Communication Challenges a Leader would Expect about Cultural Diversity in Australia

Discuss about the Leadership and Cross Cultural Analysis of Australian Organizations.

The match of globalization and internalization is growing each day. Presently, the successful business entities must work across cultures. Therefore, leaders have to, listen to the people’s voice, and understand what the voices may be telling them. Globalization has given birth to the multi-cultural organization where employees from more than one country are working together. Companies are finding multicultural employee engagement as lucrative but managing a multinational organization is tougher than a locally based company is.   Human resources in this organization are required to perform at all operational levels in the entity both locally and internationally. In such situation, the risk of cultural differences is inevitable.

In countries such as Australia, cultural diversity is a valuable asset to the Australian industries as pointed out by Shwalb, Shwalb, & Lamb (2013). Therefore, it is essential for Australian business to acknowledge the economic and social contribution of a culturally diverse workforce. The Australian industries and organizations should take advantage of the cultural diversity so as to effectively improve the level of competitiveness in customer service. The aim of this paper is to identify and critically analyse communication strategies a leader should counter inherent to cultural diversity in Australia. Also, the paper will critically examine how leaders can address ethical issues inherent to Australian Multinational Companies (MNCs). The paper will then conclude with a critical analysis of an optimal leadership mix that should be aligned with multicultural workplaces in Australia organizations.

Bochner (2013) assert that, communication is a key factor towards the success of an organization. In addition, effective communication in multi-cultural Australian organizations faces a myriad of challenges. Overcoming communication barriers in organizations is an essential aspect. Communication is more than trading word; it incorporates emotions and people intentions. Leaders in Australian entities have to be taken through proper training   interventions such as the program to build listening, writing, and conversational skill (Chhokaret al.2013). Additionally, leaders should make sure that they learn verbal and nonverbal communication and negotiation skills. Leaders in Australian organizations have a challenge in acknowledging and celebrating cultural differences, ethnicity, faith, and language among the workforce. Therefore, leaders are likely to face communication hurdles when managing cross-cultural differences as denoted below.

This communication barrier was brought forward by Edward Hall, a cross-cultural researcher and an anthropologist. He studied the cross-cultural aspects of the world, and thus came up with a set of behaviours known as the “high” and “low “context communication processes. Communication using “high” and “low” means relates to the background and the nature of events happening. “Low” and “high” context communication processes are one critical theory in cross-cultural researchers (Greenfield & Cocking, 2014). These principles apply to multinational institutions in Australia. High-context communication can be very sensitive when a manager is dealing with human resources.  In high-context communication, information cannot be efficiently transmitted as the managers encounter human resources that communicate more implicitly. Therefore, the intended message is heavily interpreted basing on the overall situation and may lead to the information being considered as ambiguous.  On the other hand, low context communication culture asserts that the communication culture tends to be individualized and fragmented.  In Australia, some human resources prefer individualized communication. In this communication channel, the content of the messages is clearly spelled out. Significantly, the message is transmitted directly and clearly to the receiver. Communication is direct, dramatic, open and based on real intentions.  Although this communication channel seems to be open phased, the; leaders may fail to get the comprehensive details regarding the subject matter. When leaders in Australian industries are communicating with nationals from Asia (Korea, Japan, and China), they are likely to face “high context “   communication barrier. Asian societies are homogenous in aspects of information and work experience as denoted by Huesmann & Eron (2013). Also, most messages are not necessarily in the form of words.  Information is mostly transmitted through gestures, space use or even silence.   Leaders in Australia organizations may not be favoured by this type of communication because it may be hard to decode  the details of the information.

High and Low Context Communication Levels

 This type of language occurs when the sender intends to communicate feelings through words and language. Leaders are faced with language barriers as a diverse workforce is characterised by different cultures and background. Language fluency is an essential social aspect that is vital in helping managers to improve the organizational effectiveness and enhance their negotiation skill. Leaders are faced with the hurdles of getting the meaning of a context when the other person fails to express him/herself fully. In Australia, some staff from China, Japan, and Korea lack effective command of English, whereas English is the most commonly used language for intermediaries in Australia. Good command of English helps to reduce and avoid misunderstanding and communication failures (Lefcourt, 2013).

Leaders in Australian corporations cannot fully understand the feelings and expression of staff under them. Junior staff needs to have knowledge of another language but also be familiar with nonverbal cues, cultural practices, values and customs of the language of operation. Leaders who may not possess value and norms of a country may have communication difficulties during their earlier stage of operations. Additionally, Australian leaders may face problems in trying to understand the nonverbal cues used by junior staff in their entities. Some nonverbal cues include kinetics such as facial expressions and eye contacts that enables the actual communication to be carried successfully or smoothly. Leaders in Australia should have the complete knowledge of nonverbal cues among various staff. For instance, in Thailand silence is a sign of respect. The Dutch workers only use gestures from the upper part of the body. Managers who fail to understand some of these nonverbal cues face difficulties in understanding the message communicated as denoted by Marsella et al. (2013)

 A management style is a form of communication channel that link the leaders and subordinates decisions.  The organizational culture is a factor that influences management style.  For instance, Australian managers are faced with the hurdle of solving problems when dealing with Chinese and American employees.  As the American problem-solving skills advocate for competing for a form of problem-solving, the Chinese prefer the centralized orientation style approach. Moreover, the Chinese staffs are not used to listen to their superiors as they tend to despise a team perspective (Kupper et al., 2013). Therefore, management behaviors of different leaders majorly affect the process of communication and essentially require a clear understanding of how to deal with staff from different cultural backgrounds.

Verbal Communication

For any organization, the subordinate staff is a valuable asset. This is because the success or subsequent failure of any organization depends on the employees. Each employee brings knowledge skills and experiences into the body. Therefore, employee satisfaction is a form of communication regarding Australian MNCs progress. Leaders in Australia MNCs face instances of employee dissatisfaction, which is detrimental to the wellbeing of an entity (Lamb, 2013). Therefore, managers should ensure staff productivity through staff empowerment within an organization, which will elicit staff satisfaction.

Ways leaders can address ethical issues related to cultural diversity in Australia

To effectively manage the ethical issues affecting the operation of an organization, a good leader needs to have a clear understating of the organizational design that can effectively shape the culture of the organization. In his study, Edwards et al. (2013) denote that a   perfect organizational design helps in ensuring productivity, effective communication, and long-term innovations in an organization. To address an ethical issue such as cultural integration, the MNCs leaders have to create a perfect environment where people can work effectively and efficiently (Alcántara et al., 2013). Most of the entity ethical issues can be tracked to a perfect organizational design. For instance, Australian MNCs system sales and production department ethically work in harmony as two separate units. In such a system, the work done through information sharing and the provision of incentives determines the performance of the whole entity.

The perfect performance design has been the main drive towards the growth in performance with an ethical working environment in many Australian MNCs. Without moral planning or intervention programs, Australian MNCs leaders can find it difficult to align its objectives towards their growth strategy. As a result, these leaders have adopted a hierarchical ethical culture within their organizational design as pointed out by (Englis, 2013). Hierarchical culture has proved to be essential to Australian MNCs management in maintaining regulatory control. Additionally, many Australian organizations use rotations in their operation such that there is flexibility in the administration of duties. In this manner, the employees feel respected and in their duties as equality in job performance is embraced resulting to unity in the successful performance of the organizations.

In their study, Beugelsdijk et al. (2014) point out those leaders of different Australian business organizations embrace innovation in the process of addressing some of the pertinent ethical issues affecting the organizations’ business strategy. To address an ethical issue such as efficiency in production, Innovation forms one of the core strategies in an organization. Based on this, the production managers are hired after every three years so that they can inject some fresh, innovative ideas into the improvement of strategic business processes (Norton et al., 2014). Therefore, Australian MNCs embrace high volume delivery with a rigid culture combined with tight controls that avoid excess. Entities that have expanded into a global brand experience large economies of scale. Therefore, the companies have maintained functionally distinct department and teams that are pivotal to decentralized ethical decision-making to ensure the ideas and opinions of both the employees and the customers are as well given priority (Holgersson et al. 2016).

Poor Interpretation Skills

Organizations operate in a volatile market, where the unpredictability of events is evident according to Bochner (2013). Development teams have hence come up with a flexible work plan that reacts to customer ideas and calls for improvement in the services offered by these organizations. Incentives and rewards are aligned with business purpose and strategy, and each department is paid according to the value it has brought into the entity. For instance, the sales teams can be rewarded for customer retention. Australian MNCs adoption of flexible controls in its organizational design can be attributed to the successful adoption of cultural diverse ethical strategies that promotes different skills and ideas that are a characteristic of a culturally diverse workplace.

Various Australian organizations also train their leaders to embrace corporate ethical organizational culture and strategies that embrace diversity in every workplace. Corporate culture has strengthened clear leadership ability for delivery of solutions to mid markets, enterprises, and strategic service providers according to Edwards, Marginson, and Ferner (2013). Failure of organizations to embrace ethical, cultural diversity may cause institutional ethnocentrism. The negative consequences brought by institutional ethnocentrism include lack of motivation and slump in organizational productivity. Leaders of organizations faced with institutional ethnocentrism hence develop an ethical, cultural competence action plan to solve these management mentalities (Olwig & Gullov, 2013). With the aim of promoting diversity in the workplace, many Australia MNCs outsource employees and other subsidiaries from cross borders (Singapore and Taiwan) through ethically monitored induction processes while inculcating their culture as the newly acquired partners. This induction minimizes the culture gap that may exist after amalgamation and promote diversity in the operational and behavioral skills of the employees.

Australian firms have adopted a system that also surveys the ethical procedures and standards for the induction approaches for every organization that encompasses the perfect knowledge of the market culture. The induction approach encompasses macro concerns of quality, culture commitment, and values of an entity as pointed out by Holgersson (2016). Organizations corporate cultures endeavor to power a diverse working environment where society, people, and business applications are ethically accessible and securely connected.  Embracing corporate culture has thus been one of the forefronts in addressing ethical issues that exist in Australian MNCs.

Leadership styles and behaviours that align with managing a culturally diverse workplace

According to Karin et al. (2014), leaders can utilize cross-cultural leadership theories to maintain strategic change within the organizations they manage. Specifically, Australian MNCs have used the Integrated Cultural framework leadership theory proposed by Hofstede in the process of their operations. Managers have used this leadership theory to analyze culture across companies and industrial (Lücke et al., 2014). Precisely the theory has been reliable and valid with the following precepts according to Reeve et al. (2014);

• Capability to influence – Members of an organization can affect decision-making in the organization to some extent. Managers are poised to reduce marginal regard to inputs to increase motivation and performance among the staff.
• Comfort with Uncertainty – It denotes the extent to which members are comfortable while taking any risk about their responsibilities in the organization.
• Achievement positioning- It indicates the extent to which members are assertive, goal oriented, and achievement assertive
• Collectivism Vs individualism- It is the extent to which individual is compared with the group loyalty as effective in the organizational performance is a united effort.
• Impartiality- It is the extent when equal chance exists for advancement
• Time Orientation- It illustrates the extent to which organizational goals and missions of an organization are focused on the present, the past and the future. Company employees should not be focused doing on the future strategic plan for the enterprise.
• Space Orientation. This represents the extent of the physical layout of an organization, whether private or a mix of both aspects.

Management Style

Hofstede proposed that the leaders should establish strategic management groups that will address Australian MNCs problems and find common ground of building trust among the employees in the diverse workplace. As a result, a good leader ought to give the suppliers, employees, and customers voice to increase their corporate matters affecting the operation and service provision of their organizations (Kupper et al., 2013). Additionally, such organisations can create a cross-cultural and strategic problem solving ideas situation by creating an electronic comment box for employees and customers to comment regarding the operation of the organization (Takahashi, 2012). Moreover, they may implement surveys on customer satisfaction and supplier engagement. Such platforms encourage efficient management team established on the vision and mission entity that encourages a sense of ownership among employees in the cross-cultural environments (Wang et al., 2014). Moreover, they should incorporate branch groups in making vital decisions in an entity. Further, an organization ought to promote teamwork among them members of the facility. The baseline of trust is created by having a better understanding of collaborative efforts of every employee within the organization despite the cultural differences among them according to Lefcourt (2013).

Hofstede grouped 100,000 IBM employees from different 40 countries for analysis. He came up with four key aspects in which cultures would emerge (Shwalb et al., 2013). Specifically, he asserted that Power, Individualism, Masculinity/Feminist, indulgence, pragmatism, and tolerance were some issues that affected organizational culture. Presently, the concept of cultural dimension and cultural distance has remained pertinent (Thomas & Peterson, 2014). However, if the management applies them simplistically, they may be problematic. On the other hand, Shalom Schwartz, an Israeli Sociologist, claims that some cultural aspects such as behavioural effectiveness overlap Hofstede dimension. His leadership theory was known as behavioural effectiveness and it included gender balance and performance orientation as some of the cultural issues affecting organizational culture. In addition, Shalom leadership theory denoted that self-indulgence is a pertinent issue affecting corporate cultures. Specifically, in some ways, the whole enterprise of business culture relies on the assumption that identifiable dimensions such as self-indulgence.

Studies from business psychologist Oded Shankar denoted that there is a need to move away from the traditional notion of cultural distance. Managers should run away from dealing with pre-existing cultural pole differences and embrace on cultural friction, which focuses on people’s interaction with a different culture (Lamb, 2013). When the managers embrace the frictional culture, they may realize that culture plays a significant role in Australian MNCs success. Even though determining the cultural impact in an organization is challenging, it is clear that the drivers of the global workforce are the culture portrayed by the internal factors affecting an organization (Cullen & Parboteeah, 2013). The labour force in an organization should thus subscribe to the organizational culture of so as to remain competitive in the current global management system (Marsella & Pedersen, 2013). Multinational companies who have the global presence are poised to soar in profitability resulting to employees from different cultural backgrounds bringing in innovation and creativity to the organization. As a result, the diverse cultures from various employees form the core of the MNCs cultural background.

Staff Behaviour

Many foreign engagements fail at the interaction levels. Additionally, many suggest that failure of negotiations at the primary level can be accredited to employ dissatisfaction. An organization that fails to embrace cultural diversity have witnessed fall in market share. For instance, the automotive industry has seen a break in promising links. Promising ties between Daimler and Chrysler and between Volvo and Renault subsidiaries in Australia has broken off due to cultural differences (Culbertson & Chen, 2014). The managers in the automotive industries failed to embrace different cultural differences, therefore, blending mistrust between workforces in this auto industry. Reeve et al. (2014) denoted that analysis have revealed that managers of  Daimler ad Chrysler and between Volvo and  Renault had excessive stronger central control which felt like culture imperialism thus bringing out developmental problems especially for junior employees. Given the cultural differences in different countries, it may be difficult for HR to set a common factor towards all cultural differences. Organizational cultures can be confined in external manifestations rather than an inside force that shapes an individual expression in life.

Conclusion

Many Australian multinational companies and organizations have different corporate cultures tailored to different business situations. What matters most is the overall design alignment with the market, which the company operates. Hierarchical organization culture has incorporated the right flexibility, right incentives, the right resources, and the right people. Moreover, entities have embraced the core cultures and functions that operate its strategic business. The flexibility of this organizational culture enables an objective system to adapt to any market with ease. Therefore, leaders have to listen to the people’s voice and embrace cultural diversity of all stakeholders in within the organizations so as to embrace a culture of respect, trust, and effective long-term performance.

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