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This can be seen as a great opportunity for the advantages it brings to the work place and the individuals themselves, as being a part of a multicultural team

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Shruti Raut, BSc nursing student , Novia UAS Anita Wikberg: Supervisor, RN, RM, PhD, Senior lecturer, Novia UAS

Multicultural to intercultural work environment, an opportunistic work environment?

Abstract:

This debate article questions whether working in a multicultural team possess as a challenge or an opportunity. Understanding the current situation of increased immigration in our world, our work environments are getting more diverse or multicultural than ever. This can be seen as a great opportunity for the advantages it brings to the work place and the individuals themselves, as being a part of a multicultural team. Although there are challenges that come along with the setting, which one overcomes the other is at question. Turning a multicultural work environment to an intercultural work environment may turn out opportunistic for both the employer and the employee. In the end, it comes down to every individual and their contribution in the team, but multicultural teams produce better results regardless if an individual sees them as an opportunity or a challenge.

Keywords:

Multicultural, Intercultural, Diverse, Immigration, Teamwork, Challenge, Opportunity

With the current growing rate in immigration around the world for various reasons, such as globalisation, political reasons, education, and family influences to name a few; our work places are observing an increase in the diversity of their work staff. There is an ever more interaction between people from different cultures, backgrounds and beliefs. This has been true in every area of work such as the business sector, the healthcare sector, the restaurant and food sector and many more.

This change in the work environment is equally new for both, the immigrants and the locals. The locals are being introduced to new cultures and so are immigrants. The question is, whether this type of work setting pose as a challenge or an opportunity for the staff and the work place itself. Can working in a multicultural team actually be beneficial for the working environment or just feel like a long-lasting challenge with it being harder to find a common ground for the working staff and the work place.

I, as an immigrant working in a different country and culture than my own, see this as an opportunity for the staff, the work place and myself. Why? One must wonder, and there are several

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reasons I will present in order to back up this argument. First of all, it is important to understand the meaning of the word ‘multicultural’, according to the Cambridge dictionary the word multicultural means ‘including people who have many different customs and beliefs or including people from different cultures’. When people from different cultures collide in a common setting there are many hurdles they first have to overcome in order to gain a good understanding of each other and to then proceed to work towards the same goal. This is mainly true in a more formal setting such as a ‘work place’ because there is a common goal to be achieved, which in this case, is providing a high performance and improved outcome to your employer. The hurdles that the team must overcome are communications problems, incompatibility in the values each one holds, and letting go of patterns depending on each one’s cultural or religious backgrounds. Meaning that, the multicultural work team needs to turn into or understand the concept of an intercultural working team. According to the Oxford dictionary the word intercultural can be described as ‘taking place between cultures or derived from different cultures’. After these hurdles are overcome, the improvement in their performance follows as the outcome (Stahl, Mäkelä, Zander & Maznevski, 2010, 439-447).

A study in which employees who worked in a multicultural team and organisation were asked about advantages of their multicultural work setting, they stated both personal and organisational advantages. The personal advantages consisted of: having a broader perspective on any given issue that was presented to them, being more tolerant and accepting towards others opinions and their differences, better ability to handle any unexpected situations they had to face, becoming more flexible and developing better communication skills and style. The organisational advantages consisted of: the possibility of handling business projects better by applying knowledge from different cultures, providing the clients or customers with a more diverse set of employees and matching them accordingly, using diverse perspectives to solve problems and make decisions more effectively, having more creative and innovative input in the processes of the organisation (Trefry, Mary, 2006, 568-570).

In a multicultural team, each individual is challenged to try and understand the differences between their own culture and culture of others and the manner in which each of the cultures reasons an action, situation or a problem in certain circumstances. This intercultural interaction can be seen as an opportunity for two different cultures to have mutual respect and understanding of each other’s differences, while coexisting and sharing different perspectives towards a shared work task or goal

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to be achieved. Of course, a team may also face disadvantages due to the differences in the team, but this is more dependent of how the work organisation curves and supports their team. For example, if the organisation provides more bonding experiences for the team in order for them to get to know each other and have discussions where everyone’s opinion is heard, it is pushing them to work towards the same goal as a team instead of just as individuals. One might argue that some individuals might still feel uncomfortable in a diverse or multicultural work setting, but an article from the Harvard Business Review argues that this challenge in itself has driven employees to perform better in their work. The article mentions that one of the reasons why individuals working in a multicultural team produce better outcomes is precisely because it is comparatively more challenging or harder than not working in a multicultural team (Rock, Grant, & Grey, 2016).

Sharing my personal experience, I work as a nurse in Finland and I moved here from India. There is quite a big difference between Finnish and Indian culture, for example, in India we usually hesitate to say ‘no’ if asked to do something, because we see it as being rude and this always is reflected in my work. If someone approached me asking to perform an additional task, I had a hard time saying

‘no’ to the request. I quickly learned from my coworkers that it is ok to say no to a requested task if you do not have time for it and it does not come through as being rude. Understanding this difference made it a lot easier for me to say no to additional tasks when I did not have the possibility to perform them and not feel like I was being disrespectful towards my colleagues.

So, the question whether working in a multicultural team serves as a challenge or an opportunity depends on the individual and the work organisation. It can be a great opportunity for someone who is open to new experiences and ironically to new challenges, but for someone more comfortable with a routine life style and having social boundaries it may just come up as a challenge that they would rather keep at bay. Overall, it could still be seen as a positive thing to implement in a working environment as it pushes employees to perform better producing better outcomes.

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References:

Cambridge online dictionary https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/multicultural [Accessed on 28.10.2020]

Oxford learner’s dictionary https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/

intercultural?q=intercultural+ [Accessed on 28.10.2020]

Rock D., Grant H., Grey J., (2016) Diverse Teams Feel Less Comfortable — and That’s Why They Perform Better, Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2016/09/diverse-teams-feel-less- comfortable-and-thats-why-they-perform-better [Accessed on 28.10.2020]

Stahl K. G., Mäkelä K., Zander L., Maznevski L. M., (2010) A look at the bright side of multicultural team diversity, Scandinavian Journal of Management, 26 (4), 439-447, ISSN 0956-5221, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2010.09.009. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/

article/pii/S0956522110001028) [Accessed on 28.10.2020]

Trefry, Mary G., (2006). "A Double-Edged Sword: Organizational Culture in Multicultural O r g a n i z a t i o n s ” . W C O B F a c u l t y P u b l i c a t i o n s . P a p e r 3 3 , 5 6 3 - 5 7 5 . h t t p : / / digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/wcob_fac/33 [Accessed on 28.10.2020]

References

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