Employees from Diverse Ethnicities or Race (Essay Sample)

Culture
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Culture
Due to an increasing multicultural workplace, managers are required to manage employees from diverse ethnicities or race. One of the ways of understanding other people’s culture is through observing their way of doing things. The etic approach allows for this type of observation whereby a culture is viewed from the perspective of an outsider. Moreover, the etic approach enables the management to have an objective understanding of other cultures without focusing on existing biases.
To have an etic perspective on a culture, a manager needs to detach emotionally from the culture to arrive at an objective conclusion or understanding. It is an outsider view as it requires one to be a detached, objective, and a scientific observer of that culture (Mor-Barak, 2017). Also, the etic approach is based on the assumption that there are common characteristics of that exist in reality. Therefore, there are common characteristics that employees from different nationalities may have despite their different cultural backgrounds.
High and low context culture is defined based on the values that different cultures place on direct and indirect communication. A high context culture, for example, relies on implied communication and nonverbal cues (Hansen & Seierstad, 2016). Therefore, a message cannot be easily decoded without enough background information of the culture. Individuals from high-context cultures value groups and where social structure and authority are centralized as well as share the close place. The aspect of time is not valued as much and is seen as a process that belongs to others and nature.
On the other hand, in low context culture, communication is more open. Employee output depends on the procedures and paying attention to organisational goals. Concerning interaction, less emphasis is placed on nonverbal cues and communication is viewed as a means of passing information, ideas, and opinions. People in this culture value their personal space and time is valued.
John, a manager of a multinational company, was recently posted to head the organisation's head office in New York. However, he has encountered communication challenges owning to employees coming from different nationalities hence different cultures. John is aware that lack of effective communication and relations between the employees would affect both individual and organisational performance. He is stuck whether to treat the employees as individuals or cluster them into high and low cultural groups.
John may be forced to adopt a flexible communication style depending on who he or she is communicating with. When speaking, for example, to employees in high context cultures, they should use face-to-face communication as opposed to electronic technology (Plueddemann, 2012). Besides, high context culture prepares personal bonds over legal documents as they are keen on getting the direct messages from the involved parties through observing their nonverbal actions. Therefore, for a productive working relationship with employees from a high context culture, he would be