Менеджмент та підприємництво: тренди розвитку (Mar 2018)
Managing cultural diversity as challenge of organizational culture in multinational business environment
Abstract
Purpose. Global intellectualization of the economy actualizes the urgency to work out a new model of the human resources development and use. The study is aimed at analyzing the essence and purpose of organizational culture as a factor of optimizing cross-cultural relations in multinational business context. The specific paper objectives are: to review the core approaches to the conceptualization of organizational culture; to analyze the concepts of cross-cultural management and cognitive management from the point of view of their common and specific attributes; to outline the possible variations in local operating practices to improve business performance of multinational corporations. Design/methodology/approach. The research can be defined as executing an investigation to acquire an additional knowledge or idea to add to an existing understanding and knowledge as far as the problem of managing cultural diversity in multinational business context is concerned. The process for this study has involved a combination of research, synthesis and analysis. Findings. The subject matter of this paper is cultural diversity in multinational business context. The study is conducted to explore how companies manage workforce diversity and its consequences to the company’s efficiency as well as to examine how companies deal with challenges that come with employees from diverse cultural backgrounds. Cultural diversity refers to most problematic aspects of multinational companies operating. Successful adaptation managing can result not only in gaining congruence in the various cultures where they operate. Such business practice is probable to convert cultural diversity itself into a source of advantage. Managing adaptation implies ensuring compliance with cultural and other types of inconsistency. Research limitations/implications. Managers in today’s multicultural global business community frequently encounter cultural differences, which can impede the successful completion of organizational goals. The internationalization of socio-economic processes puts forward the task not only to correctly identify differences in the national cultures, but also to adequately use them to overcome intercultural barriers while developing relations with foreign partners. Optimizing cross-cultural relations becomes essential to the organization’s functioning and is the main task of cross-cultural management. Originality/value. Ensuring compliance with cultural inconsistency in global business context is closely related to defining ways of optimizing needs for such variations and their costs. The solution of the task may entail two approaches. One of it refers to business practice on territories with more similar cultures. Another can be implemented through promoting strong organizational culture. In case it is really powerful it is able to cultivate staff and customers and thus softening national cultural discrepancy.
