Identification of Problems
Anne meets a male chauvinist named Jafar who sets the tone for their working relationship. Anne also encounters a culture that is different from hers and different cultural dimensions. She meets a male colleague that feels sorry for her for not having male children. That makes Anne expect some difficulty due to the culture difference existing between her and the people at the workplace. Further, Anne seeks an assistant to help her with the preliminary analytical work that she was doing. Despite Karim, Anne’s new assistant, being conversant with the English language, he was inexperienced for his age, thereby decreasing his efficiency as her assistant. The inexperience then brings down Karim’s confidence in taking up the responsibilities when the workload increases. While ExportJordan heavily promoted the seminar planned by Anne and Hayat, the women for whom the seminar was intended failed to show up in large numbers, denying the could be good prospects an opportunity to expose other products that could create an international appeal. Finally, Anne encounters another problem where Jafar becomes a threat to her job. Jafar allegedly made Hayat get fired and kept threatening Anne with his sayings.
Analysis and Evaluation
Diversity in the workplace would be important to make ExportJordan successful. However, most of the employees in the company, led by Jafar, do not realize the importance of heterogeneity in delivering better solutions as well as critical analysis. Anne is faced with the insensitivity from Jafar and other male employees creating a barrier and compromising her working efficiency. Jafar failed to recognize that people have diverse cultural differences that cannot be broken down. Instead of appreciating the importance of the cultural differences resulting from new employees in the organization, Jafar intimidates the employees that rise to high positions. When faced with such cultural opposition, it would be important to identify and appreciate the cultural etiquette practices and respect them (McIntire, 2014). It would also be important to advocate for the fact that the worth of an employee exceeds their age and ethnicity.
When Anne asks for assistance, Karim is assigned to be her aide. However, his inexperience takes a toll on their work. Hayat should have ensured that the interview for Anne’s assistant was thorough. Karim offers help in Anne overcoming the language barrier. The language barrier that Anne faces in the field would have made her assignment more difficult in directing the people and explaining the expectations. Had there not been a language barrier, the implementation of Anne’s strategies would have been easier. Managing the respondents in the field with no direct communication would result in poor performance. However, with the assistance of Karim, Anne was able to accomplish her field work.
Finally, identifying the ways for dealing with threatening and mean colleagues would require a consideration of several factors. Jafar threatens Anne and materializes the threat by making Hayat get fired. Anne does not seek to understand why Jafar kept threatening her with his mean sayings. Trying to understand why Jafar was mean to the female employees rising to high ranks in the company by helping the female entrepreneurs would help solve the conflict and reconcile the beliefs between Anne and Jafar (Gallo, 2014). Openly and loudly confronting Jafar, a male chauvinist, would not solve the problem. In any case, it would result in a more serious conflict that could lead Jafar to get Anne fired. Consequently, Anne and Don’s spirit of adventure and their genuine desire to help other people would be extinguished.
Recommendations
As the world continues experiencing globalization, managers must know how to handle people from different cultures for successful project implementation. Cultural differences result in Anne’s numerous barriers. First, she meets with Jafar who is a male chauvinist among other male employees in the company and who threatens to have her fired. Second, she meets with Karim who is inexperienced for his age. Third, she faces a language barrier as she performs her fieldwork project. Finally, she faces an uninterested audience of women who she is willing to help market their products internationally. I would recommend that Anne learns how her attitudes, values, communication styles, and behavior may be perceived by people such as Jafar from other cultures (McIntire, 2014). As such, she would know that her attitudes, however positive, could upset people in the organization. On the other hand, I would recommend that Jafar appreciates the cultural difference between him and Anne. Nevertheless, Jafar should have treated Anne as an individual and not as a stereotype. He should also have realized that culture does not determine an individual but instead shapes them to fit in the globalized world (Saunders, 2009).
Anne could also have avoided the meanness from Jafar by identifying the people in the organization who are allowed to make decisions. In some organizations, the people at the top are the only ones that can make decisions. However, there are some organizations that do allow the people in the lower positions to make decisions. Anne should also have identified the management style in the company to know whether it is typically feminine or masculine. As such, she would know how to make the negotiations. Assertiveness from employees to managers in case of a conflict could be appreciated in some organizations while in others, it would be perceived negatively (DIT, 2015). The disappointment that Anne and Hayat go through when women failed to show up in great numbers in the seminar could have been handled through better advertising strategies. With time, the women would appreciate the services offered by ExportJordan.
References
Gallo, A. (2014, October 16). How to Deal With a Mean Colleague. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/10/how-to-deal-with-a-mean-colleague
McIntire, M. (2014, June 3). How to Overcome Language and Cultural Barriers in the Workplace. LinkedIn. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140603143206-20499125-how-to-overcome-language-and-cultural-barriers-in-the-workplace
Ryan, T. (2016). 5 Strategies for Dealing with Diversity in the Workplace. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/5-strategies-dealing-diversity-workplace-18106.html
Saunders, P. (2009, July 24). 10 Steps for Dealing with Different Cultures. Datamation. Retrieved from http://mobile.datamation.com/career/article.php/3831671/10-Steps-for-Dealing-with-Different-Cultures.htm
