Organizational culture and Workplace Diversity

Organizational culture is a set of shared assumptions that guide behaviors in an organizational context. Organization Culture is the pattern of such collective behaviors and assumptions that are shared with new members of the organization as a manner of behaving. Thus organizational culture influences the way people, groups, and teams communicate with each other, with customers, and with stakeholders. In addition, organizational culture may define how much employees identify with an organization. Organizational culture can be considered as ‘corporate personality which consists of the values, beliefs, and norms that influence the behavior of people as members of an organization. Various factors influence the development of organizational cultures such as history of the organization, type of product, market, technology, strategy, type of employees, management style, national culture, organization's vision, values, norms, systems, symbols, language, assumptions, environment, location, beliefs, and habits.

Healthy Organizational Culture

A healthy organizational culture increases productivity, growth, efficiency, and reduces counterproductive behavior and turnover of employees.

The characteristics of a healthy organizational culture are:

a.       Acceptance and appreciation for diversity

b.      Fair treatment and respect for each employee's contribution

c.       Pride and enthusiasm of employees for the organization

d.      Equal opportunity for each employee for career development

e.      Strong communication of policies and company issues with all employees

f.        Leadership with a resilient sense of direction and vision

g.       The competitive advantage of innovation and customer service

h.      Encouragement for learning, training, and employee knowledge

Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory

Geert Hofstede developed a cultural dimensions theory as a framework for cross-cultural communication, which shows the effects of a society's culture on the values and behavior of the members of that society, and how these values relate to behavior.

Hofstede developed his original model through a worldwide survey of employee values between 1967 and 1973. The original theory proposed four dimensions of cultural values such as:

(1)   Individualism-collectivism: the degree to which people in a society are integrated into groups

(2)    (2) Uncertainty avoidance: a society's tolerance for ambiguity, in which people accept or reject an event of something unexpected, unknown, or away from the status quo.

(3)   Power distance (strength of social hierarchy): the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally

(4)   Masculinity-femininity (task-orientation versus person-orientation): Masculinity represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success.  Feminity represents a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak, and quality of life.

(5)   Long-term orientation vs. short-term orientation: Societies with a high degree of long-term orientation view solving the present challenges with a long-term vision as a necessity for development. Societies with short-term orientation honor traditions, value commitment to the traditional way of solving problems, and resist innovative methods of solving problems.

(6)   Indulgence vs. restraint: ‘Indulgence’ refers to a society that allows relatively free gratification of basic and natural human desires related to enjoying life and having fun. Restraint refers to a society that controls the gratification of needs and regulates it by means of strict social norms.

Workplace Diversity:

Workplace diversity is the term used for the workplace composed of employees with varying characteristics, such as different sex, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.

Benefits of workplace diversity:

·         Increased creativity

·         Increased problem-solving

·         Increased profits

·         Variety of different perspectives

·         Improved employee engagement

·         Reduced employee turnover

·         Improved company reputation

·         Improved hiring results