Corporate culture and workforce diversity


The corporate culture is understood in different layers as explained by Schein (2004), which includes artefacts, values and beliefs. Culture is the invisible weapon for success which influences performance through motivation and employee engagement (Business Today, 2015). As culture is moulded through people's behaviours and thinking, it is precise to say that the diversity of the organizational workforce affects the culture at a higher level. One can look at this as the link between the culture of the staff and the culture of the workplace.

As the business context has become more globalized and connected, professionals and experts see workforce diversity as a key to success (CIPD, 2005). Workforce diversity is defined as, the demographical, psychological and organizational differences of people within a company or a function (Ospina, 2001). Simply, that brings up the concept that people within an organization, act and think differently from one another. Therefore it has become a huge challenge for leaders to manage different types of people within an organization effectively to achieve shared goals (Edewor and Aluko, 2007).

Regardless of the management's plan, the corporate culture usually gets affected by the cultural characteristics of the staff and leaders should be able to mould them carefully through proper policies and procedures (Kreitner and Kinicki, 2001). Also on the other hand, in order to incorporate effective diversity into the organizational culture, the employees need to know about the restrictions and limitations. To form a  culture compatible with that diversification leaders need to be more involved and reachable as it has been done in companies such as Coca-Cola and Ford (Sezerel and Hakan, 2017).

Pharmaz India can be taken as an example to showcase the challenges of workforce diversity and cultural values. 

As a subsidiary of a multinational company headquartered in Denmark, the Indian Pharmaz was having trouble aligning the corporate values such as empowerment, equal opportunities and openness as the Indian workforce culture is different from the headquarters. The Indian workforce seemed to require more authoritarian management style when the headquarters wanted the management to be more delegation oriented.  However with proper involvement and effective support from the headquarters and the top management's shift in thinking has helped the subsidiary to align, develop and balance the expected culture (Dowling et al, 2013). It clearly shows that to harmonize the work patterns across global networks, cultural involvement is highly required.  

To understand how to deal with the organizational culture and diversity, one can refer to Dennison's organizational culture model (Denison, 2004). This model is based on factors such as external adaptation, internal integration, flexibility and stability (Yahyagil, 2004). This model addresses and assesses four different cultural dimensions/strengths such as involvement, consistence, adaptation, and mission which helps to create different cultural contexts within an organization (Denison, 2004).

 


Figure 1 – Denison’s Culture Model of Diversity

Source – Wahyuningsih et al (2019)

 

According to that model, leaders should be clear of the following factors (Kokina and Ostrovska, 2013). 

  1. Whether the workforce knows where they are headed to through defined goals and strategies
  2. Whether the company is keeping up with the changing requirements
  3. Whether the organization is empowering the workforce to work as teams and to develop the individual capabilities 
  4. Whether the company owns a centralized value-based system. 

Based on the understanding, leaders should try to develop ways to tackle and manage diversity in effectively. The role of an effective culture is to minimize that fear among the management of being disrupted due to the multi-cultural factor (Edewor and Aluko, 2007).  Because certain employees tend to leave organizations due to these differences even though it has both positive and negative impacts on the organizational performances (Chitra and Mohan, 2017).

 

 

Business Today. (2015). Creating the right culture is the key to success. February Issue.

Chitra. K N., Mohan, C. (2017). ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON WORKPLACE DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION. International Journal of Civil Engineering and Technology. 8(8). [Online] Available at: http://http://www.iaeme.com/ijciet/issues.asp?JType=IJCIET&VType=8&IType=8

CIPD (2005). Managing diversity: Linking theory and practice to business performance.

Dowling, P J., Festing, M., Engle, A D., (2013). International Human Resource Management. (6th Ed). Cengage Learning EMEA.

Edewor, P.A., Aluko, Y.A. (2007). Diversity  management, challenges and opportunities in multicultural organisations. The International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations, 6(6)

Kokina, I., Ostrovska, I., (2013). THE ANALYSIS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE WITH THE DENISON MODEL. European Scientific Journal. [Online]  Available at: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/236405832.pdf

Kreitner, R., Kinicki, A., (2001), Organizational Behaviour. (5th Ed), New York: McGraw-Hill.

Ospina. S (2001). Managing Diversity in Civil Service: A Conceptual Framework for Public Organizations. UN Expert Group Meeting on Managing Diversity in the Civil Service. [Online] Available at: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan000716~1.pdf

Schein, E.H.(2004) Organizational Culture and Leadership, (3rd Ed.), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Sezerel, Hakan. (2017). The effects of the organizational culture on diversity management perceptions in hospitality industry. Journal of Human Resource Management. 19

Wahyuningsih, S., Sudiro, A.,Troena, E., Irawanto, D. (2019). Analysis of organizational culture with Denison’s model approach for international business competitiveness. Problems and Perspectives in Management. [Online] Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331461953_Analysis_of_organizational_culture_with_denison's_model_approach_for_international_business_competitiveness

 

Comments

  1. Malithra YoshanDecember 5, 2020 at 3:04 AM

    Adding more to your blog, The Coca-Cola Company recently ranked 50 as the best company for diversity, and in the top 10, for commitment to gender equality. Moye Jay wrote on the official website of the Coca-Cola Company about how Coca-Cola is creating a Culture of Diversity and Inclusion.
    The Coca-Cola Company (2019) has addressed 4 strategies in dealing with its diversity in the following ways (Narima et al. 2019):
    • Create an inclusive environment by engaging diverse talent and influencing recruitment, development, advancement, and retention
    • Articulate our diversity and Inclusion progress through proactive communications
    • Regulate manage workplace equality, fairness, and compliance
    • Evaluate create and update a systematic set of tools and resources

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rumesh De MelDecember 5, 2020 at 10:05 PM

    According to the Saxena 2014, organizations that can employ quality and competitive workforce regardless of their age, attitude, language, gender, religion, caste will be compete in present market.

    ReplyDelete
  3. KELUM PERERADecember 6, 2020 at 12:10 AM

    Organizational culture is defined as a set of beliefs, values, and assumptions that are shared by members of an organization and the Culture influences employee attitudes and that those attitudes, in turn, impact organizational effectiveness (Frazier, et al., 2004)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Eranga SemageDecember 6, 2020 at 3:19 AM

    In 2013, survey done by the Talent Innovation Center, a think tank, found that 48% of U.S. companies with more diversity at senior management level improved their market share the previous year, while only 33% companies with less diverse management reported similar growth (Clarke, 2020).

    ReplyDelete
  5. Madhura AnurangaDecember 7, 2020 at 3:30 AM

    As the workforce grows more diverse, tensions over cultural issues are bound to exacerbate. The attendant cultural conflicts can be a drain on the energy of the people involved. Organizations now recognize the impact of diversity on performance and profitability as was predicted by the Hudson Institute’s study “Workforce 2000: Work and Workers for the 21st Century. Diversity brings with it advantages or opportunities as well as disadvantages and challenges (Schummer, 2009).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanuja GunathilakeDecember 16, 2020 at 10:34 PM

    The diversity of an organization can generally be defined by the recognition, understanding, and acceptance of individual differences regardless of their race, gender, age, class, ethnicity, physical ability, race, or spiritual training. (Dike,P.2013)

    ReplyDelete

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