Cultural Relativism: No Right Lifestyle

In this essay, I will discuss three factors that can affect the efficiency of multicultural teams, backed by practical proof from scholarly sources and theorists like Samovar, Porter and McDaniel, 2012, Deal and Kennedy (2000-2001) and Hofstede, from an HR manager’s view. Communication, corporate culture and time are the three variables that I will critically analyze. Communication, corporate culture and time are the three variables I will be critically analyzing partnerships between companies across the nation that would trigger a communications upsurge and multicultural teams that are bound to work together.

There are two kinds of individuals leaning to either ethnocentrism or cultural relativism. Ethnocentrism relates to a specific ethnicity .

Ethnocentrism relates to a separate ethnic group which is believed to have a subculture of a greater caliber than another and is the’ right’ way of life. This is most prevalent among individuals who do not explore other cultures or experience them, remaining within their ideological norms such as colonialism. Cultural relativism, in contrast to private standards and social norms, can be described as living in a lifestyle of counterculture, with no clear’ right or incorrect’ morals.

Therefore, being a cultural relativist can be seen as important as accepting other cultures can assist us to learn and develop. Multicultural teams in business are essential . Referring to Hofstede, culture can be defined as’ the collective programming of the mind that separates the members of one community from another,’ this indicates that we as people have certain features and features that make us special to each other.

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A culturally diversified team would therefore be a group of individuals working together to achieve a fixed objective. Within the group, people may be able to talk a distinct language, have distinct behaviors, practices, beliefs, customs and standards, etc. The objective of this paper is to obtain data on the three variables for forming and managing a multicultural team to create a fresh product to the highest possible standard, using the team as efficiently as possible . Communication is defined as’ the glue of culture’ and may be difficult between a cultural team as there are language obstacles and some conditions that may be false or inappropriate, which may influence the connection between employees.

As cultural values affect our behavior and how we act, South Korea or Japan, for instance, may embrace an’ indirect communication’ from a culture that has a greater value for a quiet communication between team members. While Americans may use a more direct communication that includes some of their values, being honest, frank, and open. While the Japanese are paying more attention to the group than to the individual. Therefore, some of these problems would influence the efficiency in a team with one American working with Japanese as the American may be more concentrated on their accomplishment than the performance of the group. This could result in poor relationships between employees as they will not feel respected, which could lead to worse results than expected as there is no consistent teamwork.

Referring to their research of the problems encountered by corporate directors while managing multicultural teams, Sogancilar and Ors (2018) discovered that 10 out of 14 respondents indicated that miscommunication was the hardest obstacle they encountered. Cambridge dictionary (2019) can be described as’ the convictions and thoughts a company has and how they influence how it does business and how its staff act.’ This indicates that a company’s convictions and values are executed with how they function, how they make decisions, and within their staff. Deal and Kennedy indicate that corporate culture is constituted by the values ‘ fundamental idea and beliefs of an organization.’ These must be followed and implemented by staff in the direction.

Therefore, if the corporate culture promotes and educates its staff to become more conscious of the distinct cultures and how to adapt and learn from them when working in a multicultural group, it can help to reduce misunderstandings and efficiently work together. This will boost team performance’s likelihood of doing better. To improve cultural consciousness and enforce it in their corporate culture, many businesses use distinct methods. For instance, Coca Cola, a worldwide company operating in over 200 businesses, has seven key principles including management, enthusiasm, integrity, cooperation, diversity, quality, and accountability.They also introduce training programs to guarantee that their staff are aware of diversity and support groups from distinct backgrounds. Deal and Kennedy, though, state that executives are often more worried with structure, policies, processes, and budgets than with their corporate values.

Learning from distinct cultures can enhance innovation as the decision-making process for a team as the understanding of how to make that extra step depends on enthusiastic insight, empathy and consumer psychology. If all of the employees are from the same country, these are all hard enough to work on. For instance, their creative thinking is used by Facebook or Instagram to link individuals from around the globe. Referring to Mona Fakhari (2016) says that some trials showing multicultural teams have a reduced correlation compared to a homogeneous culture team. This may mean that people are more drawn to people who are similar to themselves.

There are two kinds of attitudes that cope differently with moment, these are polychronous, which is when individuals multitask and attempt to do more than one job at a moment. Whereas individuals with a monochronic approach will attempt to generate time slots for distinct duties in a particular order. It becomes hard when working because of distinct cultures working at a distinct time approach. Westerners use the monochronic behavior and are rigorous in keeping it, even sentences like’ one step at a moment’ reflect this. While Latin Americans use the polychronic approach of time, when it’s time to organize meetings, this can generate issues for multicultural teams, an individual with a monochronic approach may feel disorganized and irresponsible, which can lead to conflict.

It is essential to pre-discuss this in order to fix this problem and does not create an immediate judgment. If timings are discussed and agreed at the start, no misunderstanding should occur throughout the task set. Misoc (2017) investigated the impacts of cultural diversity on team performance, as well as the outcomes for finishing the assignment in the moment assigned to multicultural and monocultural communities. This indicates that both teams have been considerate of the moment, which could contradict the reality that time is a significant problem as it has been discovered that the multicultural team is doing better. However, depending on variable variables such as the size of the team or the complexity of the assignment, the study could have performed the studies to obtain more precise outcomes.

The three problems addressed in this essay show the difficulties faced by multicultural teams and how they can affect general efficiency, but there are methods that can be used by team members to prevent this, including avoiding stereotyping and taking time out to know other team members from their view. If an employee travels to another nation to work, learning about their culture, labels and customs will be useful as it will assist fit in and comprehend why individuals do what they do, alternately if an person comes from another nation, giving them a few tips may be advisable. If businesses emphasize the significance of learning about other cultures and incorporating them into their corporate culture, it will unify the team’s job. Team members will gain valuable experience and knowledge as they are exposed to a wider range of experiences that can be implemented in how the product / service of the company can be improved, ideas taken from other places and new and innovative thinking for the company. As heterogeneous teams question another more, this will create continuous improvement.