Multicultural Leadership - Example

1. Organization while looking towards conducting their business has to deal with the different situations that the general environment presents. It is not possible for a business to be conducted in vacumn which thereby requires that the general environment is dealt in such a manner that it provides maximum advantage. The general environment for the business consists of the external environment and the competitive environment. Organizations need to develop strategies which looks towards dealing with both as the success of the organization will largely depend on the manner in which the business is able to deal with it. The external environment as the name suggests are the external factors which have an effect on the performance of the business. These factors have an indirect effect on the business working and affect all business working in the industry similarly. The external factors which the business has to deal with are economic factors, political factors, legal factors, social factors, technological factors and environmental factors. Organizations have to take all the factors seriously and have to look towards dealing with it in the most efficient manner. For example suppose a change in technology has resulted in certain production method to become obsolete as using the method means extra cost and wastage for the business. Organizations looking towards following the same method will have to encounter difficulties as using the same would lead towards inefficiency and will thereby have an effect on their performance vis-à-vis other players in the market. The competitive environment which is part of the general environment impacts the business directly and arises due competition that is prevalent. This has a larger effect on the performance of the organization and will require that proper strategies are developed which will help to deal with those is a better way. This will require that the organization accesses the different risk that the business has to fact and based on it look towards formulating strategies so that the environmental factors are dealt in a better way and ensure maximum productivity and use of resources (Eric, 2009). While looking at both the external factors and the competitive environment it is seen that competitive factors have a larger effect on the organization as the magnitude of impact is large. This is due to the fact that it directly impacts the organization and makes it difficult for the business to be able to control it. This requires that the organization scans the general environment in a proper manner and identifies the different factors and the effect they have on the performance of the business (Schermerhorn, Davidson, Poole, Simon, Woods & Chau 2011). This thereby highlights that the general environment of the business has an impact on the working of the business and requires developing tools and strategies which will help to reduce the impact on the business. This will also help to improve the overall working strategy and will help the business to differentiate themselves from the competitors and deal with the general environment in the most productive manner. 2. Organization determine a motive or a path that they will look towards following and based on it the resources are allocated and strategies made so that overall effectiveness can be determined within the system. This has made organization adopt either a customer driven value organization or a quality driven value organization depending on the sector and type of business that the company looks to perform in. Selecting the correct value for the organization and working based on it helps the business to get the required direction which facilitates in the development of a business model which matches the business requirements and ensures long term growth for the business. A customer driven organization as the name suggest focuses on customers and looks towards delivering superior services so that customers can be satisfied. This type of model is adopted by a service oriented industry as there prime focus is service and looks towards retaining customers for the long term prospect of the business entirely based on services. An example in the same direction can be the restaurant industry where the different players look towards retaining customers primarily based on their service (Schermerhorn, Davidson, Poole, Simon, Woods & Chau 2011). An interesting point to note in the customer driven model is that service is the main element based on which customers are retained and satisfied. This has also developed further and instead of focusing on the external customers the internal customer i.e. the employees are also given importance to. This has made the customer driven model to ensure that regular feedbacks and response are received from the employees as they come in direct contact with the customers and based on it the required changes in the service delivery model can be made. This has helped customer driven organizations to ensure maximum efficiency and has helped them to improve their working style (Donovan & Samler, 1994). Quality driven organization on the other hand focuses on quality and looks towards continuous improvement in their products. This type of model is preferably used by manufacturing organizations as the core constituent here are products and organizations look towards retaining customers entirely based on the quality supplied by them. Organization performing in this sector looks towards continuous improvement and looks towards matching the ISO and international standards. Another important aspect which the quality driven organization focuses on is consistency in quality. This is one of the prime aspect as can be seen in industries like the automobile industry where continuous improvements take place at the same time consistency is maintained in the product (Schermerhorn, Davidson, Poole, Simon, Woods & Chau 2011). Quality driven organization thereby looks towards developing a model which fits their requirements and looks towards making timely changes and improvements based on the manner in which the industry is evolving. This has ensured that the organizations performing in the industry are able to witness changes and ensure formulation of strategies which will help to bring maximum value. Thus, both quality and customer driven organization focuses on the different aspect of business but the primary objective is to satisfy customers and ensure sustainable growth which will help to improve productivity over a longer period of time. 3. The manner in which the environment for an organization is changing it has become imperative that the organization looks towards having a proper mix of people from different culture, sex, ethnic and races so that there is proper diversity in the workforce. Attaining a balance within the workforce helps to ensure that any decisions that are taken by the business are supported by all and helps the business to implement those easily. Ensuring a proper mix further helps to improve the brand image of the organization as it ensures that the outsiders and the society is able to witness the fact that the organization hasn’t differentiated between people and have chosen people entirely based on merit. Multicultural organizations are thus where the workforce has adequate representation of people from diverse background, sex, culture, race and groups. This shows that the culture of the organization looks towards recruiting people entirely on merit and has designed their recruitment process to be same for all. This has thereby allowed people from all regions and areas to become a part of the working culture. This has also provided additional benefit as it has ensured that a proper environment is created where the workforce is able to work in the most dedicated manner. It has helped the business to be able to work on the different fundamentals and based on it develop their style of working (Schermerhorn, Davidson, Poole, Simon, Woods & Chau 2011). An organization which has been able to develop a multicultural environment with people from diverse background has been able to develop an environment where there is maximum productivity. The productivity ensures that people working in the organization will be able to take better decisions and work together as a unit. This has helped to ensure that the employees are able to work at their full potential and has been able to ensure maximum motivation so that they are able to find a mechanism through which maximum efficiency can be garnered in the working culture (Canen & Canen, 2008). An example which can be seen in the same direction is witnessed in companies working on the global arena. To ensure multicultural environment global companies are seen to recruit people from the areas they are working i.e. recruiting the local people so that cultural integration can take place. This has helped the organization in ensuring that they are able to utilize the overall local qualities as well as use people from the global arena. This has given companies a push through which they have been able to develop their working process and alter the manner of working. The different benefits as highlighted above have made organizations to look towards adopting a multicultural workforce. This adds positivity to the entire working arena and helps to bring changes that have helped to develop strategies through which better use of the resources become possible. This that thereby ensured that the overall strategy is developed in a manner through which the organization has been able to highlight multicultural workforce and ensure maximum efficiency in dealing with the changes that has to be encountered at regular interval. 4. The business organization has gone transformation as in the early 1990’s and even before that it was seen that the workforce especially at the higher level had little representation of people belonging to the minority group and women. This led to the development of a term glass ceiling which is used to describe the legal and other barriers that were prevalent in the organization and prevented women and minorities from moving up in the organization. The determination of the terminology provided a breakthrough for both women and minorities as it highlighted the fact that the upper level position within the organization had little representation of women and men. This led towards a change and transformation in the manner recruitment was done and slowly with the passage of time both women and people belonging to the minorities was allowed to move up higher in the hierarchy. This situation also brought forward the fact that the recruitment strategies weren’t transparent and had many errors. The recruitment was dominated mostly by people belonging to the upper class and very few people other than those were allowed to move up in the hierarchy. This also highlighted the inequity which existed within the recruitment style and made organization to change their strategies and look towards increased role of both women and people belonging to the minority. This made organizations change and develop strategies which focused on ensuring that the workforce consisted of people belonging of all class and sex so that the culture of the workforce ensured better productivity and an opportunity for all the employees to move up higher up in the hierarchy (Schermerhorn, Davidson, Poole, Simon, Woods & Chau 2011). Glass ceiling acted as one of the main weapons which helped to improve the social conditions of the minorities as highlighting the actual fact made the organization to stop discriminating between people. It thereby provided an opportunity to the minority group to move up higher up in the hierarchy based on their contribution and hard work. This also ensured that the entire recruitment strategy changed and organization focused on ensuring that people were promoted and moved higher up in the hierarchy primarily based on talent and merit (Tibus, 2010). This process helped organizations to ensure that there was better motivation within the workforce. This was primarily due to the fact that the cultural differences that existed between the employees were removed. This made the employees work towards a common purpose and ensured that all the employees had a common goal. This also ensured that the performance standards that were developed was purely on merit and provided the required push through which the entire recruitment process witnessed widespread changes. Thus, the concept of glass ceiling helped to bring around large scale transformation in the recruitment strategy and helped businesses to make developments based on which they were able to transform the business and ensure that maximum efficiency were gained. This helped to motivate the employees and ensured that all the employees worked as a team and were pursuing a common objective. 5. Organizations look towards having a diverse workforce because leads towards ensuring that the resources are used in a better manner and helps the organization to work towards a common goal. Diversity in the workforce helps the organization to ensure that they have people from all culture and background. This thereby helps to ensure that there is adequate representation of all people from diverse culture. This helps the organization as it ensures that the organization is able to carry out their responsibilities in a better manner. The fact that different people have different traits and qualities and making all of those come together at a place increases the chances of the business being able to successfully ensure development on all fronts (Oyler & Pryor, 2009). An example which can be seen in the same direction is witnessed in companies working on the global arena. To ensure diversity in the workforce global companies are seen to recruit people from the areas they are working i.e. recruiting the local people so that cultural integration can take place. This has helped the organization in ensuring that they are able to utilize the overall local qualities as well as use people from the global arena. This has given companies a push through which they have been able to develop their working process and alter the manner of working. This has thereby ensured that the organization is able to have diverse people which help to carry out the different functions smoothly. In addition to it a business has to deal with different responsibility and things and while looking to achieve all the objectives it is imperative that the organization has a mix of different people who will be able to carry out the different functions. This requires that a diverse background is developed which has people from all background and regions. Ensuring a proper mix further helps to improve the brand image of the organization as it ensures that the outsiders and the society is able to witness the fact that the organization hasn’t differentiated between people and have chosen people entirely based on merit. This thereby acts a positive measure through which the overall performance of the organization shaped up (Schermerhorn, Davidson, Poole, Simon, Woods & Chau 2011). A diversified culture also helps to improve the organizational culture as people are able to understand and appreciate the culture of others. This acts as a process through which the business is able to make changes and employees find it easy to accept those changes as the motivation level of the employee is totally different. Thus, having a diverse workforce ensures that the resources are used in the best optimum manner and the chances of wastage minimizes as organizations look towards preserving the resources. This thereby helps to ensure that the benefits that the organization has is larger than the cost of recruiting people from diverse background and helps the organization to improve their overall method of delivering quality results. References Canen, G. & Canen, A. (2008). Multicultural leadership: The costs of its absence in organizational conflict management. International Journal of Conflict Management, 19 (1), 4 – 19, viewed on Nov 28, 2012 from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1669291 Donovan, P. & Samler, T. (1994). Delighting Customers: The Ten-step Approach to Building a Customer-driven Organization. Managing Service Quality, 4 (6), 38 – 43, viewed on Nov 28, 2012 from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=842401&show=html Eric, G. (2009). Business as environmental steward: the growth of greening. Journal of Business Strategy, 30 (5), 4 – 13, viewed on Nov 28, 2012 from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1811885 Oyler, J. & Pryor, M. (2009). Workplace diversity in the United States: the perspective of Peter Drucker. Journal of Management History, 15 (40, 420 – 451, viewed on Nov 28, 2012 from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1816863 Schermerhorn J, Davidson P, Poole D, Simon A, Woods, P & Chau So Ling (2011). Management foundations and applications - value pack, (1st edn AP). Milton, Qld, Australia: Wiley. ISBN: 978 0 471 43570 9 Tibus, C. (2010). Leadership beyond the glass ceiling: does ownership matter? Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 31 (80, 743 – 757, viewed on Nov 28, 2012 from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1891500 Read More