MANAGING DIVERSITY & RELIGIOUS IMPLICATIONS IN ORGANIZATIONS

Diversity is the variation of social and cultural identities among people existing together in a defined employment or market setting (Cox 2001).

Group is two or more people with common interests, objectives, and continuing interaction.

Aspects of Group Behavior:

Norms: standards that a work group uses to evaluate the behavior of its members.

Group Cohesion: “interpersonal glue” that makes members of a group stick together.

Social Loafing: failure of a group member to contribute personal time, effort, thoughts, or other to the group.

Loss of Individuality:  social process in which individual group members lose self-awareness and its accompanying sense of accountability, inhibition, and responsibility for individual behavior.

Here in Colombia, diversity has become an important issue to fulfill  global needs, to enter into global market, to support diversity in population.

Valuing differences: means recognizing and appreciating that individuals are different, that diversity is an advantage if it is valued and well managed, and that diversity is not to be simply tolerated but encouraged, supported and nurtured (Jamieson and O’Mara 1991).

Diversity can be seen as value-added because creativity increases, problem solves easily, innovation implemented, organizational flexibility; or as a barrier because less effective communication, lack of common experiences, lower level of commitment to the group and conflict can appears.

Human capital is a source of competitive advantage when employees possess different valuable skills and they are better matched to the firm’s strategy. So as more heterogeneous a team is the more superior outcomes is going to produce.

According to Slater et al. (2008), what are the actions likely to enhance organization-wide commitment to diversity? Explain which one could be most applied in the context of Colombia.

Diversity becomes a source of competitive advantage when there is a deep commitment to it. That is why is so important to make this commitment stronger. There are several ways to do so:

• Demonstrate how diversity ties directly to the organization’s business strategy.
• Managers are responsible for communicating their beliefs in diversity to all employees.
• Treat human capital as the source of competitive advantage it is.
• Emphasize in team-building and group processes.
• Reach multicultural consumer markets
• Reach multicultural suppliers
• Prepare for conflict.

I believe, here in Colombia is important to implement the pursuit of diverse suppliers. There is a diversity in ethnic groups in the country, for example the   Afro-Americans 10,6% of the population, the indies as 3,4%. Now-a-days there is an awareness of preserving and protecting this ethnic groups and a good way to do so is involving them in the supply chain of an organization. Eventually, if marketing strategies include diversity in their programs, I believe sales will increase. For example, I know a youg entrepreneur who is involving people that live in the mountain to her business as they make “arepas” and she is commercializing them and selling. And this is a value-added to her business because she can say there are 100% natural and that she is contributing to solve the social problematic of the country

RELIGION

Retrieved from: http://tiposdereligion.blogspot.com/2010/04/cristianismo.html

Is a determinant of culture, and thus it diverse from one another. Is the shared beliefs and rituals concerned with the realm of the sacred. Religion gives the status of legitimate to social arrengements and gives offical approval as promoting sense of belonging.

International business is affected by religions because as I already said, religion determines cultures. When there is a system already established, people will act according to it. Religion will tell what is good or wrong.In some countries, they live religion in an extreme way, so having business with people there encourage managers to learn about their religion and what to do in order to avoid problems caused by ignorance.

What is the dominant religion in Colombia? What are the religious implications for doing business here? Give examples.

Christianism is the most popular religion in Colombia. There are minorities as well, and Colombian constitution guarantee the freedom of beliefs but, nevertheless, this country is a really religious one, and follow sacred customs in time.

Religion beliefs will tell if a business is moral accepted or not. People are guided from their heart to make decisions.

When a project is about to be done, people pray for help, and make promises they accomplish after their favor is done. On the other hand, people are thankful to god if something results in a good way within the organization. They celebrate mass inside the organizations.

Holly week and Christmas here are holydays so commercial places may be closed during this week because managers respect  these kind of customs.

Religion as a determinant of culture will always be important in order to have a successful cross-cultural relation.

REFERENCES

1. Organizational Diversity. Sin Kit I. Class 2011-1
2. Religious Implications. Sin Kit I. Class 2011-1
3. Slater, Stanley F., Weigand, Robert A., Zweilein, Thomas J., 2008. “The business case for commitment to diversity” Business Horizons 51: 201-209
4. Thomas, David A., 2004. “Diversity as Stratefy”, Harvard Business Review, September 2004, 98-108
5. Hartman, L and Werhane, P. 2009. The global Corporation: Sustainable, Effective and Ethical Practices –a case book. Rotledge, New York. Chapter 5, p 168-181. Islamic Banking and Finance.
6. Image retrieved from: http://tiposdereligion.blogspot.com/2010/04/cristianismo.html

COMMUNICATION & VIRTUAL TEAMS

In a well globalizad World, interconnected in all senses and with a significant number of social Networks that define our activities, hobbies and likes; companies shoulds work taking advatange of these services.

A company should think on emphasizing its corporate communication since its brand creation, like in the case of Intercontinental, the company alter analyzing its brand perception and consumer feeling towards the environment that the same company provides to work with music and by delivering a clear message to companies in the World “It is a common misconception that words used to describe a brand can be directly apllied to a music brief“

A communication process involve several issues and factors like the language, data, information and richness and can have different forms like one way communication or two way communication. But shared information between people is not always verbal, thats when proxemics and other types of non verbal communications take place to delimit important facts like territorial space, and seating dynamics.

Before corporate communication involves the current factors of a common Communications like physical proximity, status, genderr, cultural Diversity but now more factors arise in the way effective and relatively cheap information tecnology have increased in the market, showing the companies new challenges but at the same time new opportunities to encourage the creation of the now know “virtual teams“

Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtIYcbzvXXY&feature=related

A virtual team sucessful depends on its capacity to exista cross time, space, and cultural differences and with the total adquisition of a unique objective to create a common framework of effective collaboration.

According to Kuruppuarachchi (2009), what benefits and problems arise as a consequence of the creation of virtual team? Identify five each. Based on this, explain how to make the transition from a more traditional team structure to the more distributed team structure?

Benefits:

1.    Improved productivity in the way the teams guarantee efficiency and commitment within the members and the activities.

2.    Reduced cost by the use of tecnologies and web based issues.

3.    Increase competitive advantage because the teams create shared value

4.    Improve customer service because of their geographical dispersion and task structuration they are able to fullfit any need of the customer wherever the customer is located.

5.    Creativity stimulation because of its level of flexibility and freedom.

Problems:

1.    Ineffective communication because of the absent of nonverbal communications factors.

2.    Lack of leisure time for team members

3.    A lot of segmentation in the team caused by big amounts of team members.

4.    More pressure based on the speed of all processes.

To go from a traditional team to a virtual one, the team should start by  generating a more dynamic environment and by incorporating differentmeans of communication in order to start moving in a more efficient way and to drop to a final process of global team networking. The change can not disrupt at first the activities of the team but facilitates it ; then to evítate problems the team can implement activities from the traditional team too like face-to-face meetings or video conferencing. To have control of all operations the virtual team should adopt too the constant monitoring and standars that doesnt necessarily limit freedom but that clear the objectives and tasks.

REFERENCES

1. Communication and Virtual teams. Sin Kit I. Class 2011-1
2. Michael Spencer. “If intercontinental were sound… what would it be?” Journal of Business Strategy. Vol 31. P 39-46
3. Kuruppuarachchi, Palitha R. 2009. “Virtual team concepts in projects: a case of study” Proyect Management Journal 40, no. 2:19-33
4. Video retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtIYcbzvXXY&feature=related

MIGRANT WORKERS, EXPATRIATE ASSIGNMENTS & OVERSEAS EXPERIENCES

Human capital is the most valuable capital an organization can have. The number of migrant workers has increased during history. These workers move from poor less developed countries to developed nations and thus labor-sending countries are not in a strong position to defend their citizens from mechanisms, standards, and conditions.

 Retrieved from: http://www.weareca.org/index.php/es/era/1960s-Present/salvadorans_2.html

Expatriate Assignments and Overseas Experiences are social phenomenon that can change or strongly influence the individual's career and the companies' performance.

Expatriate assignment: a company that operates internationally has a position available in a subsidiary abroad and the company asks its employee to go for a while. A human resource management issue. Companies select the area, prepare the expatriate workers, give them support overseas and plan their future repatriation.

Initiative: comes from the company.

Overseas experience: the person saves money, resigns from work and goes abroad to have new experiences and met different languages and cultures. People develop many valuable skills such as flexibility, a broader perspective and a critic thought

Initiative: comes from the individual.

The following video is an example of overseas experiences:

Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vqKihGp3S0

Both EA and OE, build different competences in individuals, companies and nations

In order to have a succesful experience and adaptation, a person must be able to put aside their emotional responses and try to observe the situation with an open mind and a willingness to try to understand the other country´s culture. 

Explain how easy is it for Colombian companies to employ expatriates locally? Give examples

As it is exposed in this document, migrant workers pass from developing countries to developed ones. I believed this can influence a company when choosing where to expatriate. If a company has a subsidiary here, they will prefer to hire local workers because is going to be less expensive than beginning the process of expatriate with foreigners. Here in Colombia is not that common, to have foreigners working inside the country but through history it has increased. For example, in the automobile sector, is common to have a CEO from where the company comes.

As a developing country, I think we have more expatriates working in the country in the sector of humanitarian help and Yasuko (aid worker of JICA here in Medellin) is an example of that.

On the other hand, religious workers travel the world with expatriate assignments. For example the Opus Dei expatriate their workers all over the world. Here in Colombia we have groups of foreigners working for this organization.

REFERENCES

1. Gamburd, Michele R. 2009. ADVOCATING FOR SRI LANKAN MIGRANT WORKERS. Critical Asian Studies 41, no. 1:61-8
2. Inkson, kerr et at. 1999 “Expatriate assignment versus overseas experience: contrasting models of internationl human resource development” . Journal of World Business. 34:351-368
3. Available online: http://www.opusdei.org.co/
4. Image retrieved from: http://www.weareca.org/index.php/es/era/1960s-Present/salvadorans_2.html
5. Video retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vqKihGp3S0

THE ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IN MERGING PROCESSE

“It was a successful adquisition…because it achieved more synergies than had originally been forecast..It achieved them faster than we had forecast..it went further and faster than we had forecast…It went further and faster than we promised the market and the shareholders“ Nick Starrif talking about BP and Amoco integration.

In order to achieve that succesful a firm have to be able to create value by reconcile strategic interdepence and cohesion between both firms objectives and interests. This can be possible just if the company adjust cultural gaps.

Cultural Modifications

1. Support for a global view of business.

2. Reinforcement of ethical behavior.

3. Empowerment of employees to excel in product and service quality.

By a process of compromising, the capabilities are transferred from one company to another, with strategies to encourage integration within the process and between employees, to facilitate units of work; bringing together different values and beliefs.

Integration variables:

1.    The motive of the adquisition (reasons)

2.    The process of implementation (the way)

The acculturation process:

Describes the cultural changes resulting from the interaction of one organisational cultulture with another, can be applicated when a firm decides to work by cultural differentiation or to move organisational forces to integration.

Cases:

1.    Deutsche Bank and Bankers Trust: their key aspecto to be sucessful was creating synergies by undertaking a cultural assesment exercise in order to minimize cultural clashes; the process was based on better communication for employess to believe in the validity of the adquisition.

2.    British Petroleum and Amoco: they created a new corporate culture for the future organisation, with clear structure and boundaries about objectives and expected performance, with shared values.

3.    Volvo and Ford: each company kept working by a product differentiation in two major divisions and integration teams were created to find synergies in specific areas within the company.

According to the case studies, (in class and in textbook), what are the practical steps to minimize the feelings of uncertainty normally expected by employees, and also to facilitate the learning process to occur between the two groups of people in their process of cultural and behavioral integration?

I think the first step should be creating trust, within the group of employees of both companies, but moreover in the project both companies are following. In second step employees should be communicate and involved in the goals and objective of the process. In a third step I would situate the creation of shared values and believes.

All the steps should be manage at the same time of a coordination and a previous study of both companies in order to have a real integration and no a rupture of strategies like in the case of Mercedez and Chrysler. Managers should make accurate decisions before involved all the company in the integration process.

Retrieved from: http://www.sobelmedia.com/2008/12/25/2008s-top-interactive-mergers-and-acquisitions/

REFERENCES:

1. The Role of Organizational Culture in Merging Processes. Sin Kit I. Class 2011-1
2. Alzira Salama, Wayne Holland, Gerald Vinten, 2003. “Challenges and ooportunities in mergers and acquisitions: three international case studies –Deutsche Bank-Bankers Trust; British Petroleum-Amoco; Ford-Volvo
3. Image retrieved from: http://www.sobelmedia.com/2008/12/25/2008s-top-interactive-mergers-and-acquisitions/

ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING, MANAGING CHANGE & MANAGING CONFLICT

“Knowledge is power”- Francis Bacon

To meet the challenges posed by this rapidly changing environment, the organization must become more flexible, more responsive and more willing to change and adapt.

Organizations must be committed to learn so it can transform itself. This knowledge can be created in any level of the organization, that’s why managers encourage employees to express themselves.

Learning organization: living organism in a continuous process of transformation.

This organizational learning occurs by individual learning, organizations would value people who are willing to explore and experiment with new ideas, encourage risk taking and support the pursuit of knowledge.

Knowledge creation: “Takes place when tacit knowledge is converted into explicit knowledge, disseminated throughout the organization and results in innovation in the form of a new product, services or systems” (Nonaka, 1991)

Goals setting is crucial in the process of learning:

-       Process of establishing desired results that guide and direct behavior.

-       Increases work motivation and task performance.

-       Improve the accuracy and validity of performance evaluation.

Change: the coping process of moving from the present state to a desired state that individuals, groups, organizations undertake in response to dynamic internal and external factors that alter current realities (Kavita Singh, 2009).

• Planned: result from deliberated decision
• Unplanned: came from nowhere

Types of Change:

• Incremental change: small scope as making small improvements.
• Strategic change: larger scale, as organizational restructuring.
• Transformational change: the move to a radically different, and unknown, future state.

Changes threatens the status quo by creating new problems, situations ambiguity and uncertainty and this might lead to conflict.

MODEL OF KURT LEWIN (1947)

Retrieved from: Managing Change. Sin Kit I. Class 2011-1

UBUNTU: Pay attention to local cultures, understand them and engage with them.

This is an advertisement campaign really successful in Colombia and it implements what Ubuntu is about.

Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZq8Pg40dKo

CONFLICT

Emotional conflict is inevitable in multinational corporations so it may be useful to train members to expect this. There might be no effective solution but in conflict management, is important to have “context sensitive” and analyze it from its nature and so cease tensions in cross-cultural interactions.

According to Kavita Singh, what is the relationship between the learning organization and organizational culture?

Kavita’s research paper results in several conclusions about the link between organizational learning and organizational culture. It is resume as the need of organizations of a culture that supports and facilitates learning. This culture requires:

• Openness: because it can help organizations to evolve into learning ones.
• Proactivity: taking initiative. A culture that emphasizes on proaction encourages continuous learning.
• Experimentation: the willingness to innovate and to take the lead from competitiors if required. 

When culture develops this 3 dimensions, individual learning will be more suitable for organizational learning.

Think of a change you would like to make in your life. Using Lewin’s force field analysis for that change. How will you overcome the forces for the status quo? How will you make sure to “refreeze” following the change?

I used to read. I loved to read. I want to read again. This is the change I need.

Force to change: many books waiting to be read.

Forces for status quo: lack of time, too much time online in social networks.

UNFREZZING: To overcome these forces I would need to be aware of the damage they are doing to accomplish my desire of changing.

 MOVING: I will find the appropriate time for reading and I will learn to manage it properly. I will set an agenda and follow it.

REFREEZING: I will implement this agenda as a routine, and involve the reading into my life like it was before. This will make me happier and I will try not to lost the habitude again.

REFERENCES

1. Organizational Learning. Sin Kit I. Class 2011-1
2. Singh. Kavita. 2010. “An Analysis of Relationship Between the Learning Organization and Orgaizational culture in Indian Business Organizations”. Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies. Vol 1. 142-165
3. Mangaliso. Mzamo. 2003. Building competitive advantage from Ubuntu. In Thomas, David Clinton, editor, Readings and cases in International Management: A cross-cultural perspective.
4. Von Glinow, Mary Ann, Debra L. Shapiro, and Jeanne M Brett. 2004. CAN WE TALK, AND SHOULD WE? MANAGING EMOTIONAL CONFLICT IN MULTICULTURAL TEAMS. Academy of Management Review 29 n.4: 578-592
5. Video retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZq8Pg40dKo

LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT STYLES

To manage is “to bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of or responsibility for, to conduct.”

To lead is “influencing, guiding in direction, course, action, opinion”. is an everyday way of acting and thinking that has little to do with a title or formal position in an organization.

Main differences:

Retrieved from: Leadership and Management. Sin Kit I. Class 2011-01

They are different but they complement each other.

Effective leadership + good management = healthy organizations

Behavioral Theories of Managers

• Authoritarian: retains as much power and decision making authority as possible. No consensus.
• Consultative: talks to everyone involved in or affected by a task to get their views and ideas.
• Democratic: participative style, keep employees involve in decision making.
• Laissez faire: provides little or no direction and gives employees as much freedom as possible.

Type of Leaders:

• Transformational Leaders: inspire followers to transcend their selfinterests. Intellectual stimulus.
• Charismatic Leaders: uses  personal abilities and talents in order to have profound effects on followers.
• Authentic Leader: guided by explicit values that emphasize collective interests.

MANAGEMENT STYLES

Cross-national differences are important when talking about management. Globalization makes us think about strategies that support a competitive advantage in an international level. There are two categories:

1. Convergence: converging to a developed country model or strategic business behavior would become similar. Problem: which model is imitated?
2. Divergence: set of institutions and styles that set internally. They assert that national culture will always be the dominant force. Problem: pressure from domestic and external environment.

Japanese management cares about releationshios between management levels, group loyalty, consensus (so the Germans do), information exchange and corporate values. This follows by a video of Japanese culture:

Retrieved from:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXLrU2lB8sE

The Korean management is different. The lifetime employment practice is flexible, top management tends to be authoritarian and family business still being strong. They don’t have “groupism” sense.

National management system is influenced by two items:

•  National culture: collective programming of the mind acquired by growing up in a particular territory. 
• Level of development: determine by the size of the firm and the degree of internationalization.

-       Strong forces for improving managerial operations

-       Challenges from global competitors

Firms could also imitate practices of other successful organizations that have similar needs and procedures.

Do you (or would you want to) work in an autocratic, democratic, or consultative work environment? What might be the advantages and disadvantages of each?

I would prefer to work in a consultative environment because I believe is important, as an employee, to know what is happening around me. This shows confidence and good relationships between managers and employees. An authoritarian model of behavior would diminish responsibilities, and this can be an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time. When you have less responsibilities, you will be less rewarded but at the same time you will be carrying less risk. And by working within this kind of environment, you will not be able to express yourself, even for expressing acceptance.

On the other hand, talking about democratic environment, I believe making that much of consensus will cost money and time for the business. Making a decision all employees together will take hundreds of information distributed so they majority can take the appropriate decision. In some cases, as an employee, is better to give power to a board of managers so they can decide what is better for all the organization.

REFERENCES

1. Leadership and Management styles. Sin Kit I. Class 2011-1
2. Lee, Jangho, Thomas W. Roehl & Soonkyoo Cho. 2000. What Makes Management Style Similar and Distinct Across Borders?. Growth, Experience and Culture in Korean and Japanese Firms. 631-52.
3. Gupta, V , Wang, J (2003) Globalization and Convergence-Divergence Debate: Strategic Perspectives for Emerging Markets. Journal of business and economics research. Volumen 1, number 2
4. Video, Japanese culture. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXLrU2lB8sE