Culture Exists in Everything We Do - Essay Example

?Culture exists in everything we do Cultural diversity is indeed a boon to organizations. It creates synergistic advantages and facilitates more accurate, productive, and broader knowledge of the local culture and market. However, the author fails to mention, even briefly, the disadvantages of cultural diversity or its negative effects on the organization. Diversity usually makes convergent mechanisms difficult, especially when employees have to act or think similarly for the benefit of the organization. Diversity impedes integration and communication. Employees from different cultures may misinterpret or misunderstand one another (Adler & Gunderson, 2008). The likelihood of greater uncertainty, misunderstanding, and ambiguity becomes more prominent when an organization or task needs precision, intelligibility, and direction. Diversity creates difficulties when employees and managers oversimplify organizational processes from a given culture to different cultures. For instance, problems arise when managers adopt business strategies created in a particular country without tailoring them to the receiving country. Cultural diversity can also bring about difficulties when a team composed of people from different cultures has to make an agreement. In addition, diversity heightens the difficulty of formulating organizational policies (Adler & Gunderson, 2008). However, the advantages and disadvantages of cultural diversity, according to Adler (1991), depend on the type of organizations. She argues that the degree to which managers appreciate or understand cultural diversity and its possible benefits and drawbacks determines the organization’s strategy of managing diversity. Adler observed that the most widely used organizational strategy is disregarding the effect of diversity. In ‘parochial’ organizations managers overlook the possible effect of cultural diversity, while ‘synergistic’ organizations take into consideration the possible benefits and difficulties related to a culturally diverse workforce (Hernandez & O’Connor, 2009, p. 127). References: Adler, N. & Gunderson, A. (2008). International Dimension of Organizational Behavior. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning. Hernandez, S.R. & O’Connor, S.J. (2009). Strategic Human Resources Management in Health Services Organizations. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning. Cultural diversity brings to an organization One issue clearly surfaces from the discussion: synergy is the greatest advantage of cultural diversity because it builds competitive advantage. However, achieving cultural synergy is filled with challenges; it is not an easy task. In order to fully understand the nature of cultural synergy and effectively apply it to culturally diverse organizations there should be a clear definition of the concept. Synergy is a collaborative, collective action of different entities that form a larger whole. Synergy indicates the intrinsic need to combine diverse components in order to facilitate change, innovation, and growth (Parvis, 2005). Cultural synergy is a complex undertaking hence it is not sufficient to say that “in order to accomplish this one must abandon their old way of thinking and engage in a new way of thinking”. It is evident that synergy is the foundation of cooperation in a culturally diverse organization which creates a range of innovation and practical change for improvement and success. However, in order to achieve this, an organization should first build a strong, proactive relationship. Relationship fulfills a crucial aspect of participation toward shared objectives. Relationship boosts participation and thus bigger prospect for synergy (Parvis, 2005). There are basically two steps to achieve cultural synergy. The first step is to build a collective knowledge or interpretation of the current issues of the organization with regard to the current mission. And the second step is to develop a practice or environment where in people are free to express themselves or communicate. Within such context people are confident that they will be taken seriously and appreciated. Thus they can voice out their ideas or opinions without reluctance (Parvis, 2005). These two basic steps, alongside positive relationship, are the foundation of cultural synergy. Reference: Parvis, L. (2005). Understanding Cultural Diversity in Today’s Complex World. New York: Lulu.com. Research Ethics FAQ document Informed consent, from the perspective of ethics, is the moral obligation of researchers toward their participants. In essence, informed consent is imperative to create a relationship based on trust between research participants and researchers. Participants should have decisional competence. They should be capable of understanding information given by the researcher (Miller et al., 2012). They must be legally, morally, and mentally capable to decide about participating in a research. The informed consent form and the informed consent procedure are often wrongly interchanged. The informed consent form must include important details about the research, like the rights of the participants, risks, advantages, and information about the researchers. The informed consent form merely documents the approval granted at the last phase of the informed consent procedure (Miller et al., 2012). Unwritten information, disclosed in a genuine relationship, has an important function in the informed consent procedure. This procedure is sufficient when it is founded on trust between researchers and participants. In order to build this trust, researchers should provide important information to participants, particularly those concerning benefits, risks, and rights. A holistic understanding or knowledge of all these essential attributes of an informed consent form and informed consent procedure creates a point of view that goes beyond merely recognizing and conforming to obligations and rules, which exceeds the protection of the rights of participants to autonomy. The informed consent procedure is not only based on autonomy, but also on justice (Miller et al., 2012). An accurate knowledge of the informed consent procedure should consider ethical coexistence between research participants and researchers—a trust-based relationship. Reference: Miller, T. et al. (2012). Ethics in Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Ethical principles are denned There are other ways to protect the rights of research participants, especially with regard to their safety, confidentiality, privacy, and free will, in the data collection process of survey research (Vogt, Gardner, & Haeffele, 2012): prevent too much interruption or disturbance; avoid gathering new data without cause; persuade involvement in the research project without resorting to harassment or stalking; be courteous and truthful with survey participants, especially as regards information about the study, the researcher, and institutions involved; implement the research guidelines to safeguard the wellbeing of participants from at risk groups, like the mentally disabled, the elderly, women, and children, by following specific consent protocol or other needed research adjustments; guarantee that all questions in the survey are relevant to the research objectives; formulate questions that are clear and understandable to participants; if private or sensitive information is needed, formulate techniques to assist participants in disclosing it without unnecessary trouble; and verify whether requesting participants to disclose information on particular issues could damage them personally or politically, and then avoid including questions on these issues. In addition to these, researchers have an obligation not just to save research participants from unnecessary harm but also to comply with ethical management procedures and to carry out studies that respect the scientific guidelines of their discipline. In order to do this, survey researchers should specify the main research questions of the study without bias. It is important to be certain that a survey is the best approach to address the issue; use relevant methods of analysis and instruments; interpret the research findings based on the data collected; and be truthful and definite about the level of reliability and validity of the conclusions derived from the collected data (Vogt et al., 2012). Reference: Vogt, W.P., Gardner, D., & Haeffele, L. (2012). When to Use What Research Design. New York: Guilford Press. Read More