Communication by Multi-Cultural Approach
Different from traditional focusing on scientific, bureaucracy or administrative perspectives of management, now people began to more and more realize the importance of culture issues of the modern business. Now, many of the modern companies have stepped out of the local areas and enhanced their business toward the global extent. As a result, managing culturally diverse workforce has been discovered as a major factor, which is the key business issue of this century and is one of the basic and serious challenges that the managers are going to face. Culture is fundamental to our self-concept, social relationships and communication. Of all the human characteristics, that signal diversity. (Sligo, Fountaine, OŻNeill, Sayers, 2000, P.256) Management involves allowing cultural differences to become part and parcel of the way we manage. (Inkson & Kolb, 1999, P.105) As a result, as managers of the organization in modern world, we have to equip ourselves with the knowledge and skills to achieve the effective communication through the culturally diverse workforce. The purpose of my essay is just to emphasize some key issues and knowledge we need to know about cultural diversity and give some suggestions on how the managers could manage
Third, except for preventing misunderstanding and minimizing prejudice, which are actions to reduce the negative affects of the cultural diversity, is there any way for us to benefit from it? And what can we do to make it happen? The following sentence gave us an answer; °We can go beyond awareness of our own cultural heritage to produce something greater by cooperation and collaboration.± (Moran & Harris, 1981, P.3) Cooperation or collaboration is the channel of communication, which could convert differences and conflicts into power, and the communal objective is the spirit of it. Diversity can increase the creative possibilities within groups, enhance group Second, after building our perception of cultural diversity, what °attitude± should we have toward it? To my opinion, in order to motivate employees and build cohesiveness, we should treat cultural diversity with fairness and respect and minimize prejudices. Like it is been said, °Managing diversity means managing, in a fair and respectful manner, the ideas and interests of all individuals within an organization±. (Inkson & Kolb, 1999, P.430) However, even now, prejudice and biases undeniably exist everywhere. The strongest example happens in the gender diversities in organizations. More and more people now become familiar with the term-----°glass ceiling±, which is just a dramatic metaphor that describes the common prejudice on that means that youŻd better stop daydreaming now and start opening the newspaper to find another job. However, if it is Western organization, you can tell yourself that you still have fifty percent of possibility to get the job anyway. The same words, may be perceived in quite a different way due to diverse cultural references. On the other hand, for the Western people, °touch± may play a significant role in effective non-verbal communication, such as holding or kissing each other when they first meet, a pat on the back when one wants to show congratulations, etc. However, to AsianŻs culture, when first meet each other, except for hands shaking, they never hold or kiss. Seldom do they use touch frequently because they may think this is °impolite± especially in business. So western country persons may sometimes think that the Asian people are not warm or hospitable, while it is not necessarily the case. All this could be explained by a concept °ethnocentrism±, which indicates that we may view the world solely from the perspective of our own culture. (Inkson & Kolb, 1999) As far as we can see, in order to manage diversity effectively, what is required is a sensitiv
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Approximate Word count = 1730
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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