Forecasting Effects of Cultural Changes inside Worldwide Telecommunications, Inc:
Linking Demographic and Cultural Diversity and Performance
Within today's increasingly globally-infused corporate workplaces, conventional wisdom holds that demographic and/or cultural diversity contribute positively to enhanced performance by groups, teams, or other divisions of a trans-global corporate entity, thus ultimately enhancing, by association, company products and/or services and the company itself, at home and abroad. As corporate giant Nokia's website states, for example (2005), of its own global workforce: "Respect for individual qualities, as well as a willingness to work together in a constructive, positive, even enjoyable, way [,] are all essential for high-quality results." Much related research suggests, however, that while diverse employee skills and abilities in and of themselves may enhance group or team performance, demographic diversity (e.g., differences among workforce members, in terms of language; cultural; referential; or social background), may detract from it (Knight, Pearce, Smith, Olian , Sims , Smith & Flood, 1999; Jackson, 2003; Hamilton, Nickerson, Jackson, & Owan, May 2004). I will examine factors that, based on research and anecdotal evidence combined, may inflect corporate workforce compatibility or success, exploring both positive and the ne
As Ryan states, in analyzing this incident: HP [High Performance] teams are built with . . . complementary skills. . . . a One other fact that emerges from research combined with interviewee observation of effects of diversity on group performance, and reality combined, is that genuine appreciation for demographic and/or cultural diversity is most powerful and lasting when it grows from within a diverse group itself, rather than being imposed from the outside. Jackson (2003) further explains that "most [diversity] studies assumed that diversity influences affective reactions and social processes within teams and organizations. Social processes in turn were assumed to provide the explanations for the effects of diversity on team and/or organizational performance" (p. 803). Moreover, according to Jackson: racist depiction of a bumbling, bucktoothed Chinese man. . . because the Decades of research on similarity and attraction indicate that people tend to An interesting and arguably related example, from the world of professional football, and one that starkly and vividly exemplifies workplace diversity training gone awry (i.e., the San Francisco 49'ers controversial diversity training tape that was leaked to the press (Ryan, Sunday June 5, 2005)) painfully illustrates how management attitudes anywhere, with any diverse group of people in any occupation, especially vis-a-vis other groups of people, strongly inflect "accepted" or perceived "normal" workplace attitudes about diversity (be they positive or negative), potentially polarizing, not unifying, workplace group members. training sessions to keep enhancing diversity training. Our office wanted to do
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Approximate Word count = 1847
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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