Leadership Across Culture

Cultural Diversity in Workplace
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Table of Contents
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Introduction  PAGEREF _Toc416125454 \h
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Culture diversity in organizations  PAGEREF _Toc416125455 \h
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Managing diversity in an organization  PAGEREF _Toc416125456 \h
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Fostering innovation  PAGEREF _Toc416125457 \h
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Effects of culture diversity  PAGEREF _Toc416125458 \h
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Conclusion  PAGEREF _Toc416125459 \h
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Cultural Diversity in Workplace
Introduction
In any organization, it is important to have a unified cooperation between the head office and the workers to achieve organization objectives. As the world becomes a global village, people are coming from different cultures and as a result, the problem of understanding their differences and similarities is becoming a major issue in any organization. Many countries are presently multicultural, due to demographic structures and integration of market through globalization. Work diversity has led to cultural diversity in organizations. Cultural diversity can be described in two basic dimensions, one being difference in race, ethnicity, gender, physical or cognitive capability, as they are the basic issues that shape human perspective or image. They also influence individual behavior through his life span. In terms of a group, diversity can be looked in terms of race, geographic origin, ethnicity, gender, education background, language, lifestyle, beliefs, economic category, sexual preference or age (Osborn, 2005).
Cultural diversity is derived from cultural background of a given group of people. This means that, understanding culture is the primary course of understanding cultural diversity. Culture can be described as a mixture of knowledge, belief, art, law, convention and morality shared by most of the members of a given society and they give a difference between one group and the other. Culture is learned as skills and habits, common attitudes and responsibilities and passed from one generation to another in that society. In such case, culture makes the perceptions and ideas of that group very different from another (Cox, Taylor & Stacy). With this in mind, then culture would determine what attitude and behavior would be considered the most appropriate and effective in every situation, as it is a way of life and a form of communication of resolutions. Many researchers have found culture being very complex and difficult to define, as some of its meanings are implicit and others explicit.
Culture diversity in organizations
Any organization must be able to manage cultural diversity effectively to achieve growth and success especially for a global organization. How the organization evaluates cultural diversity as either an advantage and source of power or a problem or a difficult issue to manage is important, as it will help to device ways in which to deal with it. For those who see cultural diversity as an advantage, they can use it as a competitive advantage for the organization through high performance of ...