subject: Cultural Diversity at Work by:Thong Kheng Lee [print this page] Cultural diversity is nothing newCultural diversity is nothing new. Cultural diversity includes differences in national origin, race, ethical, language and religion.
Managing or working with people from various cultures and subcultures groups can be both interesting and stimulating. However, it can also be stressful, confusing and frustrating when we do not understand what they are trying to communicate.
Effective communication between people of different culture is one of the key factors to any organization success. When individuals from different cultures do not understand each other, it blames it on the others.
To communicate effective with persons who are culturally different from ourselves, we need to learn not only about other cultures but also our own.
Cultural understanding may minimise the impact of culture shock, and maximise intercultural experiences, as well as increase professional development and organisation effectives.
Cultural sensitivity also teaches us that culture and behaviour are relative, and that we should be more tentative, and less absolute in human interactions.
In today highly complex and competitive business environment managing diversity at work become more important if business organization want to be successful.
Organizations who fail to realise the important of cultural diversity at work will paid for heavy prices, especially for organization that expatriates had been sent on foreign assignments. As studies had shown that between 16 to 40% of expatriates return before they are supposed to be due to poor performance or inability to effectively adjust to the new work place due to cultural diversity.
About the author
T.K. Lee has strong interest in the studies of communication, especially in cross cultural communication at cultural diversity work place. In his final year thesis he had studied on the topics on The Importance of Understanding Intercultural Communication in the Australia's & Singapore's Construction Industry. Lee and his then thesis supervisor Martin Loosemore from the Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney had also published a jointed Journal Title: Communication problems with ethnic minorities in the construction industry in International Journal of Project Management 20(2002) 517-524. This and some of his articles on cross cultural communication can be viewed on his website http://www.createmillionfromhome.com
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