confront our own attitudes to others if we are to be able to embrace diversity. Depending on our backgrounds – our race and ethnicity, our culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, language, religion, and nationality – we have certain ways of thinking about other groups of people. These are almost always based on our personal experiences and influences from people surrounding us in our formative years. Our families, our teachers, our religious leaders, our friends, our communities – all have some impact. There are in our minds, preconceptions which we may not even recognize as such, since we do believe that we make up our own minds about our attitudes. It is also very easy to live without questioning ourselves. Many things we believe to be right are those things that we were taught, and also taught never to question. Perhaps the strongest of these attitudes stem from our understanding of our own identities. We do not question our gender identity. We also tend not to question our religious or moral identities. Often, a cultural identity we hold dear is something that we just accept as part of ourselves. The same lack of reflection or critique of our own ways of thinking is possible for any of our attitudes. For any of these areas, it is possible that our identity beliefs cause us to reject people with belief systems about their identities that are different to our own. Our treatment of such groups will definitely be influenced by our prejudices, and it is possible that we react in a discriminatory way to others, without ever realizing it, or questioning our own attitudes. This is something that an effective manager in a multi-cultural environment cannot afford to do. My own background may have set up certain very fixed ways of thinking, and it is essential that I explore my attitudes, values, and belief systems to begin the process of becoming effective in environments where diversity defines the people. As I noted in the first paragraph of this paper, I am an Indian national. Before coming to the United States to study, I had a number of preconceptions about the country as a whole. There were also groups in the country that I thought I knew about, and understood. My superficial knowledge of many of these groups, and many aspects of American society contradicted my own beliefs, attitudes, values, and education. Particularly my family must have influenced the ways I thought, but some of my attitudes were formed by American television and the media, and their presentation of American life. To decode these messages is often very difficult, as many of the presentations by American media of Americans themselves, are very prejudiced. My family in India is economically fairly well-off. We are a close family, and the pattern is one of family values, and strong religiously-based morality. In our community, my family is well-respected and accepted. As a male, growing up in this environment, I was taught to respect my elders, treat others with consideration and understanding, to work hard to succeed in my education, and find stable, good employment and future income. The ideal path is to find a good wife, who supports her husband in his career, and to maintain the good name of the family in the community. From the media, my impression of America was of a very diverse, dynamic society. Everyone has equal opportunities to succeed, and everyone does succeed. There are so many films in which someone poor from a disadvantaged background “hits the big time” and lives “happily ever after.” But at the same time, I saw presentations of gangs of African-American youths, involved in drugs and crime. These people contradicted the values I hold completely – the crime, the alcohol and drugs, the disrespect of others, especially women – and this must have formed some degree of prejudice in my mind. I did not realize that this stereotype of African-American people applied only to a tiny percentage of this group within American society, and could definitely not be generalized to an entire racial or ethnic population. While my parents did not in any way encourage discrimination, the structure of my society does, to some degree, entrench stereotyping. There are groups within India, due to the outmoded Caste system, who are completely unacceptable to mainstream society. Perhaps some of this early exposure made it seem logical to me that African-Americans could, as a group, be poor, uneducated, prone to gang activities, and involved in crime. The idea that people were disrespected by such youths also meant that I could be strengthened in my preconception, and my rejection of this group. The treatment of women as sex objects, and the rebellion against the values and norms of older people are to me completely unacceptable, because of my religious upbringing. At the same time, I saw women who were sexually incredibly promiscuous, and who wore very provocative clothing, especially in music videos. They were not presenting themselves as being exploited but clearly they were being. Unless, they were actually immoral, in which case, I could again find reasons for my prejudices. In my country, women are very conscious of their reputations, and the sanctity of marriage is considered most important. Most films produced in India do not even show public kissing, for fear of offending viewers. This conservative attitude is entrenched, and I certainly have been influenced by such social thinking. My preconception had extended to certain groups of women, whom I considered to be morally unacceptable. On a slightly different level, I imagined that I would not be able to understand English as it is spoken in the USA. Having largely music videos and films as my reference point, I was convinced that the language used by most Americans was vastly different to the English I communicated in. I also feared that Americans would not understand my accented English. Language and the ability to communicate with a team clearly are fundamental aspects of good management, generally, and even more essential in the management of multi-cultural work forces. This specifically contributed to my preconceptions about African-Americans. I supposed that all African-Americans spoke a kind of ghetto-English, like in the Hip-Hop music I had heard. While I quite liked the sound of the music and the words, I did not think I would be able to communicate with anyone African-American, as I did not understand the slang they would use. A secret, coded language seemed to exist, to keep others from understanding what was being said. Certainly I was not used to the terminology I heard. In India, profane language is frowned upon universally. My family had also entrenched this habit of avoiding profanity as much as possible in me. In the most unrealistic way, this seems to have caused me to consider people who do swear easily as of lower social and financial standing than myself, of lesser moral fiber, and even less educated than I am. The films and television programs I saw showed people who swore uncontrollably and harshly. Again, I could justify my view of African-Americans – they were morally unsound, and did not respect the same values as I do. Even women swore – a fact that I found very difficult to accept, as women in India are generally more conservative in their language and behavior. A very specific code of behavior applies to women in India and even when women are assertive and successful in business and professions, they maintain the behavior patterns set for them by the society. Their public behavior is conservative and feminine, whereas American women seemed to me to behave in a far more masculine (by my socially influenced conception of masculine behavior) and liberal manner. Of course, this very clearly imposes a double set of standards: men are to some degree allowed far greater freedom than women, and their public behavior is far less restricted than that of women. In the extreme, women are not allowed access to education, or sometimes still the right to choose a spouse. On the one hand, this offends my sense of respect for women, while at the same time causing me to view women who behave more freely in a negative light. So, my conceptions of American women, and African-American men and women in particular were shaped almost entirely by media stereotyping, and a fairly conservative upbringing, in terms of my family’s own value system. A very different (from the USA) society also contributed to preconceptions within me. It is not always easy to realize that everyone around me is shaped by their past, their value systems, and their experiences in much the same way. Exactly as I have formulated certain ways of thinking about others, so have they. Hence, a conscious effort to adapt to and accommodate cultures, backgrounds, social norms, values and belief systems is required at all times. I contend that globalization is not going to stop any time soon. The expectations of all stakeholders in an organization may not be easy to determine, given the likelihood that many companies will be employing more and more varied personnel. My personal expectations may not align with those of others in a team, both on an organizational and a personal level. I want to ensure that I understand why, and how to overcome these misunderstandings. We all suffer from some degree of culture blindness that encourages us to believe that our concepts are always the correct ones. If someone outside “our group” acts in certain ways, it is easy to blame their background, culture, religion, or any other characteristic we assign to that group. If someone within “our group” does something, we almost automatically accept it as right. We trust people who we think are like we are more easily. If I am going to have to work in a situation where many groups are represented, and I am not going to confront the stereotypical views of these groups within me, I am going to be ineffective as a manager. As I mentioned in the opening of this paragraph, I believe that I will have to work in a multi-cultural environment as the world of business is becoming more and more integrated. In my opinion, to overcome one’s own preconceptions and prejudices is to learn to treat each person as an individual. I will have to learn to recognize cultural differences in all the people I encounter, and accept them as such. This means that I will have to learn to accept the cultures, norms, beliefs, and values of others, and respect them as much as I respect my own. I will also have to encourage people not to leave behind their own ways of thinking, but to add a company’s ethos and culture into their own thinking and behavior. My own behaviors must show this respect for others, and also show that I have respect for my own culture and background. I believe that one cannot be credible if one does not remain true to one’s own beliefs, norms and values. Experience is an important factor in teaching oneself how to manage similar situations in the future. Just reflecting on my own thinking, as I have done in this paper, provides me with some tools to approach all my attitudes to others: do I have preconceptions about an individual because I have accepted a stereotypical view of the group he/she originates from? Do I treat women, or race groups, or nationalities in a way that implies that I have some notion of how they should behave, according to my personal standards? The future of management and leadership in business is likely to require people highly skilled in managing diversity and integration, and I hope to be such a person. It is ironic, certainly, that I am able to form prejudices so easily, and certainly surprising to me that I do have so many preconceptions about groups of people, as I have certainly experienced some degree of discrimination myself due to my background, and being in a new country. Nonetheless, confronting these attitudes is a first step to modifying them finally. References Personal lecture notes, and personal memory and experience. Read More