RESEARCH

PROPOSAL
NAME: SAMIA YOUNAS

ROLL NO: 15-BS-R-46

SECTION: A

SUBJECT: SOCIALRESEARCH METHOD

SUBMITTED TO: MISS SIDRA IRFAN

DATED: MAY 29th, 2017

ABSTRACT:
Cultural diversity has increase tremendously in organizations during the past few decades. Due
to increased globalization, companies nowadays are hiring culturally diverse population in order
to increase their market value and to get a better and comparatively easy access in international
markets. But cultural diversity comes with its disadvantages as well. One of the biggest
disadvantages cultural diversity could cause to an organization is to decrease its productivity by
decreasing the performance level of multicultural teams. We see that the biggest advantage of
cultural diversity can turn into the biggest threat for the organizational productivity if not
handled with care. Multicultural teams can show best of the results if provided with suitable
organizational context. Other important factors that affect team effectiveness include
demographical variables discussed in the literature review. Although the effects of cultural
diversity has been studied in detail. But a little work has done on how to measure the effect of
diversity climate on team effectiveness. Moreover, the responses of employees are determined by
the context of the organization. Responses on the personal biases of the employees are not
known. This research proposal highlights such questions and objectives that tend to answer afore
mentioned questions in order to provide suggestions based on empirical evidences through which
effectiveness of culturally diverse teams could be improved. The research is designed to meet its
objectives using qualitative techniques for collection of the data as well as the analysis of the
data. Semi-structured interviews and in-depth interviews will be conducted to know the personal
views of the employees along with participant observation to observe the training sessions
regarding cultural diversity.

TITLE:
Cultural diversity and effectiveness of multicultural teams

INTRODUCTION

Over the last three decades, diversity in organizations has increased rapidly. Keeping in view the
changing nature of business world, many countries from different corners of the world has
passed resolutions to enhance organizational diversity in their respective countries. Therefore,
research on diversity in organizations has also increased to support methods of global diversity.
Global diversity management is "the planning, coordination and implementation of management
strategies, policies, initiatives and development activities with the aim of accommodating diverse
sets of working in organizations with international workforces”(Collins 2012) At one hand
diversity research suggests ways to improve selection and promotion criteria and on the other
hand it contributes to the field of organizational behavior. It is rooted in many disciplines like
sociology and psychology. In simple words the study of diversity climate has become very
important to improve efficiency of diverse workforce.

When culturally diverse employees work together as a team to achieve a goal; the differences in
their opinions due to diversified thinking and beliefs may hinder the development of team unity.
Workers may have different reasons to indulge in conflict that may or may not be related to
organizations work. For instance, a South African and an Indian employee might argue with
each other over a cricket match lost by India to South Africa. Likewise, workers may have
historical and regional reasons to conflict with each other. Whatever the cause might be, the fact
is that interpersonal conflict might result in low productivity of the employees.

Diversity influences teams in two opposing ways. One way is that people work together with
those they find similar to them. It could be in the terms of attitudes and beliefs. Second,
according to social identity and categorization theory, people categorize themselves into groups.
To summarize, workplace diversity can be both, an asset and a liability for the organization.
Increasing ethnic and gender diversity are turning managers' attention to the management of
cultural differences. The management literature has suggested that organizations should value
diversity to enhance organizational effectiveness. (Cox and Stacy 1991) Despite increased
attention towards diversity, we know little about how the dynamics of distributed teams differ
from those of their collocated counterparts and how existing models of teams apply to this new
form of work. (Hinds and Mortensen 2005)

A lot of research has been conducted to find out that what attributes of team performance are
effected by diversity. The need of the hour is to find out the mechanism through which cultural
diversity affects team dynamics and also the conditions through which it can help to increase
effectiveness in team performance. Moreover it is important to find out the personal biases of the
employees behind certain responses related to diversity. And how much effective role training
sessions can perform in reshaping the attitudes of employees towards diversity climate.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

 Why is it so that cultural diversity has positive effect on team effectiveness under
one condition and negative effect on the same team under other conditions?

 What conditions are favorable for cultural diversity to generate positive results
under all kinds of circumstances?

 What should be the attributes of a leader whose team is culturally diverse?

 How the training sessions and seminars can be improved in order to reshape
positively the views of multicultural team members regarding diversity?
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES:

 To explore the personal biases of the members of multicultural teams regarding diversity
 To find out the methods that can help to improve the mechanism of training sessions
regarding diversity.
 To find out the conditions that favorable for cultural diversity to generate positive results
under all kinds of circumstances
 To conduct research qualitatively because most of the research on chosen topic has been
done quantitatively.
 To find out the attributes a team leader should have to avoid negative implication of
workplace diversity on his/her team productivity.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Cultural diversity has grown as a trend in the organizations nowadays due to increase in
globalization. In understanding "cultural diversity" as describing a portion of society rather than
the whole, there is an implication that somehow an invisible "cultural homogeny" can exist, that
diversity is only applicable to a certain group of people (Harrington 2009) Members of these
groups with same culture have similarity in meanings, communications styles and language
which is different from another set of members from belonging to a different cultural group.

Cultural diversity influences workplace in positive as well as negative ways. For instance,
positive effects include a better and easier integration into foreign organizations. Negative effects
may include interpersonal conflicts because workers that are culturally diverse usually have
different values, beliefs, traditions, opinions and customs.
When a team with culturally diverse members aims at completing a task, interpersonal conflicts
may result in lack of collaboration and poor performance by team members. It is not necessary
that these conflicts are related to work only. These conflicts may be backed up by other factors as
well. But as stated earlier, other side of the coin shows a different story. The same culturally
diverse team members may have the tendency to solve a matter in different ways. Since
employees from different corners of the world have different experiences and different
perspectives regarding the same issue, therefore chances are of reaching at an innovative
procedure to deal with the matter. Al-Jenaibi (2011) studied the impact and scope of cultural
diversity in organizations in the UAE. The study showed most of the workers agreed that group
work with culturally diverse people helps “to overcome cultural differences through shared
experiences when working within a team” (insert citation)

One of the most important benefits of having culturally diverse employees is “easy expansion of
business in foreign markets”. Individual workers can prove to be an authenticated source to
gather statistics and knowledge about foreign market and its laws. Diverse workforce can also
help to avoid culture shock by providing information about their respective cultures, traditions
and customs. Otherwise organizations would have to invest time consuming training sessions for
the training of their employees. Thus cultural diversity can result in smother transitions of a
national corporation into a multi-national corporation.

A detail study of the literature reveals that members of multicultural teams require a supportive
organizational context in order to perform at their best. Organizations nowadays are well aware
of the importance of multicultural teams but most of them are not aware of the significance of
the role that their diversity climate performs in motivating or demotivating the employees
working in multicultural teams. Actually, organizations themselves influence the working
patterns, behaviors and performance of their employees at different levels to a great extent. It
may include relation between diversity climate and organization as a whole, diversity perspective
at different departmental levels and lastly the relation between diversity climate and individual
employees. However one thing common in all the levels is that diversity backed up by the
organizational climate plays a vital role in shaping the behaviors of members of multicultural
teams.
An organizations policies and rules shape up the role diversity plays in effective working of
culturally diverse teams. For instance, multicultural teams work at their best when the member
promotes different and innovative styles of thinking. Studies reveal that in some cases members
opt for “integration” i.e. to learn culture in which they are working by keeping in mind the
significance of their own culture. While some opt for “partial marginalization” i.e. is to learn
other culture and show little interest in maintenance of one’s own culture. These decisions are
affected by different types of diversity climates set by organizations. In an organization which
has policy-focused climate, employees have to work according to the organizational culture since
openly practicing one’s own culture is quite uninviting in a policy driven company.

On the other hand in an awareness focused climate, employees are allowed to freely interact
with one another without following strict cultural policies. Since awareness driven organizations
focus on access in new markets and expansion of the business, their policies are not so strict
regarding the employees. They are not required to follow organizational culture at the expense of
their own culture. Whereas engagement focused culture opts for a midway between policy-
focused and awareness focused cultures. It believes that cultural diversity gives rise to
innovative, new and different insights. Here members intend to learn organizations culture but
without ignoring the significance of their own culture. Therefore it can be said that the
integration and partial marginalization (two different behavioral patterns of the employees) are
influenced by engagement and awareness focused cultures and policy focused cultures
respectively. Thus, literature shows that organizational climate either promotes or demotes
diversity that affects performance of multicultural teams. But no work has been done yet on the
vice versa relation i.e. how the diversity perspectives of individuals navigating within a
multicultural team would influence the organizational context as a whole.

Apart from the organizational environment, other factors also affects diversity climate. These
factors include demographical variables as well. These demographical variables could be of race,
class, ethnicity, religion, gender and nationality. “According to Cox (1993), cultural identities

stem from membership in groups that are socioculturally distinct. They are often associated with
particular physical (e.g., skin color), biological (e.g., genitalia), or stylistic (e.g., dress) features,
though these may be more or less identifiable, depending in part on people's choices about
whether and how they wish to be identified by others.” (Ely and Thomas 2001)

Another important factor that affects diversity climate is power. Power status and cultural
identities are related to each other and it is important to study the relation between power and
diversity in organizations. Alderfer in his theory of intergroup relations states that distribution of
power in multicultural teams reflects how people behave and think at work. He stated that
usually identity groups with high status represent the upper level or authoritative channel of the
organization. Thus the demographical construction of a multicultural team and distribution of
power in a multicultural team influences diversity climate. For instance according to some
researchers increasing the number of women in a workgroup would reduce the level of
discrimination against them. Whereas some researchers like Cox argue that increasing the
number of women (i.e. the minority in this case) would threaten the majority (i.e. men in this
case). Hence, discrimination against women would increase as a result in this workgroup.

Likewise, in a group where minority (on the basis of ethnicity) is greater numerically, they
would feel more comfortable as compared to those who are not considered minority because of
their ethnicity. The above discussion shows that several factors influences diversity climate at
workplace. But this literature only reveals the positive and negative effects of cultural diversity,
and different factors that are either in the favor of it or against it. But the answer to the question
that what are those conditions under which diversity promotes or demotes group functioning is
still to be explored. Why is it so that diversity under some conditions results in positive outcomes
at one time and at other times it results in negative outcomes?

During 1990’s, there was a demographic shift towards multicultural workforce in business world.
Afterwards a lot of research has been done to answer the question of how to handle culturally
diverse workforce. But a little work has been done on how to measure the effects of diversity
climate on team effectiveness. As said by Clark “Ironically, some studies have shown that
diversity programs can actually have a negative net effect on the workplace through reinforced
stereotypes, intergroup conflicts, lawsuits, and other undesirable impacts”(Hostager and De
Meuse 2002). Therefore, it is very important to define measures by which effects of diversity
could be determined easily.
Employees are given training to change or reshape their diversity perceptions. But there are very
few measures to check what type of affect is caused by the training; either it was a positive effect
or negative effect. For instance, by noticing the changes in demographics, grievances and
promotions after training, information about the density of the effect could be gained. But there
is no way to measure the changes occurred in individuals views about diversity after training.
Because individual responses are more influenced by the context of organization in which they
work rather than their personal biases and beliefs towards diversity. As research also suggests
that diversity, which is a team input, affects a variety of team processes and affective reactions,
which in turn affect team performance, or the output (Stahl, xfc et al. 2010) Therefore, by
improving this input, the output can also be improved.

METHODOLOGY

Research Design

This research is designed to explore and explain the views of the members of multicultural teams
about diversity due to their personal biases, beliefs, ideas and experiences and not because of the
organizational context. Moreover it intends to explore what should be the purpose of diversity
training sessions, either it should highlight positive role of diversity or a more realistic view.
This research will use qualitative method strategies to explore and explain answers to above
mention questions.

Participants

The targeted population sample for this research will be employees of the organizations that have
culturally diverse climates. The organizations selected will be of different types since the
purpose of this research will be to formulate more general findings. The focus will be only on the
members of multicultural teams. Teams with that fit in all the demographical variables of
diversity would be considered more desirable. Since having all the elements of diversity; such
teams would provide with more refined results. Moreover to address the answer for second
question about the impact of diversity training sessions on the employees, members that would
have recently attended such sessions would be approached. As far as the age of the participants is
concerned, there will be no limit on it.

Data Collection Techniques

The techniques used for data collection would be qualitative. Semi-structured and in-depth
interviews will be used along with participant observation in which my identity will be revealed
to those being observed. Observations will be used to observe the training sessions regarding
diversity in order to get a more clear view of what is being represented to the members of
multicultural teams. Open questions will be asked in interviews. Interviews will be centre on
following type of questions like direct beliefs of participants about diversity, threats and
challenges proposed by diversity, their negative and positive experiences regarding diversity,
their views about diversity after attending seminars and training sessions, etc.

Data Analysis Techniques

Data collected through qualitative techniques would be analyzed by giving a detail reading to
every interview note. It would be helpful to specify certain themes on the basis of which
similarities and differences might be measured.

Ethical Considerations

The participation will be voluntarily and if any of my participants would not e willing to answer
a question or to allow me to use that answer, he/she will not be forced to do so. Detail info about
my research and my objectives would be shared by each participant in order to assure their
comfortability. The interviews will not be recorded without the permission of the interviewee.
The data collected from the participants will be kept confidential and the interview notes will not
be published. In case I publish any section of an interview note, it would be kept anonymous and
would be rephrased so that no one can guess the source of that particular saying. The intended
participants will be asked before the interview for a specific time. A proper place and appropriate
language will be use to make the participant feel comfortable. Personal information asked by the
participants would be limited (necessary for the interview).

Time Scale

The intended time scale for my research will be of six months. However it can vary according to
the availability of my interviewees.

Resources

I will be responsible for conducting the interviews. The data collected will be analyzed only by
me. I will be responsible for a proper meeting place for the interviews unless my interviewee
suggests a place of his/her desire. Moreover, I will attend the training sessions and I will be
responsible for granting the permissions regarding all kinds of access. Therefore, there will not
be any other resource used while undertaking this research project.

SIGNIFICANCE

The significance of the research lies in the increasing trend of globalization and workplace
diversity. A lot of research has been conducted on the positive and negative effects of diversity
on team productivity. But the answer to the question that what are those conditions under which
diversity promotes or demotes group functioning is still to be explored. Why is it so that
diversity under some conditions results in positive outcomes at one time and at other times it
results in negative outcomes? This research is designed to answer this question. Likewise, there
are no parameters defined to measure the effects of diversity climate on team effectiveness.
Therefore, it is very important to define measures by which effects of diversity could be
determined easily; one of the objectives of this research. Moreover training sessions for a better
understanding of diversity are conducted in all the organizations having diverse workforce, but
there are very few measures to check what type of affect is caused by the training; either it was a
positive effect or negative effect. There is no way to measure the changes occurred in individuals
views about diversity after training. This research also intends to provide mechanism for
construction of better training sessions regarding diversity. Lastly, its significance lies in its
objective of providing new insights to promote the diversity culture in diversified workforces by
finding answers to the afore mentioned questions.
REFERENCES

Collins, E. C. (2012). "Global Diversity Initiatives." The International Lawyer 46(4): 987-1006.

Cox, T. H. and B. Stacy (1991). "Managing Cultural Diversity: Implications for Organizational
Competitiveness." The Executive 5(3): 45-56.

Ely, R. J. and D. A. Thomas (2001). "Cultural Diversity at Work: The Effects of Diversity Perspectives on
Work Group Processes and Outcomes." Administrative Science Quarterly 46(2): 229-273.

Harrington, J. (2009). "Thinking Through Diversity." The Journal of Museum Education 34(3): 203-213.

Hinds, P. J. and M. Mortensen (2005). "Understanding Conflict in Geographically Distributed Teams: The
Moderating Effects of Shared Identity, Shared Context, and Spontaneous Communication."
Organization Science 16(3): 290-307.

Hostager, T. J. and K. P. De Meuse (2002). "Assessing the Complexity of Diversity Perceptions: Breadth,
Depth, and Balance." Journal of Business and Psychology 17(2): 189-206.

Stahl, G., et al. (2010). "Unraveling the effects of cultural diversity in teams: A meta-analysis of research
on multicultural work groups." Journal of International Business Studies 41(4): 690-709.