Diversity Challenge At The Mcdonalds Asia Research Assignment (Research Paper Sample)

DIVERSITY CHALLENGE AT THE MCDONALDS ASIA
Student’s Name
Institution
The challenge faced by McDonalds
The McDonalds is one of the most successful companies on earth. It is a company that was opened in the United States back in the 1940’s (McDonalds, 2017). originally, the firm used to sell its products to the American citizens or the tourists who visited the nation. The company has always been able to sell a wide range of beverages that have been well reviewed by its most royal customers-even if some of the products that are sold by the firm have been castigated in relation to the levels of calories. As the firm continued to grow, it made a managerial decision of opening up foreign outlets in Asia, South America and Europe among others. This was a great milestone, but the latter faced a big challenge when it came to issues to deal with diversity.
Apparently, it is quite clear that the company was already used to employing workers who are American in the American outlets. So once the firm set out to new grounds, it faced the problem of diversity because it was entering in new cultural settings-especially in Asia. In Asian countries such as Japan and China, there different people come from different cultural backgrounds. So when McDonalds ventured in these nations, it did not succeed as it had expected because it had not integrated cultural diversity in the processes of employing workers. To expound on this problem, it is good note that, “As organizations respond to changes in cross‐border business activity career practices more attuned to differences in business and cultural practices are required if organizations are to become more effective in their cross‐ border business activities…” (Fish, 1999). It was clear that this problem of diversity is what was making the firm to stall in terms of success in this particular region of the world.
The firm was not able to include enough representatives from all the cultural backgrounds of the Asian communities. This proved to be a very big challenge as the company did not have enough knowledge of finding the right representatives. Then when it was able to employ people from different communities, it noted that most of them were grouping themselves and interacting with the people from the same communities (Lyndem, 2014). The company also noted that several individuals who were given leadership positions would always discriminate people who were not from their communities. So in particular the firm faced a challenge of ensuring that all workers were treated fairly. Additionally, the firm noted that communicated was a big challenge of diversity in these regions. Most people would prefer to talk or communicate with the people that spoke their mother tongue. This is a particular case that does not affect the American workforce because many people tend to speak English unlike the Asian nations where people speak their mother tongues (which is generally allowed by the government) (Fearon, 2003).
What McDonalds did
Firstly, research was one of the ways through which the firm was able to counter the challenge of diversity in these regions. The company took a step of analyzing and studying how different foreign companies were able to solve the challenges of diversity in this region. The management of the Asian outlets wanted to know how for instance, employees in the Japanese culture would be encouraged to work together as a team even if they came from diverse communities. The research also enabled the management of this firm to understand how to treat different individuals in the workplace so that they can all work efficiently towards the achievement of the company’s goals and missions (Watson, 2006). This particular initiative worked for the better.
Another initiative that was undertaken by the management of this organization was to educate all the employees. A very efficient human resource section was put up with an aim of educating all the workers and employees on all the processes of ensuring that they work together as team and forgetting about their cultural backgrounds. The HR was also supposed to take time to teach the Asian heads of different departments so that they could treat all workers equally without any forms of discriminations. This was supposed to be an attempt of ensuring that all the workers and heads of departs work functioning in line with the values of the McDonalds.
Critical analysis of management’s response
The management of any particular organization has the power to ensure that a firm is successful or the power to break an organization. The McDonalds management took an initiative that appears to have successfully solved the challenge of diversity in this particular region. For instance, if you look at the processes of research that were implemented by the firm, some positive results were observed. This was a big milestone that allowed the company not only to diversify the employees and ensure that they were all treated equally in the workplace but also helped the firm diversify its products in the Asian markets. The research that was conducted in this particular region appears to have given the company a free role of releasing new brands that integrated the Asian culture.
The processes of reach and education in this cultural setting also seems to have played a great role in the personal development of the employees. It was clear that most of these workers would not only manage to work efficiently in the company, but also live in harmony with other people in the society. The productivity and delivery of services and products to the customers also improved because of these measure that were implemented by the firm (Harris, 2009).
Recommendations
Personally I would ha...