Assessment and Influence of Culture

1 Assessment and Influence of Culture Cultural Assessment Tools It is necessary to assess the culture of a diverse group of employees to identify the current state of culture and manage diversity effectively. Individuals from different cultures possess varying beliefs, norms, and values. For instance, Cater et al. (2013) found that students from different countries, including Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia, Germany, and Slovakia, had diverse perspectives regarding their interest in working as entrepreneurs or managers. Some of the cultural assessment tools for assessing the company's culture and identifying cultural gaps include the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI), Culture Gap Survey, Denison Organizational Culture Survey (DOCS), Perceived Cultural Compatibility Index (PCCI), Competing Values Framework (CVF), Cultural Assessment Survey, FOCUS Questionnaire, and Hofstede's Measure of Organizational Culture.

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The OCAI is a questionnaire used to diagnose an organization's culture by requiring people to respond to several items. The OCAI is useful in identifying the company's current culture and also the culture that the members believe should be adopted to match the firm's future demands. The instrument consists of six sections, including the organization's dominant characteristics, management of employees, leadership, strategic emphases, organization glue, and criteria of success. Furthermore, the company can identify cultural gaps in the organization using the Culture Gap Survey that detects gaps between the previous and desired cultural norms.

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Moreover, the Denison Organizational Culture Survey assesses a company's four traits, including mission, consistency, adaptability, and participation. The mission dimension measures the firm's long-term development, including the vision, specific objectives, and strategic direction.

Consistency assesses whether the workers' values are in line with the company's core values.

Adaptability evaluates the firm's reaction in response to the external environment. The participation dimension focuses on the allocation of responsibility and the development of a sense of belonging in the firm.

The PCCI is a self-report questionnaire that measures the comparability of organizational values. The company can also use the CVF, which suggests that there are two sets of competing values in firms. The first set is the extent to which a company emphasizes centralization over flexibility and decentralization. The second dimension is the extent to which a firm is oriented towards the eternal versus internal environments. The Cultural Assessment Survey is a selfreport questionnaire consisting of the collaborative, unified, and individual categories of items.

Moreover, FOCUS is a self-report questionnaire with evaluative and descriptive measures, with each consisting of four scales of innovation, rules, support, and goals. It measures the evaluative and descriptive aspects of four cultural orientations. Lastly, Hofstede's Measure of Organizational Culture is a self-report questionnaire consisting of six dimensions: closed versus open, process versus result-oriented, normative versus pragmatic, parochial versus professional, loose versus tight control, and employee versus job oriented.

Influence on Workplace Outcomes and Group Productivity The social culture of diverse global employees is likely to positively and negatively affect the organization's outcomes and group productivity. Cultural diversity can be a source of competitive advantage for firms. Diversity leads to improved performance in work teams (Moran

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et al., 2014). Diverse workgroups improve the functioning of the team by enhancing the exchange, integration, and discussion of ideas, insights, and knowledge relevant to the team's task (Otten et al., 2014). Diverse teams can also help the company in marketing as people from different backgrounds provide broad viewpoints regarding the consumer preferences of various cultures. Thus, the company gains valuable feedback and knowledge from the markets regarding the services and products it offers (Black et al., 2019). Diverse teams also lead to the development of cognitive flexibility in the organization as people learn to interact effectively with others with different beliefs, attitudes, and values. The workers also learn how to tolerate diverse ideas and opinions, resulting in the free flow of communication and enhanced effectiveness in group interaction (Black et al., 2019).

Culturally diverse workgroups also achieve higher creativity levels during problemsolving than those that are less diverse (Moran et al., 2014). Diverse workgroups are more innovative as individuals with different experiences and backgrounds contribute unique viewpoints to a problem (Otten et al., 2014). Different viewpoints lead to more alternatives to choose from when dealing with an issue or problem. Moreover, diverse teams prevent groupthink as people from different backgrounds who possess varied beliefs, values, and attitudes can test the reasoning and assumptions of the ideas suggested by group members (Black et al., 2019).

Hover, culturally diverse workgroups can also adversely affect an organization. For example, the productivity of diverse groups can be lower due to social loafing, production blocking, social matching of low performance, and evaluation apprehension (Otten et al., 2014).

Diverse teams can lead to decreased team performance, as subgroup categorizations can result in intergroup bias, including prejudice or favoritism (Otten et al., 2014). Moreover, the similarity-

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attraction theory suggests that people are attracted to others with similar characteristics (Black et al., 2019). Therefore, diversity in workgroups can lead to lower attachment among the members, employee turnover, and absenteeism. There are also more conflicts among diverse employees because of their conflicting cultures and views.

Influence of Social Culture and Diversity on Organizational Culture Organizational culture includes the specific beliefs, norms, and values prevalent in a firm.

The diversity and social culture of diverse employees can influence a firm's culture. In a culturally diverse company, leaders emphasize learning and integration, leading to the employees viewing their diversity as a valuable resource (Roberson, 2013). Therefore, a company with employees from different countries will be compelled to promote inclusive behaviors. The leaders will adopt diversity management practices that influence the workers' behaviors and perceptions regarding differences. They will create an organizational climate that will influence the employees' interpretation and acceptance of messages concerning diversity. For instance, an organization will implement diversity management practices, including cross-cultural mentoring programs, flexible work schedules, and diversity management committees. Such practices will make employees understand the company's emphasis on diversity. As a result, the employees will adopt a culture of open communication, embracing differences, willing to engage in collective problem-solving, and creating norms of tolerance (Roberson, 2013).

The team of employees comes from different countries with diverse national cultures.

Different national cultures differ in various dimensions, including orientation to time, communication, goal orientation, authority, formality, performance orientation, structure, community, and space (Keyton, 2011). The diverse national cultures of these employees will influence the greater organizational culture. The employees' perceptions of cultural diversity will

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determine whether they will negatively or positively impact the firm. For example, if the workers view individual differences as part of a multinational or international organizational culture and embrace them positively, they will develop a stimulating and challenging work environment, with the members creating an organizational culture to bridge and accommodate individual cultural differences. The diversity of the team influences the organizational culture as the managers adopt methods of managing cultural diversity. For example, the managers may promote a transnational culture that is open to change to transcend cultural differences. They can also promote a culture that encourages developing positive professional and personal relationships at the workplace (Roberson, 2013).

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References Black, S., Gardner, D. G., Pierce, J. L., & Steers, R. (2019). Organizational behavior. OpenStax.

Cater, T., Lang, R., & Szabo, E. (2013). The GLOBE Student project: Methods and sample structures. Journal of East European Management Studies, 18(4), 544-550.

Jung, T., Scott, T., Davies, H. T., Bower, P., Whalley, D., McNally, R., & Mannion, R. (2009).

Instruments for exploring organizational culture: A review of the literature. Public Administration Review, 69(6), 1087-1096.

Keyton, J. (2011). Communication and organizational culture: A key to understanding work experiences. SAGE. Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing cultural differences.

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Otten, S., Van der Zee, K., & Brewer, M. B. (Eds.). (2014). Towards inclusive organizations: Determinants of successful diversity management at work. Psychology Press.

Roberson, Q. M. (2013). The Oxford handbook of diversity and work. OUP USA.