Managing diversity + Religion

Managing Diversity

A group is an assemblage of persons or objects gathered or located together or two or more figures that make up a unit or design. 

Regarding this definition, groups are not easy to handle and lead, and when it comes to groups; diversity shows up.

Diversity is the variation of social and cultural identities among people existing together in a defined employment or market setting, in which groups made up of diverse personnel do a better job of analyzing and attacking problems.

 

Valuing diversity means recognizing and appreciating that individuals are different, that diversity is an advantage if it is valued and well managed, and that diversity is not to be simply tolerated but encouraged, supported and nurtured. 

Diversity must be managed is certain way that could build and structure a set of established environments that provides the integrants the confidence and comfort to reach a goal, using each individual’s capacities.

By building standardization inside the organization internal workforce competition can be reduced and focus on what it is really important and relevant.

Religion and organizations

Religion is clearly beliefs and rituals shared and concerned for a culture group, therefore It is a determinant factor of culture actions and behaviors, not only in moral or ethic approaches, but more important in business and organizations. So that, the organizational actions and activities can be approved or not by religion concepts.

Questions

Since diversity is a source of competitive advantage, what could be the recruitment strategies to effectively target to diverse groups? What would be the consequences of ignoring diversity?

First of all, the creation of a comfort environment is necessary; this probably would give the people an organizational culture and mode to operate and act inside the organization and avoid bringing out each individual identity. Of course people can avoid or forget during some work time their culture and behavioral roots, but which is important is to achieve strategies that ease off the working environment. 

And to just not ignore diversity, leaders must realize the possible implications in the processes and outcomes of a organization due to this error. Organizations require the individuals’ values and particular capacities, but also demand a control over those aspects to reach a strong and well structure organizational structure and goals.

1) Images Retrieved from google images

2) video source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhj_sGuCveo&feature=related

3) Slater, Stanley F., Weigand, Robert A., Zweilein, Thomas J., 2008. “The business case for commitment to diversity” Business Horizons 51: 201-209 

4) Thomas, David A., 2004. “Diversity as Stratefy”, Harvard Business Review, September 2004, 98-108 

5) Hartman, L and Werhane, P. 2009. The global Corporation: Sustainable, Effective and Ethical Practices –a case book. Rotledge, New York. Chapter 5, p 168-181. Islamic Banking and Finance.

 

Communication + Virtual teams

Nowadays, we are among the possibilities produced by the globalization process, so that the connection of the world is everyday much big and keeps on growing. Communications are a huge part of this interdependence, and this is not only in terms of business, which represents highly the globalization, but also what occurs with our lives. Our activities, jobs, plans are correlated to communications, and all these things must be harnessed by the humanity.

Inside organizations, it exists the interpersonal communication, which is the base of a relationship and involves lots of elements like, the communicator, the receiver, the perceptual screens, and the message. There are also issues like the noise, encode, decode and feedback, that play an important role in the way individuals communicate.

In relation to the concept above and the approach used by the manager, it may be expressive speaker, in which managers peacefully express and share their thoughts.

Emphatic listeners; in who leaders focuses on the other. Persuasive Readers; who they try to promote interest in others to achieve a goal. Sensitive to feelings Readers; who they try to take critical perspectives that enable them to negative feedback in a confident way. Also, informative managers must be willing to maintain open communication with employees.

Nevertheless, to make this useful for organizations, leaders must take into account to maintain an effective communication, and the exactly approach to achieve it, it is by handling some principles of effective communication, which are: Clarity, a specific objective (purpose of the message), full understanding, Consistency, Completeness, Feedback and Time.

Virtual teams, within the organization are the workplace with open flexibility and other capacities to members and leaders, but they demand strong coordination and good communication, and some advanced technology.

A virtual team successful depends on its capacity to maintain and sustain through time, space, and cultural differences and with the total acquisition of a unique objective to create a common framework of effective collaboration.

Question

According to Kuruppuarachchi (2009), what benefits and problems arise as a consequence of the creation of virtual team? Identify five each. Based on this, explain how to make the transition from a more traditional team structure to the more distributed team structure?

Benefits:

1. Improved productivity and reduced costs by technological means

2. Competitive advantages and value inside organization

3. Improvement in terms of customer service and satisfaction

4. Better skilled and qualified employees not matter the dispersion

5. Different approaches of business processes

Problems:

1. Ineffective communication, because of nonverbal communications methods

2. Not standard goals for different team members

3. The dependency on the speed of all processes

4. Structure and separation economical costs

To achieve virtual distributed structure team, the team itself needs to build own environment in which they feel unified and entering relevant means of communication in order to create a efficient approach and reach a real connected and aware team networking.

Besides, to ensure a control of different operations the virtual team needs adopt constant and committed monitoring, which does not tie the team to a standard operation method, if so that provides unique and clear goals and activities to follow.

1) Images Retrieved from google images

2) Michael Spencer. “If intercontinental were sound… what would it be?” Journal of Business Strategy. Vol 31. P 39-46 

3) Kuruppuarachchi, Palitha R. 2009. “Virtual team concepts in projects: a case of study” Proyect Management Journal 40, no. 2:19-33

Migrant workers + Expatriates Assignments

Migrant labor involves the movement of people from one country to another primarily for employment related reasons.

Migrant workers are used extensively for crop harvesting, For example Workers’ migration in China. Global crisis affects migrant workers China has about 242 million rural residents who work off the farm, and about 153 million of them are migrants who work outside their home towns, including tens of millions in export zones making cheap goods for the rest of the world (Buckley and Wills 2011).

Expatriates and Overseas experiences

The term Expatriate is used to refer to people living in a foreign country from all walks of life, he or she travel to a foreign country for a specific reason, such as mission work, employment, humanitarian aid work, government work, etc.

They are people, who go to another country to develop a different set of activities, works and establish themselves in the host country, with the initial initiative of the international organization.

This kind of activity abroad are applied mainly by multinational companies, primarily with the intention of establishing operations in a different country, in order to make the company bigger or stronger or just for starting from scratch.

An expatriate Assignment is suitable to begin with an available position perhaps in a subsidiary of the company for which the person works for.  

As a target, companies do these investments to gain better employees who can and learn and develop many capacities abroad and back in home, they would apply those new capacities in the company, however EA offers a set of opportunities to the travelers.  

Know a different culture, live in a way different place with specific manners, gain of knowledge about how business are managed, accomplish the assignment, achieve new skills and get a higher position within the firm. Those are clearly opportunities for expatriates.

On the other hand, overseas experiences are related to Expatriate assignment, but they quite different from each other. First of all, in OE the initiative of international experience comes from the individual and not from a company.

OE is not committed to a work-career development, these activities are more addressed to meet some places, interact with new cultures, gain some professional experiences, have some fun and cross cultural experiences.

Also, it is relevant to say that people find their motivation to have an overseas experience in curiosity rather than in specific goals, unlike the individuals in expatriate assignments.

Question

Explain how easy is it for Colombian companies to employ expatriates locally? Give examples

I guess that is not easy and common, not because Colombian companies are not willing to hire foreigners, but so because our country is not currently recognized for expatriates. However, there can be many expatriates working in some economical sectors.

These expatriates are not only in the economical campus, many people coming from abroad work in the cultural, medical, and aid sectors inside our country.

So according to that, Colombia can offer a diversity of opportunities for several kinds of expatriate assignments and for overseas experiences too.

1) Images Retrieved from google images

2) video source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_15u5POBmc

3)“Migrant workers concept”. Retrieved from Reuters wed page

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/27/us-china-economy-wen-idUSTRE71Q07F20110227

4) “Expatriate Assignments Versus Overseas Experiences: Contrasting Models of International Human Resource Development.” Published by Kerr Inkson, Michael B. Arthur, Sean Barry and Judith Pringle. Retrieved from: Organizations & Cultures, course’s text book.

5) “Expatriate meaning” .Retrieved on April 6, 2011 from: http://www.mission2go.com/expatriate-meaning.htm.

Organizational culture in merging process

According to what is currently going on in international business and venturing into different markets, enterprises are more likely to go for acquisitions than just start from scratch. This is because acquisitions would give them local market knowledge and it would provide them a set of established assets, which in the end means a reduction in investment.

Besides, mergers or acquisitions can really empower and renew market position and transform the company itself. However things are not as easy as they seem to be.

In a successful acquisition, the organizations must create value creation as the most important goal. In order to achieve this target, people of both organizations must cooperate and collaborate to produce benefits and opportunities for the merge.

There are two activities that are very important, first the will and capacities of leaders of the merging firms to collaborate and guide the merge to a future unified work. And second a integration of the people involved in the merge with the primary goal of achieve a single organizational culture for the new company.

Nevertheless, the total staff combinations demands deep efforts, due to challenges presented in terms of nationality, cultural manners, beliefs, values differences.

So that, Acquisitions and merger are seductive profitable opportunities for international enterprises, but it still have many tricky challenges, which are much related to cultural and people management and integration for a success.

Question

According to the case studies (in class and in textbook), what are the practical steps to

minimize the feelings of uncertainty normally expected by employees, and also to facilitate the learning process to occur between the two groups of people in their process of cultural and behavioral integration?

When it comes to merging, it is a find a organizational struggle between the so called “us” and “them”. The two groups want in certain way to keep and maintain their organizational identity and autonomy, it perhaps provoked by the uncertainty of a new company employees’ structure.

According to Elsaa and Veiga (1994), a successful integration are tied to managers’ ability to create a need of strategic interdependence between the two firms, which would make the groups realize of the actually importance of each group of employees and the need for an integration. 

1) Images Retrieved from google images

2) video source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIfWKU4LbLU

3) Alzira Salama, Wayne Holland, Gerald Vinten, 2003. “Challenges and ooportunities in mergers and acquisitions: three international case studies –Deutsche Bank-Bankers Trust; British Petroleum-Amoco; Ford-Volvo

Organizational learning + Managing change

Nowadays, organizations face the constant and growing changes in the whole environment surrounding them. High product quality, customer expectation and good services, aggressive competition, technologies, cheaper production; that is why organizations can not get stuck in the past, they need to be in constant updating to fight or diminish the impacts of their environment.

Each organization has its own rites and communication approaches, that is why a particular culture within the organization drives and leads the actions, thoughts, feelings and working styles of the members of that organizations and also the members of that particular culture. And this is the concept of organizational culture.

By trying to link the two concepts above, it is clear that organizations must merge both concepts into one. As it was mentioned, organizations have to be aware of the changing environment, but also they need to improve and learn from what things they handle everyday. This is the proper answer of why organizations require a culture that supports and facilitates learning, if not; they organization is not concern about the changing environment.

Regarding the changes, there two There two main kind of them. Planned change is when you decide to make some alteration inside your organization, different to the unplanned change when you can not have control over it; it just comes up by the imposition of the unpredicted environment.

However, as changes provoke negative consequences, they also provoke positive consequences. In order to organizations struggle against changes, their culture builds new ideas and strategies, enhance the union of the organization, establish identities, and show the capacity to struggle against problems. In the end, it demonstrates if the organizational learning is unified with the organizational culture

Questions

What is the relationship between organizational learning and individual satisfaction?

If inside of organization, the people are improving their shelves and having increasing learning from every single situation, this would influence the people’s work satisfaction and therefore personal or individual satisfaction. When you are doing really well in your job or your study, it is reflected in your achievements and satisfaction.

Is it possible to change corporate culture? If so, how?

For sure, when they relations and dynamics inside of organizations are not generating value for the company, it can be due to corporate culture. Maybe, there is not a single or important approach that the staff can follow. Maybe they are trying to pursue their own interest and seeking their own achievements rather than work in the same way; together to reach a single goal for the organization. In such a case, organizations leaders must focus on developing a new and ownership organizational cultures and procedures, which is concentrated on well being of the organization. 

1) Images Retrieved from google images

2) video source:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0eP5yza5gI

3) Singh. Kavita. 2010. “An Analysis of Relationship Between the Learning Organization and Orgaizational culture in Indian Business Organizations”. Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies. Vol 1. 142-165 

4) Mangaliso. Mzamo. 2003. Building competitive advantage from Ubuntu. In Thomas, David Clinton, editor, Readings and cases in International Management: A cross-cultural perspective. 

5) Von Glinow, Mary Ann, Debra L. Shapiro, and Jeanne M Brett. 2004. CAN WE TALK, AND SHOULD WE? MANAGING EMOTIONAL CONFLICT IN MULTICULTURAL TEAMS. Academy of Management Review 29 n.4: 578-592