Cross-Cultural Management in the Workplace: A Practical Guide

Introduction: The Importance of Respecting Workers Across Cultures

Although it is a cliché of the business world, it is nonetheless true that no business that neglects—or abuses—its workers can prosper for long. Badly trained, badly prepared, or badly treated workers do not do their best—and indeed, why should they? The best way to get the most out of a worker is to ensure that the worker feels appreciated and respected, and it is the job of those in supervisorial and managerial positions to ensure that an environment of mutual respect is instigated and maintained.

This is always a challenging task. Managing the relationships among employees is one of the most difficult responsibilities that supervisors face. It is especially difficult when the people who come together in the workplace come from different cultures. This paper addresses that challenge: How does a supervisor manage cross-cultural differences in the workplace so that the rights and sensibilities of each person are respected?

This is, of course, a difficult and demanding task. The complexities of creating cross-cultural communication and respect in the workplace can indeed seem overwhelming. The examples and interviews that follow illustrate some of the complications that can arise in a multicultural workplace, as well as some of the strategies that effective managers use to address them.

A Case Study in Cross-Cultural Conflict Resolution

An upper-level editor at a daily newspaper describes her recent experiences with two of her employees, which demonstrate the kinds of complications that can arise in a multicultural workplace.

"First off, I have to say that although these two people are technically my subordinates—I mean, I do things like sign their timecards—newspapers really aren't very hierarchical. There's no 'I'm the boss and you do what I say' tradition. And that's generally a good thing, I think, because it means that you have to sit down with people and talk to them and create a mood of cooperation.

"But then you have a situation like this. I have one writer who is an observant Muslim. And the person who sits next to her is Chinese-American. This second person often eats pork dishes at her desk—they work until 8 at night, so they usually bring their dinners. The Muslim woman doesn't like to be around the smell of pork. And the Chinese-American woman says that her grandmother makes her dinners and would be insulted if she didn't eat them, and that pork is an important part of Chinese food.

"This seems like something trivial, but soon everyone is taking sides and sniping at each other. I tried moving them to other desks, but the Muslim woman said that she could still smell the pork, and the Chinese-American woman walked around eating—I think on purpose—near her desk. It was driving me crazy."

This is precisely the kind of cross-cultural management problem that often comes up in workplaces today, where what seems like a small, relatively insignificant point quickly mushrooms into something larger. This manager, however, was able to take control of the situation, and her actions could serve as a model for others. The first thing she did was to "take a big deep mental breath" and get some psychological distance from the conflict. The second thing she did was to ask herself whether she was being culturally insensitive herself.

"Part of what was bothering me is that I kept thinking, this is such a stupid thing to fight about. But then I realized that was only because this wasn't an issue in my own family. What if it was something that really bothered me, something that I found culturally offensive? What if someone was eating dog or cat? Or someone said I couldn't eat my family's favorite foods? I would be upset. And looking at it that way allowed me to empathize and to understand."

The editor then took steps to help the two women understand each other. She asked the Chinese-American woman to take her colleague home to dinner so that she could learn something about the importance of food—and especially of meat—in Chinese families. She also asked the Chinese-American woman to speak with a Muslim scholar about the historical prohibitions against pork in Islam. Then she made a practical ruling: the Chinese-American woman could eat pork in the office on even-numbered days but not on odd ones, and the Muslim woman could not complain if the schedule was adhered to. Finally, she gave the Chinese-American woman a longer dinner break once a week so that she could go home to eat.

"The whole thing was really exhausting, but it turned out okay. We're all still speaking to each other and working well together, and we all learned something about how other Americans live. I think that we did okay because we always kept reminding ourselves that the first step to solving a problem is honestly and sincerely wanting to fix it."

The Role of Corporate Culture

The brief case study above illustrates the ways in which a good manager can use determination and creativity to resolve cross-cultural misunderstandings in the workplace. But not all such problems have such happy outcomes. Sometimes this is because the individuals involved—unlike those in the case above—are not genuinely interested in finding a solution. At other times the problem is more deeply rooted in the culture of the workplace itself.

Managing cross-cultural differences requires a manager who is willing and able to take on the task, but it also requires a corporate culture that supports such managerial efforts. To understand how and why this is the case, we need to examine what is meant by corporate culture.

Corporate culture is at least in some important ways different from what most people automatically think of when they hear the word "culture." The term usually conjures something anthropological and distinctly ethnic—people in masks performing arcane and deeply important rituals, perhaps. But culture is simply the generally accepted beliefs, actions, and material practices that a group of people share and that define them as a group. With this broad definition in hand, we can see how companies, just as much as villages, possess a culture. Whether cross-cultural management is relatively easy—or even possible—is directly dependent on the overall corporate culture of an organization.

One implication of this fact is that if a manager wants to begin solving the kinds of cross-cultural misunderstandings that have previously been ignored, he or she may well have to change the overall culture of the organization so that it can accommodate the cultural values of workers with widely divergent belief systems. This is often very difficult.

The reasons that organizational cultures may be so resistant to change are suggested in the following observation about corporate culture:

"Culture can be viewed at several levels. Some aspects of culture are visible and tangible and others are intangible and unconscious. Basic assumptions that guide the organization are deeply rooted and often taken for granted."

Those basic assumptions often include the belief that there is only one—or at most a very limited number of—correct ways to accomplish a particular job. Although managers and other workers might believe that this defined "right way" simply reflects common sense and logic, it may also have embedded in it cultural values or practices drawn from mainstream American culture (or some other dominant culture) that result in conflicts in the workplace.

A design engineer at an American Toyota plant describes the strengths and limits of even a relatively thoughtful cross-cultural management environment. Toyota does fairly extensive cross-cultural training for its managers in both American and Japanese culture, yet challenges persist.

"The Toyota company is sensitive to being seen as insensitive to non-Japanese workers and non-Japanese values, so I have seen the Japanese officials that we work with really extend themselves to make Americans feel welcome. They take courses in American culture, they speak English, they always apologize if they make a cultural mistake—and most of all, they listen.

"But even given that, there are limitations. We have all these mechanisms set up to facilitate Japanese-American communication, but of course these are hardly the only two cultures in the world. We've had a large group of French engineers working at our plant for the last six weeks, and they have a very different communication style, work style—everything—from the Americans. The Americans are just fine with this. It's like, 'Well, they're French. Of course they try to smoke in the offices and come in late and stay late. It's that European thing.' But the Japanese officials here seem really frustrated: the French are acting like Americans, and they're certainly not acting like the Japanese. So how do you categorize them?"

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