Question

As we have already seen, reason and emotions are an integral part of decision making. Cognitive processing--or

the way we understand and acquire information--is also important to this process. But where does culture fit into

the equation? For example, do people in Asian countries use the same logic when deciding as people in Europe or

the United States? What influence do religious differences have over a person's ethical approach to solving a

problem?

1. Let’s do a pretend exercise. Imagine you are a manager of a very diverse, multicultural team. Describe the team

in detail to include information about the number of men and women on the team, where they come from, the

religions they practice, etc. Be sure to give each team member a name. Now, imagine that you must decide which

holidays your team members will be paid for and which holidays they will not be paid for.

2. List all possible holidays that could be observed by the team members.

3. Think and discuss the issues you may encounter in making this decision.

 Give examples of how accommodation and assimilation could play a role.

 Give an example of how stereotyping could be involved.

 Discuss potential differences of culture, gender, and religion and the impact these differences will have on

team members' opinions.

4. How can the group apply the systematic approach to making decisions that will be satisfactory to all or most of

the team members?

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This article provides some valuable insight into managing globally

Answer 1

Let’s do a pretend exercise. Imagine you are a manager of a very diverse, multicultural team. Describe the team in detail to include information about the number of men and women on the team, where they come from, the religions they practice, etc. Be sure to give each team member a name. Now, imagine that you must decide which holidays your team members will be paid for and which holidays they will not be paid for.

Name	Gender	Religious Affiliation	Country of Origin
John Doe	M	Atheism	U.S.A
Hubert Goodwin	M	Catholicism	U.S.A
Emilio Silva	M	Christianity	Portugal
Daisy Abeles	F	Jewish	Israel
Banko Basho	M	Buddhism	India
Inigo Montoya	M	Catholicism	Mexico
Maria Sanchez	F	Christianity	Mexico
Madhvi Ananya	F	Hinduism	Mauritius
Helga Hogan	F	Islam	India
Rachael Levy	F	Judaism	Israel
Aida Lebna	F	Christianity	Ethiopia
Neema Mohamed	F	Islam	Egypt
Rebecca Marten	F	Agnostic	U.S.A
Zakiyya Xara	F	Hinduism	Nepal

List all possible holidays that could be observed by the team members.

Atheism/Agnosticism

• New Year’s Eve
• New Year’s Day (Federal)

Buddhism

• Visakah Puja- Buddha’s Birth
• Buddhist New Year
• Bodhi Day- Buddha’s Enlightenment

Catholicism/Christianity

• Easter Sunday
• Christmas Eve (Optional)
• Christmas Day (Federal)
• Good Friday (Optional)

Hinduism

• Maha Shivaratri
• Holi
• Ram Navami
• Vaisakhi
• Janmashtami
• Dussehra
• Diwali

Islam

• Eid Al-Adha
• Eid Ad-Fitr

Judaism

• First two days of Passover
• Rosh Hashanah
• Yom Kippur
• First two days of Sukkot
  U.S. (Federal Holidays)
• Labor Day (Federal)
• Thanksgiving Day (Federal)
• Friday after Thanksgiving
• President’s Day (Federal)
• MLK JR Birthday (Federal)
• Veterans Day (Federal)
• Columbus Day (Federal)
• Memorial Day (Federal)
• Independence Day (Federal)

Think and discuss the issues you may encounter in making this decision.

In the past, companies like Starbucks has received negative feedback multiple times after the release of their holiday collections, especially the cups. Customers felt as if the company focused too much on Christmas, rather than celebrating the holiday season as a whole (including all other important religious holidays). The company has been working on accommodating the customer’s needs in the past two years by making this time of year a time for EVERYONE to enjoy. They focused more on designs like ice skates, or snowflakes, or gingerbread men rather than Christmas trees and angels. Now let us stand back and think about something more serious though, the employees of the company only get paid for holidays such as Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. Though, holidays like Hanukkah and Kwanzaa aren’t covered. This is a issue that many corporations encounter.

The biggest issue that we would encounter making a decision on which holidays will be paid time off for employees is the bias that will be portrayed to the practicing religious employees. If we were to stick with the “usual” structure of holidays that are paid off according to Federal Law, and our workforce is comprised primarily of practicing Hindus, Buddhists, and Judaism, then that could be seen as favoring the current situation (McKee 2013). Another issue that may arise is the morale of our employees if we do not pick their religions holiday as a paid day off; additionally, we could run into a lawsuit just like Jose Gonzalez and Glenn Owen did in Chapter 2 (McKee 2013).

In my opinion, in this type of situation, I think that no matter what is decided on, there's still going to be someone who is upset by the decision and feel that they aren't being accommodated as much as they should be. Christian holidays seem to be the holidays most observed in the workplace so someone of a different religion may be upset that they have to pick and choose which holidays they can observe while Christian holidays are always accommodated.

Give examples of how accommodation and assimilation could play a role.

Accommodation- Recognizing various holidays, appreciating the new cultures

• Accommodate by granting 7 guaranteed holidays off
• 18 accrued days of PTO the course of the year          

Assimilation- Lumping holidays into generic “Winter break” or “Spring break”

            It isn’t always possible for a company to accommodate to all the holidays that are celebrated. I think it is important to locate a common ground and decide which holidays are largely celebrated by a significant amount of the team, and which can be placed into a assimilation type deal such as winter break or spring break. For example, New Year’s Day is a holiday celebrated by many so a majority of the time it is a given paid day off for everyone. Though, a holiday such as Saint Patrick’s Day is an Irish holiday and is celebrated by all Irish people, but it doesn’t need to necessarily be a paid day off. Others may accommodate to the holiday by dressing in green and cooking Irish foods, regardless of whether they are Irish or not. So a major issue that may be faced would be deciding which ones are seemily required to be paid for, and which aren’t necessarily considered major holidays.

In picking the paid holidays off, we could begin by accommodating everyone and all of the possible holidays that exist. This would not be a good or even okay decision to make because the workforce could deplete on the days our customers do not observe. This would in turn be a negative impact to the company, company sales, and morale of everyone who is picking up the slack for those who are not there working. On the other hand, assimilation could be a positive influence on the company as we could integrate or “fit” the new and practiced holidays of our employees into our company policy (McKee 2013).

There could be a collective decision made amongest the team as to which major holidays should be accommodated and which don’t. Two major holidays from each religion could be decided on and the others would need special requests to have off that day. If two or more major holidays happen relatively close in time to each other, a “break” could possibly be implemented depending on how close the holidays are to each other and how many days it would require to cover those days.

Give an example of how stereotyping could be involved.

It cannot be assumed that a person absolutely celebrates the holiday that they are stereo typically assumed to celebrate. For example, a person that was born Jewish may have converted to Christianity at a point in their life and now they celebrate Christmas rather than Hanukkah. Stereotypes could lead to an easy decision for the company. Since we have certain stereotypes for people, regardless of the acknowledgement within us, it could lead to smoother interactions (McKee 2013). For example, stereotypically other businesses and companies in the United States give their employees Christmas day off. This is not practiced or observed by every single person who is Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist; but, it is a social norm that everyone will have that day off.

If a collective decision isn’t made among the group and the decision of which holidays are going to be observed and which aren’t are made by higher-ups, certain holidays may be assumed as being more important than others. Certain holidays in a religion may not be as important as others and stereotyping could lead to assumptions about which ones are more important. In order to not stereotype, careful research would need to be done about each holiday which would take time.

Discuss potential differences of culture, gender, and religion and the impact these differences will have on team members' opinions.

Each person will always consider their own holiday more important than the others, though most are usually accepting and understanding of other celebrated holidays. If we are Christian, we usually always celebrate Easter Sunday. If we are Islamic we celebrate Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha, and so on. These differences can cause difficulties when it comes to deciding which holidays to pay the employees for because how can you choose which one is more important than the other? There are multiple cultures, genders, and religions in today’s society; the LGBT community is now the LGBTQIA+ (Gold 2018).

These differences will impact others naturally; but it would be the role of leaders, as well as everyone, to avoid treating these differences as absolutes (McKee 2013). These opinions on differences could lead to stereotyping within the workforce and directly affect the morale of the “different”.

As previously stated, I think the biggest issue will be that each person is going to think their holiday is more important than others. There could be strong opinions from other team members about the validity of how important one holiday is over another. Some may feel that too many of one religion’s holidays are being recognized versus another religion.

How can the group apply the systematic approach to making decisions that will be satisfactory to all or most of the team members?

1. Identify the problem.

In this situation, the problem is that some employees may not get paid for their time off while observing certain religious holidays. Consider the example of an ethical dilemma given in Chapter 2, with Jose Gonzalez and Glenn Owen. They sued their company, AT&T, when AT&T denied them their request off from work in order to attend a religious service. Giving all employees every conceivable holiday off would also be impractical, however. Thus, we must determine the metrics by which we judge a holiday to be necessarily observed.

2. Establish the decision criteria.

• Which holidays are observed by people regardless of religious affiliation? (i.e. federal holidays)
• What religions make up a majority of our workforce?
• Which holidays are usually the most important or sacred for those religions?
• Is there a Paid time off (PTO) option in place?

3. Allocate weights to decision criteria.
   1. What religions make up a majority of our workforce?
   2. Which holidays are observed by people regardless of religious affiliation? (i.e. federal holidays)
   3. Which holidays are most important or sacred for those religions?
   4. Is there a Paid Time Off (PTO) option in place?
4. List alternatives.

• Use the standard Federal Holiday System in the U.S.
• Cherry pick the holidays most important to our workforce
• Implement a PTO system
• Have a set number of days guaranteed for religious purposes

5. Analyze alternatives.

• Use the standard Federal Holiday System in the U.S.
  • It would be considered the “norm” or status quo bias
  • Other religions are not considered in the system
• Cherry pick the holidays most important to our workforce
  • Some Bias
  • Not everyone may be considered with this alternative
• Implementing a PTO system
  • Accruing time gives them the option and ability to choose which days off they will have
  • Will have to request days off a certain time period in advanced (say 2-3 weeks) to be approved for the day off
  • First come, first serve basis; may need coverage for the days that are taken off (if not approved in advance)
• Have a set number of days guaranteed for religious purposes
  • Accommodates all religions and cultural backgrounds
  • Gives the employee the option to choose which holidays they want to take off

6. Choose an alternative.

We chose the PTO system. In our system, employees would be guaranteed 7 days off. Throughout the year, employees would accrue PTO for 18 days: 7 days off for religious reasons, 10 days for vacation, 6 sick days, and 2 personal days.

7. Implement the decision.

Time and resources would be spent ensuring that every employee is aware of the new holiday system and how time off would be accrued and spent. Pamphlets would be provided to better illustrate these potentially complicated changes.

8. Evaluate the decision.

There are several ways that we could gauge employee contentment with the new holiday plan. As detailed in Chapter 4, HR has several methods of quantitative and qualitative research at its disposal. We would let the employees know that they should inform management in advance about which holiday they were going to request PTO for (in a timely manner) so that the team is able to work together successfully on their day of absence, OR so they have a comfortable amount of time to find coverage for their shift. Due to our team being so small, we would elect not to distribute an employee engagement survey, because information could easily be misconstrued and questions could be misleading. We would conduct annual interviews to continue to ensure that employees are happy with their holiday benefits.

Sources Cited:

McKee, Annie, et al. Management: a Focus on Leaders. Pearson Australia, 2013

Heathfield, Susan M. “What's a Typical Paid Holiday Schedule in the US?” The Balance Careers, www.thebalancecareers.com/paid-holiday-schedule-1917985.

“Religious Events in the Workplace.” Diversity Resources, www.diversityresources.com/workplace-cultural-events/.

Gold, Michael. “The ABCs of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. .” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 June 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/style/lgbtq-gender-language.html.

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