Pluralist organisational culture always leading organisational effectiveness.

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Title of the report

Executive Summary

The effects of pluralism or cultural diversity on organizational effectiveness are complex and powerful. It is imperative for employers to understand the workforce to get the best out of it. The employers must have to acknowledge and reunite the needs of different cultural people, may it be of any gender, race, ethnicity or of religious background. The levels of co-operation are higher in multicultural organizations compared to homogenous ones.For any organization to be effective in its long run, co-operation and co-ordination of the employees within an organization plays a vital role.

However, managers must also undergo cross cultural trainings to overcome the communication difficulties among multicultural workforce. People from different diverse backgrounds possess different attitudes, values and norms which managers should be able to tackle and shape up and use them as a resource for the development of the organization and reaching its objectives which is normally seen in pluralistic organizations.

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE

Introduction 4

Aims and Objectives 4

Organisation and cultures 5

Origin of Pluralism 6

Pluralism playing important role in organisational

effectiveness 7

Difficulties in pluralism 10

Bringing better approach to pluralism 12

Conclusion 14

Reference 15

Bibliography 18

Appendices 19

Introduction

The report is based on the concept that Pluralist organization culture leads to organizational effectiveness. Many people believe that compared to homogenous organizational cultures, the multicultural organizations are more successful.

Moreover, one of the basic facts is that in a multicultural organization, the levels of competition and the sense of individualism and respect for job is more which results in innovation, new ideas and revenue generation in these types of organizations leading to an overall success. However, the levels of staff turnover and staff dissatisfaction are at lower levels, which a noted as one of the decisive factors for any organization to survive. Any organization which is internally strong through their skilful human resource will definitely excel in the long run.

The aim and objective of this report is to show pluralism as one of the strongest organizational resource that leads to organizational success.

ORGANIZATION AND CULTURES:

Every organisation posses own unique culture. The organizational culture describes the organization and the way the things are done and handled. Mullins.J.L., describes organizational culture as an important ingredient of managerial behaviour and organizational performance.

The different views towards the various types of organizational culture as presented by Willcoxson & Mullet(2002)describes the existence of following cultures-

●An Unitary or homogeneous culture-

Unitary organization is viewed as an integrated and harmonious whole with managers and other staff sharing common interests and objectives. The organization is viewed as a team with a common source of loyalty, focus of effort and one accepted leader.(Mullins L.J,2005) .In the unitarist perspective, the essential unity of the organisation makes it possible for the leader or leadership group to effectively control or change the organizational directions. It is a top-down organizational control occur in transnational companies, where national or professional cultures arguably exert less influence, but in most organisations the existence of sub-cultures which militate against the effectiveness of top-down cultural leadership.(Handy1993)(cited by Willcoxson L,. Millett B 2000)

●Pluralist or heterogeneous differentiated multiculturalism

Pluralism refers to the presence of diverse subcultures in a particular organisation, arising from factors such as migration, professional affiliation, status ,or social interactions. The organiational success evolves from the effective leadership and management of diversity, and the cultural change.The organization must take efforts to maintain the diversity by designing specific programs for different segments in the organization that leads to effective management. I( Willcoxson L,. Millett B 2000).

ORIGINS OF PLURALISM

The emergence of pluralism or multiculturalism is the most prominent effect of global integration of economies. The main reasons behind its ...

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●Pluralist or heterogeneous differentiated multiculturalism

ORIGINS OF PLURALISM

The emergence of pluralism or multiculturalism is the most prominent effect of global integration of economies. The main reasons behind its emergence are-

●According to Ferraro G. P, globalisation of business and increasing competitiveness due to successful industrial potentialities of countries like Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and other developing countries has forced the business organisations to penetrate into international/cross cultural alliances.

●Johnston William P. (2000) says The new world labour market, the increasing demand of cheap labour and specialised cultural quality enhanced the movement of skilled and unskilled human resources from developing to developed industrialised countries.

●Other factors are professional affiliation, improved technological development in transportation, activities such as foreign capital investments, joint venture, acquisition and mergers, increasing attention of human rights greatly facilitated the movements of people and information across the world.(Gentile M. C,1996. & Ferraro G.P, 1993)

PLURALISM PLAYING IMPORTANT ROLE IN ORGANISATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

Ethical and cultural behaviour have direct or indirect impact on the final outcome of an organisation .Pluralist or a multicultural organisation can definitely bring organisational effectiveness .White (1999) while discussing the advantages of multiculturism , makes the arguments for the performance advantages of diverse groups and organisations over homogeneous organisational groups based on several sources(Cox, Lobel & MacLeod, 1991; Mandell & Kohler-Gray, 1990; Marmer-Solomon, 1989; Esty, 1988; Copeland, 1988; Cox & Blake, 1991),producing common ideas supporting pluralism.

●Combination of diverse human backgrounds and potentialities:

As per U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Education statistics,1989 (Gentile M.C,1996)the developing countries have a good number of share in supplying educated people to the world and to the organizations with diverse working culture where the level of co-operation, co-ordination and understandings are higher compared to homogenous organizations leading to organizational effectiveness. These companies have lower levels of turnover and maximum utilization of combined diverse human talents.(Alder 1991).

Moreover, global diversity is not just about race, gender, ethnicity, it is about diversity in thinking, talent, leadership and skill set that individuals bring to an organization from various backgrounds.l

●Pluralist organizations have a effective Global reach:

In a multicultural organization it has a better understanding of diverse external customers leading to wider and enhanced market.

the pluralist organization has a better understanding of the social,political, economic and cultural environment of foreign countries resulting in increased understanding of potential customers from foreign markets leading to market expansion.

” Diversity represents a way of doing business that is barrier-free and all-inclusive, allowing the unique ideas, experiences, cultures and backgrounds of all our people to come together for creating the most innovative products and best customer experience. Our diversity is global in its inclusion and respect for the many different people and cultures we encounter everyday throughout the many countries in which we do business worldwide.”- Dell Computers

●Multicultural organizations are advanced and open to ideas:

Morgan(1989) says, in a pluralist organization creativeness and innovation are of high importance and plays a vital role, especially research oriented and high technology organizations, where contribution made by an array of talents provided by gender and ethnic diversities become invaluable because of better understanding of market trends.

● Pluralist organizations are better organized and reliable:

In a Multicultural organization or a pluralistic organization people come from various ethnic, social and diverse backgrounds bear different and individual characteristics. For example, Japanese are good listeners, believes in harmonizing and group building, the North Americans believe on arguments, provocation. When these people of different characteristics work as a group they have more effective and reliable results and are better organized to carry on their positive identities. (Ferraro G.P,1998)

●Pluralist organizations are more flexible and positive towards changes: Multicultural organizations are more positive and responsive towards change and show more organizational flexibility. Women, for example, have a higher tolerance for ambiguity than men (Rotter & O’Connell, 1982) while

bilinguals have a higher level of divergent thinking and cognitive flexibility than monolinguals (Lambert, W 1977), linguistic competent individuals can successfully react in situations where non verbal phenomena affects the interpersonal communication dominantly among certain different cultures (Ferraro G. P,1998).

●Conflicts as constructive

Conflicts can arise any time in an organization. Conflicts are inevitable. In pluralist organisational culture, conflicts may arise because of misunderstanding, communication differences, personality and cultural clashes, substandard performance etc. But these conflicts, at the same time create an free and open atmosphere encouraging creative thinking, in taking better quality decisions, greater commitment to a decision and more competition. Thus, conflicts can have positive effects on a multicultural organisation and hence lead to evolution, internal and external change (Tjosvold, 1989; 1993).

Drawbacks of PLURALISM

Although multiculturism has strong effect towards reaching the organisational objectives involving several diverse characteristics under one roof, it has pitfalls too. According to several sources (Shephard 1964, Alder 1991, Ferraro G. P, 1998) excessive diversity in a group can bring inconsistency in performance and functions. Moreover, communication problems and nature and behaviour of different cultured members might bring disagreement and delays while performing business activities. The main difficulties that could be faced in an multi diverse cultured organisation are as follows-

●Groupings and individualism-

The feeling of groupings and desire to work in a group plays a crucial role behind corporate or group relationship; some people have different approach towards cultural values of being in group or preferring to remain as an individual. For example: although Japanese culture tend towards bringing harmony and perform work functions in a group, as well as avoiding discouragement to the members by pursuing open disagreement within group but the North Americans tend to believe in individualism, privacy, debates, controversies, and competitiveness which results in conflicts, hatred, fear and discouragement among the team members.( Ferraro G. P,1998).

●Communication and behavioural gap-

In an organisation, communication and good communicators among group plays an important role. Cultures vary in terms of difference that exists among them while communicating, some people are “explicit” in communication skills while others are “implicit” ( Ferraro G. P,1998). Good communicators are straight forward and does not rely on codes or usage of shortened words , nonverbal behaviours, body postures, hand gestures, facial impressions that give different messages to different cultures and cannot properly evaluate the social context of the communication .Inadequate knowledge of verbal and nonverbal channel of expression may often lead to serious cross cultural misunderstandings, miscommunications, ambiguity, and wrong impression of the communicator(Collet 1971) .For example: Japanese people are related as more implicit communicators than that of the Americans because they prefer to use less direct and coded languages.

● Conflict as destructive

Conflict can have positive as well as negative effect; it is a very important issue in case of a multicultural international business which are more prone towards intergroup conflicts. Conflicts could destroy a group and harmony among its members leading to major hostilities. If it is pursued for long time democracy of the employees in such an organisation may be destroyed resulting misuse of power, feelings of stress, climate of mistrust and suspicion, breaking team work, poor communication and distorted perceptions, ultimately expensive litigation. (McKenna, EugeneF 2000)

●Managerial inefficiency-

A pluralist organization is a combination of different cultural characteristics like some are not sensitive to timing, some are not good listeners, others prefer to work individual rather in group. A study by Ziller, 1973; Lott & Lott, 1965; Randolph & Blackburn, 1989; Jackson, 1991,Cox 1993;(cited in White Richard D,1999) showed that, a heterogeneous organization must have effective diversity management to control the diverse behaviours, intergroup conflicts, otherwise decision making may take long, degrade team cohesiveness, reduce creativity and innovation.

This could affect the market share by reducing profitability, restricting the progress of business.

●Other effects-

Cross cultural differences when ignored and not managed effectively, cultural conflicts will arise and if the cultural discrimination pursue among major and minor members in the team, minors may be restricted from taking part in the decision making activities which hinders performance, increases absenteeism, and later affecting the productivity and employee turnover.(Alder 1986).

BRINGING BETTER APROACH TO PLURALISM

A study by authors like Cox 1993,Gordon1978, Fernandez, 1993; Copeland, 1988a; 1988b; Rice, 1994; McEnrue, 1993; McNerny, 1994; Jenner, 1994; Gummer, 1994; Carnevale & Stone, 1994(;(cited in White Richard D,1999) shows researches on managing diverse cultured organisations.

They emphasised and argued that, power and potentiality of a diverse cultured organisation is very high as its effectiveness is contributed by the efforts of various socio cultural background, but the members in such an organisation must create a proper balance between meeting presumed objectives of the organisation and admiring the individual cultures of employees thus striving the best out of diverse virtues, which is not easy to achieve.

The following are the approaches to be taken for understanding better cultural diversities and utilize them-

●Mutual respect and appreciation for each other to be infused among the employees allowing to pay attention to the minorities and encourage them in the decision making process, thus diversity must be valued first before managing them. The leadership style is to be changed accordingly with a view to adopt “the central culture of leadership”.

●If The higher authority personnel’s and leaders are provided cross cultural training they can have better commitments and achieve abilities to solve problems and understand employees ,moreover performance of managers relating achievement of diversity objectives should be measured and rewarded for ensuring fairness.

●Successful communication in the international business environment is an important factor, leaders must possess good communication skills and understanding of diverse communication techniques like verbal and non verbal aspects of communication .Thus verbal and nonverbal communication training is provided to ensure effective communication.

●A multiculturally successful organization cannot exist without the understanding of moral values of diverse cultures by respecting and supporting cultural values which could be done by recognizing religious holidays, diet restrictions etc.

CONCLUSION

Existence of Pluralist organizations and encouragement of multicultural workforce is inevitable for expansion of business comprising the best skills and varied cultural qualities. According to the research by Ferraro G. P, 1998, the recent decades have the growing tendency of conversion of unitary organizations into pluralist, attracting more diverse cultured people to migrate from developing countries as the industries become more globally interdependent .When it comes to the question of managing such a diversity, a higher emphasis must be laid on building human relations, admiring cultural practices, avoiding racial discrimination, respecting minorities and team building.But, being ignorant to these factors could stand as the biggest challenge for the business, leading to negative dynamics. Thus, a successful pluralist organisation must emphasise on training its staffs for avoidance of misunderstanding, ambiguity, increasing tolerance, thereby creating better working ambience with combination of skills and achieving shared mutual goals.

REFERENCES

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APPENDICES

The below few statements are spoken by some of the biggest multinational founders ,showing the importance of existence of diverse cultures or pluralism in an organisation and how its efficiency directly relates to the presence of such vast cultural diversity.

MICROSOFT

“The collaborative energy that is created when talented people from different backgrounds come together to focus on innovation has helped fuel Microsoft's success for more than 30 years. As we bring our innovations into more and more markets around the world, and as we strive to bridge the digital divide so that people at all levels of society can benefit from the opportunities of the global knowledge economy, we recognize that it's more important than ever to honour diversity, both inside Microsoft and in the communities where we live and work”.

(Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman)

The above statement spoken by Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft, states clearly how the efficiency of the organization been affected globally due to innovation and cultural diversity.

WALLMART

“Diversity is a way of life at Wal-Mart. And our commitment to diversity is not just something we talk about, it’s who we are. Our dedication to diversity extends from our board of directors, to our associates; from our suppliers, to our customers; and to every aspect of our business. We have long maintained diversity initiatives, including personnel practices and supplier programs, to help build and retain a diverse workforce and supplier base along with varied community outreach programs. We know that attracting diverse customers, associates and suppliers is critical to our success.”(Wall mart Groups)

The above words shows the key of success of one of the largest retail stores of the world has received global recognition with the effort of diverse workforce.