Diversity & Fairness In International Organizations

What are the challenges that need to be considered when addressing diversity and fairness in international organizations?


In today’s corporate world, international companies are present everywhere performing cross-culture operations on daily basis. Managing international companies can appear to be difficult as coordinating of work of numerous and different people requires a very goodstrategy and managerial skills. Creating international projects brings together people of not only different profession or perspectives but also educated in a different way, with distinct values, believes and customs. It is believed that international organizations, with international teams, can be more productive and innovative than the one-culture-based and can constitute the best way to look forsolutions for multinational companies. That is why they are trying to overcome the barriers and resolve existing problems to make the maximum out of the international teams. We cannot underestimate the difficulties created by diversity. “The differences must be identified, discussed and channelled” (Schneider and Brasoux, p.239)


Within an international organization it is impossible to separateequality and diversity. They must be seen and worked on together what usually is dealt with using diversity management. According to Gagnon and Cornelius (p.27), diversity management is „an approach to workplace equality [that] draws its distinctiveness largely from its focus on equality through ‘difference’ rather than ‘sameness’”. The interpersonal conflicts rising from the culturaldistinctiveness, different expectations and communication problems are only few examples of all the complications we face while working between cultures.


The differences can usually be localized and explained according to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions what can be of great use when it comes to comparing between cultures. The dimensions are called: power distance, individualism vs. collectivism,uncertainty avoidance, masculinity vs. femininity and long term vs. short term orientation. Hofstede provides short definitions for each of his dimensions. “Power distance is the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.” Individualism or collectivism of a society is determined by “ the degree to which individuals areintegrated into groups”. Uncertainty avoidance describes a society's tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity”. Masculinity vs. femininity concerns “the distribution of emotional roles between the genders” and finds out which values – male or female specific are more largely spread within a society. Finally long vs. short term orientation describes the extent to which a culture attaches importanceto the future. The mentioned dimensions of differences are the reasons for the majority of internationaly-based conflicts and misunderstandings at work. The people representing two extremes of each dimension can find it difficult to collaborate because of the divergence in their priorities, customs, and the way of thinking (a great number of examples that we can apply to this theory will appearlater in the text). Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that the averages of a country do not always relate to individuals of that country as very often there are exceptions to the rules.


The first step to achieve an effective collaboration within a company is to create good relations between its members. a group identity. The trust and the easy-going communication are extremely important.However this is hard to achieve among people from different cultures. Sometimes there is also the problem of time zone. Managers must change the time of meeting and play the role of coordinator so that nobody feels underestimated and the flow of information between members runs smoothly.


Nevertheless the main area where the “international” problems arise is the communication and the main...