Critical consideration of diversity management in cross- cultural context

In recent years a global progression towards the topics of Diversity and Inclusion could have been widely observed. Generally speaking, we can see more and more attention being brought up towards the topics of diversity and seemingly more people start to understand the importance of it and that being diverse is an upcoming must-have of the new decade. Even though we may think that these days nobody should be in any way shocked by or reluctant to accept diversified people in both their personal and professional communities such instances still happen. Having mentioned that, the art of diversity management and especially when it comes to the cross-cultural aspects is incredibly important and will be the main topic of this paper.

The first question we should answer is what is Diversity Management? This type of management is a type of management that focuses on managing, coordinating, and securing employees from diversified backgrounds, nationalities, cultures, and communities to provide them with an inclusive professional environment. This management style and the origination of diversity and inclusion is strongly correlated with the introduction of equal employment opportunities, LGBTQ rights, global access to education, and partially with globalization. Even though the word diversity has a global reach and generally people are aware of the fact that everyone amongst us comes from a different social group, culture, country, religion, origin we still struggle to fully accept it and, in some cases, admit it.

We may ask ourselves why diversity is important? Why should we pay so much attention to it? The answer to that is rather simple. Because it is inevitable. We cannot avoid being surrounded by diverse people by any chance even if we presumably live in a very specific and closed community. We simply cannot avoid it thanks to globalization (which also has a negative impact on it) and technological development.

Globalization had a very strong positive and negative impact on diversity. When it comes to the positive aspects, we have to think about globalization in a way of a global reach rather than global standardization. Having everything easily accessible and opened to everyone enabled the diversity to flow outside of the box, spreading globally.

People started traveling more for both touristic and business purposes, started studying aboard, meeting people from various backgrounds, and sharing their heritage with them. Such simple things as visa waiver programs had an impact on diversity sharing as they in a way encouraged people to travel, explore and share who they really are. Such an approach in my personal view is amazing and should be widely encouraged. Luckily various universities enable their students to go on exchange programs as a part of Erasmus programs in order to encourage them towards diversity. Having a look at our Kozminski University, we can state that diversity management in the cross-cultural aspect is done very well thanks to the above-mentioned Erasmus programs. Without a doubt, it can be stated that universities and other educational institutions are pioneers in diversity management and enterprises should really teach from them. Such statement is based on the fact that universities do not market themselves to be “Diverse and Inclusive”, “LGBTQ/ All race/ All religion friendly” as opposed to enterprises because there is a strong belief and assurance in the student community that they are diverse as they comprise of young people who are diverse themselves. Additionally, diversity has its global spread thanks to technological advancement and the popularity of social media. Nowadays, we see numerous people embracing their diversity on social media, reaching millions of people and showing how proud they are of it. However, the fast and easy global reach has its risks. All businesses must beware of how their social media are being managed in order to avoid any inappropriate situations that may bring drastic reputational risks.

In 2017 the clothing company United Colours of Benetton was named “sexist” after a social media post that was captioned “girls not allowed” for a new boys clothing collection. The firm got a very strong social media backlash and recorded a strong reputational decrease over not being diverse and inclusive for all its’ customers. As claimed the firm wanted to deliver a “funny” message and did not intend to discriminate against anyone, however, the clientele did not get the joke at all. Eventually, the firm issued an official apology on its social media.

The above instances show how sensitive the topic of diversity is even today. A minor mistake can cost a lot that is so, it is crucial to master diversity management and really know what is appropriate or not and how it can be used for the benefit of the enterprise. People dislike being labeled on various surfaces when it comes to their race, nationality, gender, or sexuality and this is something Benetton omitted, as their post assumed that boy’s collection and be worn only by boys, not by girls.

On the other hand, globalization has also a negative impact on diversity specifically when it comes to the cultural part. The phenomenon called westernization is not something unheard of. Many believe that westernization goes hand in hand with globalization and is strongly responsible for erasing a cultural differentiation and sort of unifying everyone to behave, believe and live similarly. Very culture-specific habits such as eating with your hands in Arabic or Indian cultures, wearing hijabs or traditional clothing, praying, or celebrating culture-specific rites may be considered “not trendy” or even unappealing in the westernized world. That becomes an issue because of the far reach of social media which of course has its negative aspects. Nowadays, everyone wants to be perceived in a specific way, show only the glamorous part of life, and look like the Kardashians. Nevertheless, the most important is not to be biased by social media and globalization. In my view, people forget that even the Kardashians are diverse with their appearances and cultural heritage therefore, it is not something we may just easily acquire over the social media post.

We may ask ourselves why is diversity still an issue having such a global reach? That is because of stereotyping. We stereotype about something every day and we may do it either consciously or unconsciously. Stereotyping is a process very similar to labeling and prejudice. We start to stereotype about either a situation or a person from the very few first seconds and immediately our mind goes to the closest thing we heard or know about it regardless, of being true or not. After that, we associate the fact with the previously built-up assumption or even the label without a deeper knowledge of it. It all happens within the first seconds of interaction and often is the base of strong prejudice and further on our attitude. Technically speaking we approach either a person or a situation with already a sense of what to expect. In most cases, the assumption will not be true and is simply misleading and made up. The majority of stereotypes consider exactly cultures and it essential is to eliminate them in the process of diversity management as they restrict your thinking.

Very common examples of cultural stereotypes include:

• Southern European= lazy,

• Eastern European= poor,

• Chinese= fake,

• German= well made,

• French= expensive

Are these stereotypes real? In most cases, they are not. They are just generalization used by people in order to try to deliver the message about the unknown based on else’s experiences or beliefs. However, it essential is not to take the stereotypes too seriously and make sure we treat everyone equally regardless of the cultural background. If by any means a business decides to follow stereotypes, the diversity management in that instance immediately can be considered as a failure and may bring risks for the business. Businesses can stereotype as easily as regular people. Stereotyping in business may rely on:

• Supplier selection- businesses may decide to seek supply only from the country-specific providers not taking into account the actual quality of the supply. For instance, many think that Asian and specifically Chinese products are low quality and we are reluctant towards them right after we hear “Made in China”. Under no circumstances it does mean that if something is mead out of Europe or the USA it's automatically better quality because the access to technology and knowledge is the same globally and for some industries, we have better specialists and stronger regulations in Asia than anywhere else.

• Customer base selection- similarly to the above, businesses decide to target a specific customer base. Mostly it is based on customer profiling and market research however, we should take it we a pinch of salt. Any business should restrain itself to a specific client group and close its offering for the others. For instance, we may assume that a major customer of a luxury fashion brand will be women, we may assume that only men will be buying cars or sport-related items or that people will not buy this product in Europe because it is so “American”. All of these examples simply show how narrow the understanding can be and in these cases what we should focus on is the product itself. Essential is to produce an outcome that is diverse and can easily reach a diversified clientele without a major change in the offering. This shows that when thinking about diversity management in a cross-cultural aspect we should not only think about its terms of people but also products or services to make sure we do not discriminate against any of our potential customers and we are able to satisfy their needs.

• Team selection- when it comes to stereotyping in the team selection it is associated with the Human Resource selection processes. As far as these processes are concerned, we should most certainly avoid stereotyping. When thinking about employee selection we should not be biased and offer everyone an equal chance, therefore, look at their experience and professional capabilities instead of their race, nationality, culture, or appearance. In many organizations, it is not well perceived to include your photograph with your CV as the job position should not depend on your look but on your qualifications. Nevertheless, including a photograph in a CV is still a common thing especially in Eastern Europe.

Overall, appropriate diversity and inclusion management practices should strongly focus on eliminating stereotypes from the enterprise as they do not bring any noticeable advantages to it.

In light of the above, the importance of diversity management can be seen on various business levels. Strong attention to diversity aspects is paid by various enterprises on the employee selection process as the majority of rims offer equal employment opportunities. Of course, if you ever applied for a job you see that often there a “special requirements” that immediately discriminate 99% of candidates and are very culture-specific. For instance, the majority or if not all of the job offers in Japan require candidates to speak Japanese which shows that the job market is very exclusive and mostly dedicated to one culture as Japanese is not a widely taught language in other countries. Therefore, getting a good job in Japan for an outsider is nearly impossible.

Similarly, in China, if you are an outsider, people will be very hesitant towards you as they are a rather shy nation and hesitant towards non-Chinese speaking people what can be observed by the lack of English signs on the streets in major cities. Even in Europe, we can notice such instances and France is a perfect example of it. As similar to Japan, the majority of jobs in France- especially in Paris- require candidates to speak French and do not consider candidates without this language for any position.

A strong cultural diversity can be seen in start-ups as these enterprises do it freely. What is meant by that is the fact that start-ups mostly depend on enthusiastic, like-minded people who are very opened, and these enterprises are not strongly regulated, with tall hierarchy and are decentralized. On the other hand, we have big enterprises which as they proudly claim are “All about Diversity and Inclusion” but the question is are they really? If not, why do they try to be all about it?

In my personal view, big enterprises aspire to be diverse and inclusive but there is still a long way to go for some of them. Such opinion is based on the fact that for many years, these workplaces were very exclusive and reserved for specific people only. For instance, banking and finance was a man’s job, people of colour and different sexualities or religions were not accepted by corporations and these places were not adjusted for their needs. Back in the day, corporations did not have kosher or halal meals in the employee canteens or did not have prayer rooms. Nowadays this aspect has changed and became more of a standard. Additionally, as opposed to start-ups many corporations decide to employ “diversity hires” because of introduced quotas that state the ratio of diverse employees to non-diverse employees that should be kept in order to have “good statistics” or are receiving subsidies for each hired diverse employee. Paradoxically, corporations encourage their employees to express themselves and embrace their cultures but at the same time impose on them artifacts (to be described further on) in a form of dress code that limits the diversity and restrains self-expression.

The essential is to find a balance in the diversity management practices introduced by firms. People do not like when someone tries too hard and the same goes for firms. If you aspire to be too diverse it means that actually you are not, and you try to convince everyone else. Often firms use diversity as a good PR, but it is similar to a simple TV advertisement- the more of it, the less credible it becomes.