Cultural diversity is an expression of different behaviors and meaning. People differ in their view of life as informed by these differences. Individuals may vary in their religion, political views, age, sex, and educational background (Berry and Sam 5). All these aspects intertwine to bring about dissimilarities in their opinions, preferences, and understanding. A person’s culture determines the way he or she behaves in areas such as communication, leadership, values and comprehension of facts. People all over the world work together in unshared culture, but must coexist harmoniously to achieve a specific goal. This command respect, understanding, appreciation and the highest degree of embracing these different cultures for pleasant interactions in the workplace.
Societies who are rigid about their cultures create a harsh working background in the workplace. It has been a phenomenon that people working in foreign nations are never regarded with respect due to their cultural background. It is so sad that these happen, yet there are potentialities and benefits that these companies would achieve from these diversities. Unequivocally, cultural diversity is a reality in every working environment, and every person, regardless of his or her position in the firm must strive to respect other cultures for a peaceful working relationship.
A Chinese working with different members of the team from the Italian and American backgrounds would experience differences in language, the type of foods, tastes and preferences about particular matters. For example, the Chinese culture centers around, music, ceramics, architecture, material arts, thinking and worship. All these determine how they reason in regards to nature values, religious values as well as language values. These would contrast, other cultures, for example the Italians who express themselves using the Italian language. In a common working place, language would be the most challenging conflict, since it portrays the ways people reason and express opinions in an organization. In this datum, difference in cultural background of the people working as a team would be curtailed, most so if prejudice controls the relationship (Pieterse et al, 788).
Many people attach much value to their own cultures, giving little meaning to other cultures. Others in the line of interactions consider some behavior awkward while respond to them with disrespect, an aspect that can create a barrier in the pursuit of the team’s success. It is therefore important for every member of the team to exercise discipline to other people’s cultures, esteem them, and embrace them as they are. This will be the surest way to capture good relations, love and accord in the race of achieving the goals of the team. The group must interact across the eight behaviors scale, which come with a great deal of differences, but the team has the capital obligation to work together for the betterment t of their course. The behavior scale is realized in areas of communication, evaluation, leadership, decision-making, persuasion, trust, scheduling and disagreements in the following ways (Youjae, and Gong 1281).
Communication
At this scale, the degree of how cultures give preference to low or high context communication is apparent. For instance, low content cultures like the Americans are precise, simple and explicitly clear. They attach meanings to their interpretations at the face value, with the highest regard and give much emphasis and repletion for good understanding. On the other hand, the Chinese demonstrate high context value where the language appears more complex and must fall within the dominant lines of expression. This context gives much weight to interpretation, and does very little to write. The disparity of the two can lead to conflicts in the standpoint of communication. If such a scenario is ostensible, the team members should be wiser to establish an agreement on the best way of creating universality (Youjae, and Gong 1281). Even though Chinese use the Chinese language as the tool of interaction, they can learn the dominant world language of English to create the universality between Italians and the American languages.
Evaluation
On this scale, values and reasons are put to test and measures how people respond to criticism in order to come up with the best way to go. However, how people understand and go about evaluating differ in cultures. For example, the Americans have the highest context evaluation criterion, which is precise and gives negative feedback. On the other hand, Chinese exhibit low context value and outlay indirect negative feedback. In this dictum, the Chinese preference of indirect feedback would feel offended if fixed with the negative direct feedback from the American line. Therefore, when giving feedbacks, every culture needs to understand the grid lines of difference and use the moderate way of giving criticism (Youjae & Gong 1280).
Persuasion
This scale gauges the measure of tastes and preference in principles of arguments, expressed as “deductive versus inductive reasoning.” An Italian would get it best to use the general universal principles before he or she metes out his or her view. An American for that matter would prefer fact based reasoning where facts must present in an outright scope that leaves no room for any kind of doubt. In fact, in the standpoint of the American, nothing that does not conform to empirical justification can be accepted. This would be a great controversy if the agreement cannot respect each other’s view of facts, therefore, the team must look meticulously at the best way of accepting what to go with as the concerted fact (Youjae, and Gong 1283).
Leadership
This scale tames how the authority commands respect from the junior staffs. The Chinese looks power in the spectrum of hierarchy that is from the senior most people in the lower in that rank, and the distribution with respect to these hierarchies. Even though Italians and Americans maintains the hierarchical view of power, the Chinese view is so strict and rigid. Therefore, a Chinese leader will demand more respect from the people working under his or her order, and this would lead to conflict to the other members who would see it as subordination and dictatorship. It is imperative that the leader understands how to dispense delegations without being rigid and strict, as this would make the working environment unbearable to the people (Youjae & Gong 1283).
Decision
Decisions take form in different cultures depending on the individual understanding of the flow of command (Berry & Sam 15). The Americans would favor that every decision the leader has in mind must be shared for a common consensus, while the Chinese leader would be an absolute decision maker who decides matters solely without engaging the group members. Using the Chinese way can be is so domineering to then American, and would subject the team members to despotic rule. In this datum, the leader must understand his or her own subjects and take heed of their feelings before reaching a decision.
Trust
In this scale, people offer trust independently, for instance, some trust with their brains while others from their hearts. The American trust is task-based, which gives a trust on performance. An individual is only trusted if he or she completes a task the most robust way. On the other hand, other cultures are related-based, meaning they trust people premised on the way a person gives demonstration that he or she is good to be with. In this case, someone might not be good at relating to others, but performs better in everything he or she is mandated to do. Another person can be good to be with but performs meagerly. This calls for a dynamic stand to issue trust, which considers all the feelings, while avoiding the extraneous concern on one end only (Pieterse et al, 789).
Disagreement
On this scale, the way of looking at disagreements takes toll in different milieus, for example, Americans believe that disagreements are beneficial in the work environment, since people disagree to agree to perform better. On other cultures, disagreements are due to lack of good performance, poor relationship among others. In this respect, people in a working team must look into various ways of handling disagreements amicably that leaves the team in a stronger bond of relationship (Pieterse et al, 787).
Scheduling
This demonstrates how the business programs run itself. In Italy, schedules are just suggestions that can work or fail to work, while in America, it is the guiding attachment in the way things must be done. Consequently, when the schedules are drawn, the group should consider all the viewpoints and make emphasis on the binding principle that lead to the set objectives (Pieterse et al, 788).
The results from this cultural profile demonstrates that people differ in other respects, for example American view schedules as the backbone guide of the programs while, the Italian view looks at it as a suggestion. In another stance, people make a horizon point in other areas, for example, Americans and Chines view leadership in a hierarchical manner. Additionally, some cultures are so strict in what they regard important, and give meagre meaning in other respects. Therefore, it is better for the people living together to strive to understand each other to coexist in unity.
Works Cited
Berry, John W., and David L. Sam. "Accommodating cultural diversity and achieving
equity." European Psychologist (2013).
Pieterse, Anne Nederveen, Daan Van Knippenberg, and Dirk Van Dierendonck. "Cultural
diversity and team performance: The role of team member goal orientation." Academy of Management Journal 56.3 (2013): 782-804.
Yi, Youjae, and Taeshik Gong. "Customer value co-creation behavior: Scale development
and validation." Journal of Business Research 66.9 (2013): 1279-1284.
