Why is it important that leaders understand cultural diversity in modern day organisation?

Describe about the Leadership in Business for A Multicultural Society.

Leading for change helps to perform an organisation in a multicultural society in proper and adequate manner. According to Chhokar et al., (2013), leadership plays an important role in order to manage the transformed business operation of the companies for providing a tough competition to the other existing competitor companies in the particular marketplace. This essay will explain a blueprint in order to guide every organisations of Australia to develop the basic ways of representations of the leadership, which determines the cultural diversity. Scott & Davis (2015) have mentioned that it is essential for the modern leaders of the organisation to understand the existence of the cultural diversity. This essay will also cover the gaps and laws in between the considerable uncertainty and the collected data from various trustworthy sources in the Australian marketplace. It will also illustrate the reason of the improvement of the leadership quality and the management in order to do better than the other neighbouring countries.

As opined by Daft (2014), cultural diversity involves the differences, which distinguishes a group of people from the other and it can be determined by some attributes such as age, gender, sexual orientation, class and ethnicity. Leadership quality differs from one person to other ad it should be open for the every level of associated employees of the organisations. The leaders should change their perception in order to deal with the cultural diversity in the modern day organisation. However, the leaders also communicate with the employees for resolving any kind of issues regarding the cultural diversity.  There are certain cases, which suggest that the leaders are unable to handle the cultural diversity and gender in equal manner. The leaders of the Australian organisations experience several incidents on the cultural diversity and its impact upon the employee performance and ultimate productivity and profit level of the companies. The management of the organisations does not provide a separate leadership program in order to deal with the cultural diversity of the employees. Hargreaves & Fink (2012) have stated that the leaders are expected to integrate the cultural diversity in order to maintain a flawless business operation within the large corporations. The leaders are always expected to build a perfect accountability for creating an inclusive workplace environment. The leaders resolve the challenges of cultural diversity with their own commitment for the ultimate success of the company in a particular market.

How can leaders support and influence the cultural diversity in the workplace?

In case study 1, the chief executive team of Westpac, ensures the diversity goals and inclusion to be integrated into the basic business strategies of the company. Even this team keeps a perfect and adequate track of the process of progressing and initiatives. Same things happen with PwC and Telstra in order to mitigate the cultural diversity within the organisation. Dickson et al., (2012) have mentioned that there are effective and potential organisational policies and procedures, which can control the cultural diversities among the existing employees of the organisation. There are several researches on the senior leader’s cultural composition in any kind of business of Australia, its civil society, government and politics. However, the priorities are only the chief executives of the large corporations and leaders, who possess the capabilities of changing the attitudes and behaviour towards the existing cultural diversity within the organisation. The business experts have suggested that if cultural diversity can be used in positive manner, then it can create a perfect working environment that may bring the ultimate success of the company.  Several data have been collected in order to understand the existence of the cultural diversity and its impact on the productivity of the employees as it will hamper both the market position of a company and the brand reputation.

As opined by Wiewiora et al. (2013), it is an essential factor for the leaders of the organisation to understand the importance of the cultural diversity in order to make the business operations in an organisation. As Australia is considered multicultural nation, therefore, the leaders should possess adequate idea regarding the impact of cultural diversity. Even in the public services of Australia, the cultural diversity is under- represented in dramatically manner. This sector consists of employees of Anglo Celtic, European, non-European and Indigenous background. There is an applied vision of the inclusive leadership, which proposes that there are basic requirements of cultural diversity, which should be satisfied within every organisation. It should consider the uniqueness of every employee from different cultural background and it should obey the leaders. The culturally different employee of the company should not be excluded from the senior colleagues. Ng & Sears (2012) have suggested that there should be cultural diversity in the various level of leadership of an organisation in order to reduce any kind of biasness towards some particular employees. As every employees of the organisation have to share common objectives and goals, therefore any kind of issues regarding cultural diversity should be resolved for attaining the desired goals of the organisation. any kind of allegations and litigations of the racial discrimination possess the potentiality to damage the brand image of a corporate company. For instances, Leslie Miley, who holds a highest position in Twitter claims that the management fails to recruit fresh African-American talent as it oppose the cultural diversity. Australian Bureau of Statistics provides a basic core set of the important indicators for measuring the cultural diversity within the company. Griffin (2013) has stated that   every organisation can collect important data on the ethnic background of the every associated employee. The leaders of a large corporation are expected to avoid every confusion regarding the cultural diversity of the employees. Eve on certain cases, there are questionnaires, which help to investigate the existing issues that may damage the business operations and functions of an organisation.

In most o the Australian organisations, the inclusion and diversity is approached with a perfect process of bottom-up and top-down strategy and the CEO of organisations help the leaders to take effective measure for mitigating the issues related to the cultural diversity. Cummings & Worley (2014) have mentioned that the leaders can engage every employees from different cultural background while dividing the allocated tasks in between them. An efficient and potential leader communicates with the employees from every level in order to influence and support the system of cultural diversity in the workplace. Every employee should know their commitment to the company and need to understand the actual process of diversity, which may influence the role and responsibility and the way of the basic success of any initiative towards mitigating the cultural diversity. The leaders can participate in the surveys of the employee engagement as it provides a scope to discuss the concerns, which may elicit any relevant advices for supporting the efforts of the employees of the organisation. According to Moran et al. (2014), the leaders should be engaged in the diversity effort in active manner, therefore, it will help to start a resource group of thee associated employees. The leaders of the Australian organisation become the mentee, part of co-mentor relationship and an adequate mentor, which represents a perfect and valuable scope and opportunity for professional and personal development. In order to influence and support the cultural diversity within the corporation, the leaders become competent culturally for learning and understanding about various races, cultures, ethnicity, backgrounds and regions. The employees are encouraged to share some cultural practices in order to become familiar with the cultural diversity and to solve problems during the period of crisis.

As opined by Erez et al. (2013), the leadership theories will be perfect and suitable to support and influence the cultural diversity within the organisation. Such as behavioural theory reflects that, the quality of leadership requires well-developed and deigned positive ego with a stable and strong personality. As Australia is multicultural society, therefore, the leaders of the Australian organisations should possess self-confidence to the utmost level, as it will help to resolve critical issues related to the cultural diversity in the company. On the other hand, the contingency theory argues that there is no fixed or established way to lead the people and each leadership style is based on the current situation. Hogan & Coote (2014) have contradicted with the fact that contingency theory is an extended version of the trait theories of the leadership. The contingency theory explains the requirement of employing this particular theory, when the employees will be responsive in appropriate manner. The Human Rights Commission of Australia has launched workplace cultural diversity tool in order to help the organisations for measuring the best practices related to the cultural diversity. There is process of online diagnostic for assessing and evaluating the strategies, leadership, appropriate selection and retention of potential staffs for monitoring the progress in the present workplace culture. This particular process is strictly followed by the leaders of the organisation in Australia for handling a culturally diverse workplace. The leaders should always mitigate every stereotype risks for accompanying the basic appointment of the talents of culturally diverse leadership position. Dimmock (2012) has mentioned that if the employees fail to perform according to the requirements and expectations of the companies, then it reflects the failure of the leadership quality. The leaders of the organisation should make achievable targets for the employees as it has been proved that targets, which are overly ambitious, may affect the future efforts.

There is bias interrupted program, which has been launched by Telstra for improving the understanding of the leaders of Telstra and motivates the employees for high innovation and performance. McKee et al. (2012) have suggested that leaders of a company possess the potentiality for valuing the uniqueness of every individual over their cultural differences. Even the leaders should be flexible while recruiting and selecting appropriate and suitable employees to explore the fundamental dynamics of sexual orientation, gender identity, intercultural understanding, age and global mindset of the associated individuals within the organisation. There are organisational policies, procedure, rules and regulations, which promote the inclusive leadership that provides no extra privilege towards certain groups of cultural background (Banks, 2015). The leaders have understood the impact of the culture in order to shape the fundamental perceptions, behaviour and attitudes of the employees. An Australian organisation provides a vast scope for every associated individuals of the organisation to hold the position of leader, if that particular individual possesses the leadership potentiality, capabilities and efficiency. However, from various sources it has been confirmed that the leadership and cultural diversity in Australia suggests an important and emergent field. There are also large possibilities of the improvement of improving this quality of leadership to deal with the cultural diversity within the company. The leadership commitment offers a detailed vision of the diversity, which is communicated and demonstrated throughout a company with the help of top-level management procedures. Hogan (2012) has contradicted with the above statement and has stated that during making the strategic plan of the enterprise, the management and the business experts should consider cultural diversity as an important factor as it can be aligned with the strategic plan and promote more inclusive workplace environment than previous. The organisations arrange adequate training programmes for educating and informing the management and the leaders regarding the benefit of diversity.

Conclusion

This essay particularly discusses the existing issues related cultural diversity within various organisations of Australia. It also explains the importance of leadership for influencing and supporting the cultural diversity for betterment of the business operations of the organisations and it helps a company to hold the desired position in particular industry with suitable market share. This easy also clearly reflects the impish link in between the cultural background and cultural identity of an individual. Only with the effective and potential leadership capabilities, the critical issues will be mitigated and the government of Australia should update their existing laws and legislations regarding cultural differences of individual for supporting the cultural diversity of an organisation.

References

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Erez, M., Lisak, A., Harush, R., Glikson, E., Nouri, R., & Shokef, E. (2013). Going global: Developing management students’ cultural intelligence and global identity in culturally diverse virtual teams. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 12(3), 330-355.

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Wiewiora, A., Trigunarsyah, B., Murphy, G., & Coffey, V. (2013). Organizational culture and willingness to share knowledge: A competing values perspective in Australian context. International Journal of Project Management, 31(8), 1163-1174.