Paper Example on Opportunities and Challenges Presented By Culturally Diverse Teams

Introduction

Cultural diverse teams refer to the representation of different cultures within an organization. Global politics are increasingly being focused on internal matters, but organizations must remain culturally diverse to meet the needs of the global market. Culturally diverse organizations can bring on board employees and ideas from different cultures an approach that seeks to expand their hold on the market and increase their profits. Further, culturally diverse organizations such as Apple and Google can pool together development teams from different parts of the world with the aim of increasing cultural inclusivity and also increase the overall invention in their organizations. Cultural diversity promotes a multicultural approach, and the employees are required to interact with employees from different cultural backgrounds which improves the contribution of the teams in the organizations. However, poor management of cultural diversity poses a significant threat to the overall performance of the organizations. Poor management of cultural diversity can lead to misunderstandings and also lead to communication barriers within an organization teams which affects an organization negatively. Therefore, it is important for every organization to identify the opportunities and challenges of the diverse teams to ensure that the organization can take advantage of diverse teams to achieve globalization goals (Stahl et al., 2016).

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Culturally Diverse Teams Background

Globalization has increased the interactions between people from different backgrounds, cultures, nationalities, and beliefs. Hirst and Bromley affirm that today people don't live in an isolated marketplace, but they are part of the world economy facing stiff competition from every corner of the world (Hirst and Bromley 2015). For this reason, all organizations need to ensure that they develop a diverse workforce to ensure that the organization is flexible to change and creativity in the workforce is improved when the workforce is diverse. Therefore, focusing and capitalizing on workplace diversity is one of the most effective tools in management currently. Within an organization, the human resource department is mandated with the task of ensuring that the workforce is diverse to ensure that the productivity of people needs and wants are satisfied. Diversity administration is something that an organization initiates as the organization begins to grow and globalize. The process involves using minority groups like women and minorities diversity for the company's competitive gain (Hirst and Bromley 2015). Workplace diversity is remarkable because it ensures that employees are efficiently utilized. Cultural diversity and gender diversity has an impact on how individuals behave and interact with one another at work and in some cases affects their social environment and culture. There is also age diversity and religious diversity that can also be promoted in the workplace (Sabharwal 2014). An analysis of the benefits of workplace diversity, organizational culture, cultural differences, cultural shifts and team effectiveness ensure that one can understand the significance of diversity in the workplace.

Diverse teams are on the rise in many multinational organizations with the aim of appealing to a diverse market. Many multinational organizations use diverse teams as an approach to develop goods and services that meet the demands of the diverse markets. As multinational organizations continue to employ diverse teams in creating diverse organizational cultures, it is important for the organization to identify opportunities and also manage challenges of the culturally diverse teams to increase business success internationally.

Opportunities for Cultural Diverse Teams

Creating Competitive Advantage for the Multi-National Companies (MNC)

Multinational organizations are organizations that operate on a global scale by setting up production centers or sales centers in different countries across the world such as Coca-Cola Company. Multinational organizations should view culturally diverse teams as an opportunity towards increased market dominance and ability to identify and meet the culturally diverse needs of the consumers. Workplace diversity has various advantages for multi-national companies (MNC) across the world (Sucher and Cheung 2015, p. 93). Organizations that employ a diverse workforce ensure that they increase their adaptability. Additionally, variety also provides that there are a broader service range and different viewpoints in the organization which leads to new ideas that lead to innovations. Diversity at the workplace ensures that execution of tasks at work is effective by dividing the tasks into smaller functions which can be handled and achieved easily (Perlmutter 2017). Contrary to that, workplace diversity has a lot of challenges that revolve around communication barrier as a result of different languages in the workplace. At the same time, some employees may be resistant to change during its initial conception, and this either reduces employee morale or affects the adaptation of the innovation (Perlmutter 2017). Diversity at the workplace also involves putting different rules and regulations for employee behavior, performance, and recruitment at the organization which must be followed strictly. However, the rules and regulations should be strictly followed by everyone. Organizations incorporate the rules and regulations in their ethical codes of conduct to ensure that all employees strictly observe them at work.

The culturally diverse teams can inspire creativity and promote innovation in the multinational corporations which are an opportunity for the international organizations to increase their competitive advantage in the international market by creating culturally competitive products through the use of the culturally diverse teams. The needs and preferences of the people are aver changing which present a significant challenge to the international organizations. However, multinational companies can use culturally diverse teams to identify the market needs and create products that can appeal to the ever-changing consumer needs and preferences. Therefore, multinational organizations should continue to take advantage of the culturally diverse teams to create market competitive advantage and help them to penetrate new international markets using products that appeal to the changing needs and preferences of the people.

International HRM Policies

A human resource manager is obligated to facilitate the organization's potential to use employees' efficiency to obtain strategic business goals. The human resource manager is also mandated to ensure that all workers rewarded equitably and fairly for their contributions to the company. According to Reiche and Oddou (2016), these rewards not only include rewards, salaries, and wages but also involves career enhancement through training and providing a conducive work environment. The human resource department can achieve this through identifying the diversity factors existing currently in the workforce and evaluate the essential distinctions in the company's workforce and the labor market where employees are obtained (Rice, 2015). In addition to that, HRM managers explore the potential benefits of recruitment and developing, monitoring, implementing and evaluating workers management.

National Culture and Management

Globally, national culture is very diverse across the world and impacts management and organizations in different ways. National culture involves the pervasive, norms, shared beliefs, symbols, and values that we encounter in our daily lives. National culture usually gets transmitted using rituals and symbols that people take for granted in most cases (Neal, 2016). Management currently is bound by various rules and policies which must work by national cultures to ascertain that their organization receives attention displayed by different people. National culture triggers changes in the corporate administration control to favor local business-unit circumstances. The critical role of the administration is more complicated than many individuals contend. Management in most cases adopts holistic obligations for the final results of the projects (Benschop et al., 2015).

Local Market Knowledge Using Culturally Diverse Teams

Multinational companies view diverse cultural teams as an opportunity because of their ability to increase the organization knowledge on the nature of different markets. Culturally diverse teams in multinational organizations have market insights of the local markets where they come from an aspect that is taken as an opportunity for the multinational companies to increase their competitiveness in the market entries (Trax, Brunow and Suedekum 2015, p. 85). Culturally diverse teams are of the essence in making local market-based decisions on the marketing approach as well as the type of goods and services that are most appealing to the local markets. Today, multinational organizations are required to make decisions that help the organizations to achieve competitive advantage through perfect market information. Through culturally diverse teams the multinational organizations can save time and make market decisions more effectively to ensure they have a competitive advantage which increases their profitability by creating goods and services that can appeal to the needs of the international consumers who have a diverse background (Stahl and Tung 2015, p. 391).

High Cultural Sensitivity and Insight Improves Market Targeting

Market targeting today plays a significant role in ensuring that an organization can make sales at a global level. The growing expansion of business markets beyond national boundaries means that the multinational organizations can highly rely on the culturally diverse teams to ensure that they can correctly target markets and increase sales projections. Cultural diverse teams in international business organizations increase the cultural sensitivity of the organizations towards the market and create better and actionable insights through which multinational organizations can increase international presence in an international market. Therefore, culturally diverse teams are an opportunity for the multinational organizations to increase overall market targeting and ensure that the goods and services produced appeals to the needs and preferences of the consumers in a culturally diverse market (Petersen et al., 2015, p. 44).

Diverse Skills Set and Ability to Retain Best Talent

The multinational organizations can attract talented employees from different cultures an aspect that gives them a competitive advantage over other organizations that recruit from a specific region. Organizations such as Google has been able to pool together teams with diverse skills sets from different parts of the world which have facilitated the organization innovation drive and ability to retain talented employees in the market. Culturally diverse teams play a significant role in improving business creativity and productivity by helping culturally diverse organizations to attract highly trained and talented employees (Sparrow and Makram 2015).

Challenges of Culturally Diverse Teams

Organization Culture and Structure

Organizational culture refers to the personality of the organization which is adaptable with time on imposed on employees to enhance their productivity. According to Schein (2010), Culture comprises of the assumptions, norms, values and physical signs of the organization members and their traits towards different activities in t...