Diversity Management And Its Effects In Multinational Corporations

Today,globalization has become a reality.Advances in the field of information and technology and liberalization in trade and investment have increased the ease and speed with which companies can manage their global operations.Due to globalization,many companies are now operating in more than one country.This crossing of geographical boundaries by the companies gives the birth of multicultural organization where employees from more than one country are working together.In its definition,its acknowledging,understanding,accepting,and valuing differences among people with respect to age,class,race,ethnicity,gender,disabilities,etc.(Esty et al.1995).Companies need to embrace diversity and look for ways to become inclusive organizations because diversity has the potential to yield greater work productivity and competitive advantages(SHRM 1995).They are finding these expansions as attractive and lucrative but operating and managing a global business is normally a lot tougher than managing a local company,the global business will also be prone to be affected by a multitude of factors,in this case the diversity of employees within the workplaceDiversity presents unique challenges for management as it is linnked to both positive and negative organizational performance outcomes(Mannix&Neale,2005).However also,Diversity,by itself,may not be sufficient to achieve competitive advantage.Effective diversity management becomes an important issue for organizations to consider.In such circumstances,the risk of cross cultural discrepancies is inevitable.Using a multipipe case study approach the aim of this paper is to find out these discrepancies,through some research&interviews at companies that face this predicament and then suggest some effective solutions to manage effectively the cross-cultural aspect of diversity management within the workplace for the success of global business.Data from questionnaires,focused interviews and existing documents were used to compare the research questions to the practices of diversity management within global corporations,aswell as other various human resources literature explored.In addition to this,the research has taken a qualitative,interpretivist&exploratory design in the form of case studies,which was the most appropriate methodology for this type of social phenomenon research that has become increasingly dynamic,as the world continues to globalise.