Question

Intercultural Communication Select an organizational culture (business, health care, or education). What are potential challenges that organizations of this type face as they become more culturally diverse?

Answer 1

Organizational culture refers to collective behavior, assumptions, and beliefs of members of an organization which actually forms social environment within an organization. Organizational culture includes organization's vision, mission, systems, values, beliefs, etc. Organizational culture influenced by its geographical location, beliefs of people in the organization, action preference of management team, environment, synergy between employees and clients, etc.

Due to globalization, we can see people from different cultures, locations, beliefs working in organization. This makes global organization mixed pot of cultures and thus making it more diverse. There are many organizations with global presence in sectors like healthcare, education, business, etc. Example: Healthcare organization having global presence in order to carry out pharmacologic research and deliver products to global community. Information Technology enabled business organization having global presence and employing people from different countries. Here, we can observe people from different countries with different religious and cultural background work together at one organization making it diverse cultural organization.

Below are some potential challenges faced by diverse cultural organization (mixed pot culture):

1. Communication: People from different regions or countries may talk global language like English, but their communication may be influenced by their previous knowledge, assumptions, etc. There may be difficulty understanding language spoken by native speakers due to idioms and words used are particular to that region (Bartlett, 1932, War of the Ghosts).

2. Respect/fear of authority: People from one culture may hesitate to freely move with elders or senior officials in the organization, whereas people from another culture easily work with senior officials without hesitation. This may produce conflict and gap between these two parties.

3. Lack of synergy: People from different cultures may form their own groups and may not mingle with others causing hindrance to synergy and organizational growth.

4. Collaborative actions: People from different cultures may face issues while collaborating with other people for working sensitive issues like blood transfusion, pregnancy management at healthcare organization, etc. There may be conflict between members due to difference in race, beliefs, nationality, etc. Example: An assembly unit employing people from different countries may face difficulty in achieving productivity due to uneasiness felt by employees with collaborative work.

These are some potential challenges we can observe in organizations getting more diverse in culture.