cultural implications in the workplace
Interpersonal conflict in the workplace can often result from cultural differences. The fundamental reasons for the conflict relate to the impact that these differences have on individual understanding of meaning in the social interactions. Cultural differences may include distinctions in race, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, gender, religion, and physical disability.
Each individual’s communication is influenced by the surrounding culture: our interpretation of symbols, our use of non-verbal language, chronemics, and proxemics, are determined by the cultural context. Most relationships we chose are with those who have a high degree of cultural homogeneity (Canfield). In the workplace, however, we are often in peer and supervisory relationships we don’t choose, and therefore we encounter a high degree of differentiation. Our choices, then are often about with whom we will work productively as informational peers and as collegial peers (Sias, Krone and Jablin).
These differences are both perceived and real. Perceived differences are often presumed because of our tendency to think about cultures collectively. As Gudykunst (1991) points out, when speaking to a group, we must often assume that everyone within the group is the same, but when communicating with individuals, this perspective is inadequate.
Both real and perceived differences are interpreted in light of our personal contexts. (Canfield) We often categorize people based upon physical appearance, and judge unusual appearance features as negative (Gudykinst, 1991). Other personal contexts through which we view others will include religious values, personal history, and even corporate cultural values and beliefs.
The recent diversity emphasis in many corporations focuses on diversity in hiring. In my employment, I have encountered aggressive diversity hiring discussion, but ineffective implementation. A more diverse workforce took several years to accomplish due to several factors: the intentionality of the efforts, the corporate culture, and the absence of diversity training with regard to effective cross-cultural communication.
The hiring program was not intentional in that initial efforts were limited to an encouragement to “look more closely at diversity candidates” in hope of finding qualified minority job seekers. Later, that problem was rectified by searching for candidates in databases that contained primarily or exclusively minority applicants. The corporate culture itself slowed progress in that a high value on promoting from within perpetuated the lack of diversity. Without training in cross-cultural communication, effective diversity hiring remained a half-hearted effort, and individuals remained unable to relate to each other as individuals without excessive application of cultural contexts, myths and preconceptions. A transformation of the workplace requires awareness, intent, and motivation.
The single, most effective change would have been to include cultural awareness in team building exercises. Often HR and managers perceive the emphasis on culture to be counter productive to achieving effective cross-cultural relationships. However, Gudykinst suggests that understanding cultural differences can help one appreciate individual similarities (Gudykunst, 1991).
Sias, Krone, and Jablin (in Knapp & Daly, 2002) suggest that workplace relationships are influenced and affected by the ecological systems, which include the microsystem (a worker and his or her various relationships with other individuals, i.e. co-workers, supervisor), the mesosystem (the interrelations among Microsystems), the macrosystem (impinges upon relationship in major divisions of an organization), and the exosystem (cultural belief system, forms of knowledge, social and technological and political systems within other subsystems). Those individuals involved in equivalent status relationships, or peer relationships, in the workplace in general, do not choose their coworkers (Knapp & Daly, 2002).
Works CIted
Canfield, A., Body, Identity, and Interaction: Interpreting Nonverbal Communication. Accessed April 29, 2004 at http://canfield.etext.net/Chapter6.htm.
Gudykunst, W. (1991) Understanding Diversity. In Bridging Differences: Effective Intergroup Communication, pp. 42-59.
Knapp, M. L., & Daly, J. A., (Eds.). (2002). Handbook of interpersonal communication (3rd ed.).
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