II. Exploring Diversity
SUMMARY
Here we learned and understood that everybody are different in several ways and also knew how those differences affects individuals’ values, opportunities and perceptions of self and others at work and at society. Also we saw important concepts about this topic as race, discrimination and racism.
We went deeper with the concept of racism, looking at important issues as the personal, the cultutal and the institutional racism.
To understand better the diversity we saw the theories underpinning of diversity, and also we learned how to understand the multicultural diversity in every of it issues.
QUESTION
Why there are differences and conflicts, between people of different cultures in workplace in some organizations? ¿Is this problem related with the cultural diversity?
First we should know there are a lot of differences and low tolerance for people from other cultures in actual society, because everybody feels afraid of the unknown issues, that’s why in this cases the lack of information and education about other cultures or behaviors make people reject those other person who are different.
Even thought there are some investigations and research that shows how these differences are taken between different culture people, especially in workplace. E.T. Hall developed the concept that there are three important concepts about cultural differences. These are time, context, and space. He also established that is important to understand the differences between monochronic time and polychronic, because time is essential to success, especially in workplace.
Is important to understand monochronic time is characterized as linear, tangible, and divisible. In monochronic time, events are scheduled one item at a time and this schedule takes precedence over interpersonal relationships. Monochronic time focuses on the time is money approach and is couched in terms such as time spent, time wasted, time lost and so on.
Otherwise polychronic time is characterized by the concurrent happening of many things and by a great involvement with people and is more focused on completing human transactions than it is on the holding on of schedules.
That’s why we saw that those cultures that are monochronic do one thing at a time and concentrate on the job at hand, and take commitments seriously. They are more likely to value promptness and are accustomed to short- term relationships. And in the other hand polychronic cultures focus on doing many things at a time, are more distractible and are likely to base their promptness on the strength of a relationship, so keeping strangers waiting is far more acceptable than family.
The other issues that Hall exposed were the high and low context, it refers to the amount of information that a person can manage. This can vary from a high context culture where background information is implicit to low context culture where much of the background information must be made explicit in an interaction. In consequence people from a high context cultures often send more information implicitly, have a wider "network," and thus tend to stay well informed on many subjects. The people from low context cultures usually verbalize much more background information, and tend not to be well informed on subjects outside of their own interests.
Here we can understand why there are differences in work, because not everybody has the information of this, and in some cases this causes serious problem at work, some of them unsolved ones. We should understand that in every place there are a lot of different attitudes and behaviors in people, some of those are characteristics of their cultures and knowing those differences life in work can be easily and peacefully if we understand the cultural diversity.
- Hall, E.T. (1990), Understanding cultural differences, Intercultural Press, Yarmouth, ME
- Hall, E.T. (1985), Hidden Differences: Studies in International Communication, Gruner & Jahr, Hamburg
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