Cultural diversity management Noor van Loon block 2
Lecture 1
Management refers to the way in which various stakeholders try to manage issues of
cultural diversity. Organizations should ensure that diversity works and that the potential
bright side of cultural diversity is shown. The risks and negative sides of diversity should be
avoided.
The management question comes in as a second step after the understanding of diversity
comes in in a particular work setting. This particularity is important because it differs in all
organizations. Another aim of this course is to design a tailormade approach.
Send email to: culturaldiversitymanagement@gmail.com before 3 nov
- Student registration number
- Master the Dutch language? Yes/no
- Which master program do you follow?
Group project
- What is the issue
- How does the organization deal with the issue
o Doing nothing is also doing something
- What does the literature tell us about this issue
- What does the literature tell us about how the organization can fix this
- What can the organization do to fix the problem?
26 nov:
- Division of labor
- What organization
- What articles
- What is the plan
Double framework
- Organizations/labor market professional and collegial identities. Related to the
institutional setting and the work that needs to be done. E.g. as a teacher, identity
relates to profession in order to provide stakeholders (= students) with the right
information.
- Cultural diversity cultural identities. This refers to the way you develop your life
and the things that you find important, e.g. values, meanings, lifestyle, norms that
you bring with you when you move from 1 place to another. All these issues come
together under the heading of cultural diversity. This is also related to one’s
upbringing, which might be different for people across the globe concerning norms,
values, and religious aspects.
,Cultural diversity management Noor van Loon block 2
(Inter)actions between stakeholders:
- Work: production, service delivery, professional treatment...
- Work related communication: team meetings, email, intranet, application interviews,
assessment interviews, call on your colleagues, briefings, de-briefings, training,
coaching...
- Personal communications: privacy-related conversations at the coffee machine
Cultural difference:
these (inter)actions take place between stakeholders with different languages, religions, life-
styles, identities etc.
Stakeholders
- Professional identities
o Managers
o Shareholders
o Customers, clients
o Government
o Employees
o Board of directors
- Cultural identities
o Dutch
o Allochthone
o Bi-cultural
o Turkish
o Moroccan
o Etc
at least double identities
Inter(actions):
=> Professional and cultural dimensions of interactions
=> Salience of professional and cultural identities in these interactions cannot be taken for
granted
(Inter)actions related to:
- Different meanings: views, opinions, interpretations, perceptions, emotions, norms,
values...:
o Professional discourses
o Diversity related discourses
- Different artefacts: products, services, material resources, texts..
,Cultural diversity management Noor van Loon block 2
- Societal influences: markets, government regulations, labour markets, discourses on
migration, discourses on migrants and ‘integration’...:
o Professional discourses
o Diversity related discourses
so, what happens surround the work place will impact what happens on the work
floor (e.g. when the employer has a certain view on migrant workers than this might
impact the situation on the work floor and the interactions of all employees). There
might be some discourses (professional and diversity-related as well).
- Organisational influences: management style, communication policies, HRM policies,
labour relations, how work processes are structured, relations between staff and line,
prescribed behaviour, power relations...:
o Professional discourses
o Diversity related discourses
Cultural diversity as part of overall workforce diversity:
- Also including diversity in terms of age, gender, ability, sexual orientation...
- Linking: intersectionality, how these different diversity identities relate to each other
(e.g. race and gender: female Afro-American). So, gender identity might sometimes
be quite important for instance with regard to the ability for a certain career.
Focus:
- (Inter)actions of culturally diverse stakeholders in work settings
- Related to different meanings and artefacts
- Influenced by organizational and societal factors
- Analysis: issues of professionalism and cultural diversity in (inter)actions at work
related to all these levels
- Intervention: managing these issues
Cultural diversity management
Aim:
- Get a good understanding of these (inter)actions of culturally diverse stakeholders in
work settings, related to different meanings and artefacts and influenced by
organizational and societal factors
, Cultural diversity management Noor van Loon block 2
- Critically assess management interventions to deal with these (inter)actions, relations
and influences and design tailor-made interventions
- Develop new and tailor-made management approaches
Lecture 2
Various interest in cultural diversity at work
need to find out what interests are of each stakeholder in each organization. Various
stakeholders, both from some professional and cultural point of view, and each of those may
have a different interest at stake when it comes to diversity/professional relationships (e.g.
the interest of employee might be different from the interest of employer/manager). In fact,
a person can have different identities (both professional and cultural) as well.
Literature: two basic challenges
1. The business case for diversity= about performance of organization / team /
individual => what are the consequences of ethnic diversity for performance
= about business unit, team, department, etc. It is about the quantity or quality of
the provided services by the organization (e.g. with regard to university: the
quantity/the quality of teaching). So, the business case is about what happens to the
business unit, team, department when this unit becomes diverse because of different
cultures/ethnicities. Argument: diversity is good for business! The more diverse a
team becomes, the higher the performance of a team will be not only for the unit as
a whole but for the individuals in a team as well. When people from different
backgrounds will work together, then this will bring about different points of
view/perspectives and it will stimulate discussion/encourage reflection which will in
turn lead to improvement of decision making and new dynamics = more innovation
and more creativity, and this may easily lead to an improvement of
products/services/better ways of cooperating/speeding up the process in a team =
basically the cognitive effects: new cognitive approaches to the service delivery –
bringing in a new ideas to perform as an organization.
Arguments:
- Diversity is good for organizational / team / individual performance since it leads to
innovation, creativity, new viewpoints, dynamics and discussion => cognitive effects
Stahl et al. (2010):
= a meta-study, as a study of studies, and this one is one of the best ones.
Conclusion: cognitive argument is confirmed by a large number of studies, being carried out
in different parts of the world. The more diverse a team becomes, the more satisfied the
