Value Creation through Heterogeneous Cultural Team-Based Environments

Previous research has documented cultural heterogeneity within project teams, but still attention mainly centres on project managers who transfer internationally to manage teams of a different culture from their own, or more recently from those who manage virtual teams. Existing literature does not discuss the readiness to manage culturally diverse teams as a result of large-scale EU migration and wider immigration in the UK projectised environments. The objectives of this contribution are: 1) to investigate the factors that influence effective value creation in heterogeneous cultural environments, in both inter- and intra-organisational learning and knowledge creation in the UK project team-based environments, and 2) to illuminate issues of value creation in heterogeneous cultural environments in both public and private team-based project environments. This chapter adds to extant studies of organisational diversity and innovation by elucidating the overwhelming key aspects of cultural heterogeneity and thus explains how challenging it is to affect change in the prevailing praxis, ideas, and values in team-based management.

Innovation through Diversity

Organizations operating on a global scale encounter much pressure to be innovative in order to survive. For many, embracing diversity is a means of enhancing creativity, and thus, success. A common organizational strategy to harness diversity is through structures and cultures that organizational scholars would identify as post-modern alternatives to traditional, tall bureaucracies. While such organizations claim that these structures and cultures cater to diversity, particularly gendered diversity, they can often operate to mitigate gendered equality. This occurs because organizations, despite their best intentions and efforts, reinscribe masculine norms of working and organizing. This chapter examines two highly recognizable technology organizations, Google and Facebook, and closely attends to the ways in which their structures and cultures privilege masculinity.

The Role and Value of Diversity to Learning Organizations and Innovation

Learning organizations are environments promoting individual and team learning capabilities. Learning organization concepts, embraced by a growing number of organizations throughout the world, are strategies for competing in dynamic economic environments. Globally, leaders across varying industries continue to strive to build learning organizations that improve effectiveness and possess an ability to continuously evolve. Learning organizations depend on effective communication, a chief component of leadership influence. They also require thinking from as many perspectives as possible, in order to change and grow in response to anticipated and existing external pressures. These perspectives emerge from the variety of experiences coming from diverse individuals, and leaders must recognize these as critical resources in organizations' ability to learn, manage change, and facilitate innovation. This chapter explores learning organization variables, arguing that diversity and leadership communication are important co-factors in successfully implementing learning organization principles leading to innovation.

A History of How U.S. Academics, Laws, and Business Have Created the Current Approach to Organizational Diversity with Some Ideas for Moving Forward

The purpose of this chapter is to clearly define and address the original intended usage of terms among academicians, the law, and businesses regarding diversity: workforce diversity (cultural diversity and gender diversity) and global diversity (cultural diversity and multicultural diversity). The proposed comprehensive Guidelines for Diversity Training Program as common ground to shared gain takes into consideration different paradigms of various parties (academicians, politicians, and practitioners) in two ways. First, the Diversity Training Program utilizes the academicians' rhetorical definitions of diversity, incorporates the legality component of diversity, and transforms it into a functional strategy to assist firms with hiring diverse competent staffs who possess the appropriate KSAOs qualifications as common ground to shared gain. Second, the Diversity Training Program starts with diversity from the beginning (with the recruiting and selecting), supports diversity through its process (with diversity appreciation), and continues to promote diversity thereafter (with mentorship).

Realizing Race

Media representations are for most of us a window on the world. We hear, see, or otherwise experience forms of culture through mass distributed imagery, music, news, fashion, and film, among other media. The U.S. is the global leader in the distribution of media, accounting for one-third of more than $30 billion annually in worldwide film distribution alone. Media representations from the U.S. are distinctive and carry signs of the country's long struggle with race and equality. International college students with little exposure to the U.S. outside of its depiction in exported media come here with racial perceptions that can be detrimental to their own and the college experiences of others, namely African American men. Girded by two qualitative studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, this chapter examines how media representations can flavor cross-cultural interactions, and what implications these interactions may have for campus climate, as well as cross-cultural learning opportunities for both international and underrepresented domestic student groups.

Access within the Classroom through Universal Design for Learning and Key Learning Elements

Much has been done to assure that social justice is achieved by providing equal opportunity for access to education, but less has been done to provide equal opportunity for learning success. This chapter addresses how an organizational trainer/faculty (instructor) may become an Equal Opportunity Instructor for Learning Success (EOILS). In particular, it provides guidance for how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Elements of Learning may be combined in an innovative manner to design and implement classes that will provide equal opportunity for learning success. This is accomplished by presenting the UDL Principles and Elements of Learning while showing how course improvements may be made. There are three examples resulting in the final implementation that incorporates significant use of UDL Principles and Elements of Learning. Faculty and organizational trainers (training and development) around the world would likely benefit from the use of UDL.

Preparation and Assessment of Individuals to Work with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Others

Education, in any setting, must prepare individuals to sensitively relate to and productively collaborate with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Individuals (CLDI) on multiple levels in various contexts. Undergirded in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and constructivism, the study upon which the chapter is based, uses narrative analysis to determine resonant concepts: level appropriate key understandings derived by learners as a result of interactions (with peers and instructor, course activities and materials) within a course or program of study. Learners must unravel information, make sense of interactions, engage in critical reflection, and come to understandings upon which they act as citizens. Thus, learning takes place in the context of critical reflection and self and societal confrontations. Analysis of a capstone assignment in a course that prepares pre-service and in-service teachers to work with CLDI evidenced four clusters of resonant concepts relating to foundations of education, awareness, response, and advocacy.

Engineering Justice

This chapter addresses how the field of engineering has the potential of being a major force for social justice and how that may be accomplished. With their placement in a wide-range of occupations and job sites and with engineering professionals from many diverse countries, engineers are strategically located for societal impact. Engineers are naturally suited for problem solving and this propensity can be awakened to issues broader than those advanced by an employer or client. Educators can help engineers to think critically about how to think in socially just ways and how solutions will affect people. This chapter demonstrates how educational and training programs may be built around the understanding of the engineering profession and of the use of innovative instructional strategies that inspire and excite an engineer during the learning process. This chapter includes examples of instructional modules that may be used to accomplish these goals.

Globalizing Migration Dialogue

In this chapter, the authors examine how working with diverse international communities to explore migration history and experiences using oral history and community-service learning pedagogy as well as research practices creates a model for transformational dialogue and understanding regarding difference and diversity. The Empowerment and Migration project focused on two activities: a two-city exhibition on “Citizenship and Migration,” involving migrants from Los Angeles and Marseilles, and the E&M Website, which offers migrants, educators, researchers, associations, and NGOs a global forum for education, dialogue, and research regarding immigrant experiences. The project included student work from California State University Dominguez Hill in Los Angeles and from the Lycée Jean-Baptiste Brochier in Marseilles and immigrant contributions from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. The authors qualitatively examine the project's goals of reducing defensiveness by promoting reflective practice, collaborative multicultural skill mastery, and practices for building and sustaining positive cross-cultural rapport.

Cross-Cultural Adaptation Challenges to Management Innovation in Multinational Business Context

With economic development and globalization, many multinational enterprises have been established. Because of the cultural and economic context differences, traditional management strategies could not be effectively implemented in multinational companies. Therefore, management innovation is necessary for those companies to achieve business success. Various studies on multinational management seem focused on differences in business environments and cultures between countries and comparative management styles. However, few studies have paid attention to the process of cross-cultural adaptation and transformation through day-to-day practices in multinational enterprises. Therefore, based on the concept of management innovation and the integrative theory of cross-cultural adaptation, this chapter intends to begin building a model to explore management innovation in multinational enterprises from the perspective of cross-cultural adaptation. Qualitative data was collected from Chinese-owned multinational companies. The results support the model conceptually and provide suggestions for further studies.