Cross-cultural Management and Contemporary Issues

Cross-cultural Management and Contemporary Issues

Nancy Adler (2008) defined cross cultural management as follows: “Cross-cultural management explains the behavior of people in organizations around the world and shows people how to work in organizations with employees and client populations from many different cultures.” Cross cultural management refers to the expansion of corporate culture in multinational company. Which is a nucleus determined to solve the argument due to globalization. Cultural scrutiny and culture as such are the process of cross cultural management. For scrutinizing the culture you need a management which can unswervingly or circuitously and successfully finds the accomplishment of management enterprise (UK essays, 2013). Diversity or diverse workforce stands for having multicultural people working in a company from different companies. Race, sex, gender, color, ethnicity are the key elements of Diversity. Employees mind has to be read and understand their attitude and cultural norms. No employee in a company wants to be inhibited by Race, sex, gender, color and ethnicity, etc. Managing diversity in a workplace means to handle every group to give their potential and equity at work without benefit and difficulty (Kundu, 2001) According to (HP, 2008), HP is a personal computer seller and fifth biggest company in the international having employee of 172000 worldwide. It design and manufacture software also hardware in the market. Companies like HP takes management people who can handle diverse workforce. Because there will be people coming with different manner, aptitude and curiosity. If HP fails to do so, then the company will have undesirable consequences on worker and clientele (Kundu, 2001). In diversity management, diversity of culture is a big issue.

Figure 1: Dimensions of diversity

There are three aspect of diversity as primary dimensions, secondary dimensions and tertiary dimensions as shown in (Figure 1). Primary dimensions are race, ethnicity, gender, age and disability. Secondary dimensions are religion, experience, sex, economics, and culture and so on. Territory dimensions are assumptions, feelings, and values and so on (Rijamampianina and Carmichael, 2005). For HP to manage diversity is cultural synergy is the main source.

For managing diversity in HP, they went through Adler's four steps of cultural synergy (Figure 2) to get hold of synergy. Cultural synergy can be accomplished by watching others culture perpetuating self one. HP learned technique to solve problems from a different point of view, analyze the problem, work with people who have competency and put the difference in the market and this is how HP got diversity solved by itself. First it starts with describing the situation and shaping the original cultural postulation. Then carefully assess the cultural overlies. Third step is to create culturally synergistic alternatives and finally implement the culturally synergistic solution by selecting one substitute.

Figure 2: Cultural synergy Leadership is the key to any company's success. The successful leader should consider change management taking as challenge for expansion of the organization. A company like HP needs a diverse team to work on for their business growth, because people coming from different backgrounds can help with their talent, business plan while making it a strategy, but has to be led by a leader who will put emphasis on the cross culture management of the company. The leader has to be effective and having a sharp point of view. HP is always recruiting diverse team for the rapid growth and leader need a strong, super ordinate identity to make this diverse team successful in achieving company's success (Gianasso, 2013). The leader has to understand the employees, culture, communication gap, cross cultural settings and cultural environment, in one word being equipped with everything. A leader will always think about the company's success and focusing on that he will work on making a team with collaboration. Managing employee in a company is a difficult one. Individualism, which is common in every employee of a company. Working in a company will motivate people to have a professional growth. For a growth in a company employee will work on their own way to achieve the goal. That's why they will implement their own strategies to obtain some sort of attraction in the company. Of course an employee doesn't need everything while working. Like working as a financial specialist doesn't need the facilities or interpretation of another department. There is always a gap within promise and implementation. Most

common things to cater is gender diversity, cultural diversity. Now let's see how HP caters different needs of employers? According to HP 2011 Global Citizenship Report "HP’s people are integral to the company’s success. Recruiting, developing, and retaining the best employees provides us with a competitive advantage, so we strive to create supportive, motivating workplaces where everyone can flourish. We foster a culture based on listening, sharing, inspiring, helping, and learning, and we regularly seek feedback on how we can perform better" (HP, 2011). HP does follow some strategy to manage this. Employee feedback, the Annual voice of workforce helps HP to influence itself. The employee uses HP intranet to clear their answer with the leader. Leaders and employee at HP have a great interaction and a relationship through which HP evaluates the employee perception. According to HP 2011 Global Citizenship Report "The ability to think and act as a leader is crucial for every HP employee, regardless of role. All employees have the opportunity to complete a self-assessment against the HP leadership standards and develop leadership skills through performance feedback, learning and training resources, or working with a coach or mentor." Inclusion and diversity are integrated into each other. Establishing a diverse and inclusive workplace for HP took a long way and a cost a great leadership. HP workplace is integrated with lots of people with their innovative and other cultural norms which make each employee incomparable from each other. In HP company inclusion refers to an environment where everybody got equity of chipping in the establishment of business success. According to (HP, 2011) “HP connects everyone and everything through its products, services and its winning workforce. In fact diversity and inclusion is woven into the fabric of the company” Cross cultural management has caused of growing fast. Working environment now days is more selfmotivated. Migration is another reason for the fast growing cross cultural management. Highly educated and skilled people are moving from their own country because of superior life. Another reason linked to this migration is International business growth. (Jolita Greblikaite, 2010) The cross cultural problem is related to: knowledge transfer and propagation, virtual team, effective management of human resource and bicultural skills. The fastest growing need of cross cultural

management got the globalization effect and migration. The standard practice has to be implemented. Barrier to cross cultural management are as follows: Deem and pigeonhole Verbal language Practice Importance Nonverbal language Social rule (Jolita Greblikaite, 2010)

HP has its own policies and practice to handle employee so that all the employee in the get the same value. This helps to keep the employees motivated thinking that equity has been made. HP indulgence all employees with distinction and importance. HP doesn’t discriminate with no employee due to have cultural diversity. One of the HP policies is to abide by the confined and countrywide regulation pertaining to non-discrimination and equal opportunity (Yousuf Kamal, 2009). Managing the diversity in the workplace is a complicated one, but HP did it carefully after adapting emerging paradigm of diversity management (Yousuf Kamal, 2009). As HP is in technology market HP requires skilled and dynamic employee. HP made its working environment by recruiting some multi cultural and multinational employee and made its work place a diverse place where the entire employee can put their skill, attitude and experience of the company to grow more effective. For managing this place cross cultural management was introduced to carry out the objective to achieve for the company. HP made this cross cultural management to one of their strategies. As HP is in competitive business with other technology company like Microsoft, Dell, IBM and others. Globalization effect on HP made the need of migration of people, which is another core of diverse workforces. Thus, it can be said that HP is successful and clearly confident with its diverse management. Workplace diversity can be measured by undertaking some steps to follow. Organizes internal and external audit of HR and cross cultural management. HP gives cross cultural management training focusing on what kind of competencies are needed for a manager to establish objectives and how to work contentedly in another culture, in this

first train the diverse work group ten the management (Kundu, 2001). When you manage diversity that means you have the power to acknowledge different employee and their differences pointing valuable. First of all have to find out the kind of diversity can take place then cure it. HP cannot compete in this technology market if HP ignores Diversity. The consequences of ignoring diversity create conflict in the workplace which is barrier to cross cultural management.

Bibliography Gianasso, D. G. (2013, May 15th). guidogianasso. Retrieved May 2nd, 2015, from Leaders Across Cultures: https://guidogianasso.wordpress.com/ HP. (2011, October 31). HP people. Retrieved May 2nd, 2015, from http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/media/files/hp_fy11_gcr_hp_people.pdf

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