Cultural Differences: How to Achieve Competitive Advantage?

Abstract

In the era of globalization, cross-border mergers and acquisitions are playing vital role to expand brand in the competitive market for which the companies outgrow their original cultural boundaries. At the same time, there are many other factors for which companies get employees from different cultures, for instance, recruitment and selection policy, market expansion strategy, leadership style, the provisions of the ethical guide, and so on; therefore, the management teams of the companies have face new and unfamiliar challenges. In this context, this research paper will focus on the impact of having different cultures in an organization, the responsibility of the leaders to control the employees, the advantages of having different cultures in an organization, the sensitive issues for having different cultures and so on. In addition, this paper will assess the challenges of having different cultures in the organizations and recommend alternative solutions, and action plan to gain competitive advantages by capturing the strengths of the best talent.

Introduction

The key objective of this research paper is to discuss how a manager should handle the differences of a culture, strengths of having multiple cultures in the organizations, the process to gain competitive advantage considering cultural strengths and so on. However, the researcher has scope to identify current situation, and set priorities to suggest an action plan to overcome the companies from the dilemmas related with management of the employees of the different cultural backgrounds. This report will pursue case study approach and use the scenario of organizational culture of Procter & Gamble, Credit Suisse, and UBS Bank to describe how to achieve competitive advantage by focusing on cultural strengths. This method depicts in-depth, multi-faceted explorations of complex aspects for which it is a very useful approach in the fields of organizational behavior and real-life context. On the other hand, the content of this mini research paper will take from the secondary sources because it would not be possible to collect primary data through interview from the management of P&G, Credit Suisse, and UBS Bank.

Business situation

Sun (137) pointed out that the culture is a coordination of values, norms, beliefs, postulations and customs, shared by the collective individuals within a common platform as a group originated from a country or region or organized under a same banner of social, political, religion or professional organization where the individuals perform and react in the same manner. He considered culture as a ‘software’ while the organization treated as a ‘hardware’ and the managers are supposed to learn with awareness to understanding how the each element of the ‘software’ works complying the ‘hardware’ in order to bring better performance of the shared values, beliefs, interactions, organizational structure and control systems to generate standard behavioral norms. For managers, the best way to understanding and foresee how the culture differs from one to another’ the framework of cultural orientation identifies six core factors that all the groups have to deal and determine in order to gathering efficiency the six key factors are relationship to the environment, approach of action, relationships among individuals, human nature, time and space. People from different culture would act and deal in different ways for the key factors and the managers would generate a combination cultural system that would bring better performance

Handle Cultural Differences in an Organization

The changing nature of business operation has increase in global activities of both in the native and multinational organizations where the organizational behavior imposed additional responsibility to the managers to align with a better understanding of culture diversity and its impact on the organization. The cultural backgrounds of the employees in an organization remarkably influence the assumptions regarding the process of work and method of interact with their co-workers, although the influence of cultural differences is very insightful within the organization and sometimes found in hidden condition that results in profound and irrevocable conflicts and trap into unexploited potential. Thus, handle cultural differences in an organization is a potential issue from the perspectives of managers, where the managers are emphasized to understanding management behavior to the cultural differences.

DiStefano and Martha (3) pointed out four cross-cultural arenas that managers needed to put into practice in the international management, the managers needed to understand their individual culture that they belong from and how it diverge from other employees as demonstrated in the figure below:

Decision for every sequence of the four presented in above figure necessity prepared and implemented within the cultural boundaries, the Arena-1 and Arena-2 indicates individual level where managers would efficiently interact with the people from other cultures and the employees from dissimilar cultures would bring different expectations regarding their interaction and skills that depend on understanding and building cultural diversity. In the figure, the Arena-3 and Arena-4 represents the organizational level where the managers would deign and develop a harmonized system for interaction that would ultimately guide the process of coordinated behavior of the employees, but managers must take into account where the system complies or contradicts with the cultural dimension settled in the individual level.

In case of Arena-1 and Arena-3 for one-way interaction, the managers required to assess the progress attained in the individual level from the culture that already put into practice and then redesign the cultural context with successful execution acceptable to the one-way transactions with new context mixed culture. At the same time, managers must develop the system multi-way transactions with better understanding of the cultural differences, broader understanding, and better integration by mitigating conflicts and contradiction in the organizational level that would generate superior cultural orientations.

Impact of Different Cultures in an Organization

Ghemawat and Sebastian (7) provided a systematic review to assess the effects of cultural differences in an organization from pointing to it impacts on four categories of global flows such as information flow, people’s integration, products innovation, and capital engagement while Hauke (3) kept his efforts to identify the impact of cultural difference on the knowledge management within the organization. This section of the research paper would analyze the impact of different cultures in an organization from the following perspectives:

Impact of Cultural Difference on Information Flow

Ghemawat and Sebastian (7) added that the linguistic differences are the most constructive proxy of cultural differences that work in the way of quantifying the shocks of language barriers to ensure the free flow of information in order to demonstrate the strength of attaining international telephone calls that organizations have to response to the overseas customers. While the organizations have multi-linguistic human resources, they could successfully serve the purpose of information flow with better understanding and easygoing manner that customers feel very convenient.

It has evidenced from the European data that the strength of telephone calls duration between countries are only 20% of the attendants share through the native speaking while the 80% have to choice a common language that both parties are familiar. The analysis of the impact of language barriers to ensure hindrance free information flows illustrated that the same language for interaction between two companies would increases the magnitude of knowledge flows among the geographic regions where the organizations are willing to entry (Hauke 3). At the same time, the language barriers are more agreeable to quantification that can generate scope for easily think; mitigate misunderstanding, misinterpretation and unwillingness to sharing information within the cultural boundaries while the access to easy information would assist the customers for decision-making.

Impact of Cultural Difference on People

The research with the international business networks illustrated that the cultural differences have greater impact on the people flows, the European migration data evidenced that 60% people move to the country with same religion while 40% people moves in the countries with same language. Such flow of people remarkably influence the international trade with information flows pattern of business operation as well as investment where the past opportunistic business experience contribute to the economy of the migrated country with new business entry, new investment and diverse experience including their assets transfer.

Impact of Cultural Difference on Product Flows

In the international trade, the cultural factors have direct impact on the product and service flows where language is the prime factor that evidenced increasing bilateral trade among the countries with same language, on the contrary, language barriers is more alarming while superior quality of products and services face tremendous obstacles that the inferior due to language difference. Religion is the next cultural factor the impact on the product and service flow in the international trade, Hofstede’s cultural framework illustrated the linkage religion with trade flows where common religion forms same values and preference and the customers look for products from the countries with same religion and turn the cultural differences as an impediment to trade.

Impact of Cultural Difference on Capital Flows

Hofstede’s cultural framework illustrated that the cultural factors have greater influence on the foreign investment flows, foreign market entry and patterns of business operation whether it goes through joint venture, independent foreign entry or merger and acquisition, for capital investment, in order to avoid higher uncertainty, the firms prefer to penetrate in the countries with less cultural distance. Although the multinationals today drives to move their capital flow for the emerging economy, but they always consider the large power distance preference while the cultural difference increased the multinationals prefer to have joint venture rather than interdependent entry.

Strength Points of Different Cultures in an Organization

The technological development and the weave of globalization have generated vast economic integration among nations, and the increasing incorporation of political boundaries is shifting with collaborations and cooperation between the public and private sectors in every nation where the governments and business firms are emphasizing to strength points of different cultures in an organization. Although there are many challenges to managing different cultures in an organization, but successful integration of multiple cultures would enable the organization to take the challenge of shifting dynamics of modern business by establishing and maintaining different cross border economic approaches, geopolitical shifts and socio-cultural relations those are experiencing over the border boundaries. Esty, Richard and Marcie (35) added that the collaboration of different cultures could be beneficial for both the organization and its associates and employers by ensuring workplace diversity, increasing productivity, boosting marketing scopes, flexibility and creativeness, search for global talents and recruitment and such attributes of the organization would be considered strength point of different cultures in an organization.

Gudykunst and Nishida (7) added that in an organization with different cultures, the strength of the individual cultural identities would pressure the individual values that interact with the culture of others and would positively generate a collective values where the individualistic values may not dominate over the corporate culture that generated by amalgamation of diverse cultures. Steen (3) under the multicultural contexts in an organization, the individuals would fit their own cultural and ethnic identities in an integrated guided by the diversity management of the human resource that would result following strength points for the combination of different cultures in an organization-

• Due different cultures are integrated in the multinationals, the overall degree of delegation would decrease, the managers in the multi-cultural organization are more likely to delegate whether their subordinates are from same culture or diverse;
• In the organization with different culture the overall degree of utility and efforts of the employees would increase with higher satisfaction and elevated motivation regardless to the native culture or the culture that his manager belongs to;
• Due to integration multiple culture the degree of information collection or data gathering would dramatically increase, such flow of information would turn into additional strength for the organizations;
• The managers in the organizations with different culture would get greater opportunity for experimentation, same task could be given to the few employees from diverse culture and then the outcomes could compare the performance that would assist to identifying best performers cultural identity;
• The training for cultural diversity management would take time; the employees from different culture would quickly fit with the corporate culture that would experience
• Due to the availability of different cultural, it would be easier for the organization to communicate with the most comprehensible language that the target customers prefer, such communicating process would generate more strength for the organization.

Achieving Competitive Advantage by Focusing on Cultural Strengths

Apfelthalera, Helen and Robert (1) stated that the multinationals working with different cultural combination has to overcome their cultural boundaries while large-scale companies possibly will try to capture the paramount strengths of gathering best talents and utilizing advanced technology that the corporate culture of twenty-first century offers pointing to the complexities of cross-cultural association in order to achieve competitive advantage. To address the question how the organizations could attain competitive advantage by focusing on cultural strengths, it is essential to investigate with the cultural components those contribute the managers to mitigate the complexities of cross-cultural combination that would ultimately assist to achieve competitive advantage in the global marketplace strongly aligned with increasing competition, complexity, and environmental uncertainty.

Cox and Stacy (45) pointed out that the most recent business trend of globalization along with the increasing pressure of ethnic and gender diversity emphasized the managers to keep their enthusiastic awareness on the management of cultural differences while the dominant literature of management recommended that the organizations must value diversity to improve its efficiency. The unambiguous linkage between managing different cultures and achieving organizational competitiveness is in fact a hot topic where the leading academics, consultants, and business giants are strongly advocating to emphasizing the approach of ‘valuing diversity’ in order to manage and administer diverse workforce with particular focus to the competitive advantages. Cox and Stacy (46) also added that the goal of corporate social responsibility of the business firms is only the area that payback from the management of diversity, there are specific focus on six areas where reasonable management would be capable to generate competitive advantage and the areas are cost, creativity, resource acquisition, marketing, managerial flexibility along with problem-solving activities.

The advantages of having different cultures in an organization

Multinational companies expand the business in the high competitive global marketplace for which these organizations have to handle many challenges and uncertainties in the day-to-day performance, such as, communication problems, fixing price and so on. In this context, the organizations can gain competitive advantages using the best talent from the different cultural background, for instance, the companies can enhance creativity and foster innovation, improve knowledge to operate in different culture and reduce labor costs of labor turnover by recruiting talented employees from local marketplace (Robbins and Timothy 540). The employees from the different social, cultural and educational background can easily understand the needs of a wide range of buyers and can communicate in accordance with the situation; in addition, they will play vital role to negotiate price in a simple business deal (Robbins and Timothy 540). Therefore, the key advantages of having different cultures in the organizations are:

• Enlarged Productivity: The employees from the different social, cultural and educational backgrounds get the opportunity to work together towards a common vision using different sets of expertise that ignites their loyalty and raises their retention as well as productivity (Robbins and Timothy 540);
• Enhanced creativity and problem solving: As the organizational people come from different educational background, they have knowledge in different areas; therefore, they can share and explore their creative ideas each other in accordance their own styles, which help the companies improve market position in the international marketplace;
• Attract and Retain talent: the companies have tried to develop workplace safety issues, introduce ethical practice and implement good organizational culture as a part of diversity management; as a result, the employees get outstanding environment to explore their knowledge, skills and good performance for the companies. In this context, the employees would be unwilling to leave the companies due to having good workplace; therefore, the companies will be able to increase retention rate;
• Communication and handle customers: Diversity and inclusion will assist to develop synergy in the team members and improve communication skills; therefore, it will open a new dimension for the business organization to diverse customer base by handling the customers more effectively;
• Litigation expenses: The management can avoid the cost of litigation;
• Position in the marketplace: It will help the companies boost market share and create a satisfied diverse customer base in the international market due to having employees from different cultures; moreover, the multinational companies will be able to adopt culture of the local people easily and can offer products and services considering local demand and culture

The sensitive issues for having different cultures

Berry et al. (6) stated that communicating with employees of different cultures is often unpleasant or burdensome for all parties; in addition, it has both positive and negative impact on the organization. Sensitive issues for having different cultures can easily make discomfort in intercultural contexts; however, they further argued that staff of different countries could not understand the process to communicate with each other. At the same time, some information is sensitive or confidential for which the management should deal with this issue more carefully; therefore, the management needs to communicate with particular group of people, which may have negative impact on the organizational community. However, Berry et al. (6) further stated that cultural sensitivity is extremely complex procedure

Analysis

P&G is one of the largest and most innovative companies, which offers high-quality products to meet consumer needs worldwide; it introduces unique and widely accepted corporate culture to be an outstanding performer in the global market. According to the annual report of Procter & Gamble, diversity is the DNA of its business since it endeavors to build an inclusive workplace, which gives equal access to information, progress and opportunity to all employees; moreover, it seeks to leverage its global team of associates. Procter & Gamble (1) reported that this company is truly a global company for which it is essential to realize, embrace and operate in a multicultural world; however, it has set a bold vision for diversity and inclusion. The management of this company gathers the feedback of the associates through formal or informal surveys with intent to solve problems of the employees; in addition, this process plays vital role to develop communication, enhance diversity journey and make practices on diversity and fairness.

P&G gained competitive advantage for the nonstop development of the business in the global market because of diversity management; therefore, all employees valued and perform at their peak as they can realize their importance in the workplace; at the same time, the company also valued the skills and experiences of the employees (Lacy 1). Most importantly, five of the 11 Board of Directors of this company are female leaders; more than 43% of the total managers are women; therefore, this company honored as a top company for executive women by NAFE; moreover, Diversity Officer Linda received the Diamond Leadership Award to support diversity initiatives along with influence others to follow. However, the next table gives more information in this regard:

It has 50% female employees in the UK whereas only 37% female employees in the global workforce; on the other hand, P&G provides equal opportunities for the disable, gay and lesbian people. It has already prepared organizational strategy with intent to implement and continue programs to develop lives of the human resources; furthermore, diversity management team responsible to suggest the senior managers on the strategy implementation process by which it would be possible for the company to reach its diversity objectives.

According to the diversity and inclusion reports, P&G has large global consumers for which it needs to recruit employees from global markets; therefore, it has designed recruitment process to select top talent from diverse backgrounds and cultures; however, leaders of P&G also consists of diverse population. However, the following figure shows the focus areas of this company:

As this company recruits employees from diverse cultures, it becomes easy to handle the challenges related with language problems, pricing difficulties, along with cultural differences to gain competitive advantages both in national and international market. Here, it is important to note that the leaders of this company have considered values-based leadership models and they followed a broad approach for the human resource management, for instance, P&G introduced Flex@Work strategy in 2012; this is a flexible approach, which ensures flexible environment and supports personalized flexibility to exploit productivity (Lacy 1).

This strategy gives the opportunity to the employees to participate in the action plan, design work plan, communicate with the managers at any time, meet personal needs, change start or finish time, and so on; therefore, it can be said that P&G has not considered autocratic leadership style and it used more democratic and values-based leadership style. However, the next figure shows that high performing culture and passionate leadership is the key of organizational success:

Therefore, this company had received Catalyst Award 1998 to go forward and empower women in the workplace; in addition, it was ranked top 10 positions for recruitment & retention, people with disabilities, Asian-Americans, Latinos and global diversity in accordance with the survey of the DiversityInc (Procter & Gamble 1). However, this company designs unique recruitment process by joining strong internal competition and fair endorsement to transform organizational culture to the new staff; in addition, the core of the cultural framework based on the set of values, beliefs and principles.

Credit Suisse Group

It has already developed more than 40 internal employee networks all over the world with intent to remove cultural difference to create an environment in the job place to exchange knowledge and experience; however, it runs by the workforce and gives priority to all employees irrespective of race and culture (Credit Suisse Group 1). However, Credit Suisse Group (19) mentioned that it has more than 530 offices and 22 booking centers in 50 nations; therefore, this financial institute has about 2000 relationship managers to develop close relations with global clients as well as stakeholders of the company. According to the diversity and inclusion reports, this financial institute has large global clients for which it is essential to recruit staff from the countries where it has business operation; so, this organization has diverse workforce, for instance, it has over 40 percent employees in Switzerland, and rest 60 percent from the rest of the world particularly from the Americas. However, the following figure Credit Suisse employees by region in 2012:

At present, it has more than 46,300 employees from 100 countries whereas this figure was 47,400 employees in 2012; however, this information indicates that it has taken downsizing or layoff decision. In addition, Credit Suisse Group (19) stated that it was essential to cut job in the time of global recession to reduce operating costs in some extent; consequently, the lower level employees faced tension related with survival syndrome for which the performance of the expatriates had hampered.

Kesoglou (1) stated that this organization is a platform of diverse ideas, perspectives, and cultures to become successful in the global market; in addition, it focuses on the expertise and cultural diversity as it is committed to promoting an inclusive place of work where everyone is treated with self-respect and get chance to explore their views and innovative ideas. Kesoglou (2) added that Credit Suisse considers the greater skills and strong cultural diversity of its workforce is the most strength of the company that provides enhanced opportunity to attain its organisational objectives; therefore, the company provides highest emphasis to uphold highest dignity and respect to every individual regardless to the age, colour, gender, or ethnic orientation.

Credit Suisse is strongly committed to its workplace dignity and to put into practice it has set out ‘conduct guidance’ with uncompromising policy arguing that the organisation would demonstrate zero tolerance to all sorts of discrimination and harassment and to implementing such policy it has already introduced online training program for the employees incorporating it policy with the local legislation. The Company for its thirteen Asian markets evidenced with completely distinctive and very diverse cultural mix of employees that could not match one another although most of the demography of the Asian markets consist with more homogenous population while Australia, Malaysia and Singapore consist with more multi-cultural environment and the company designed holidays suitable to every ethic group.

The prime objective of this financial institute is to attract, retain, reward, and motivate the employees and to develop good organizational culture by providing extensive compensation and facilities; as a consequence, it needs to expend a large budget for the compensation, which creates financial problem at the time of global financial crisis.

• Representation of Female workforce: this financial institute does not mention the actual number of female employees; however, more than 33% of the total employees are women, but it is unfortunate that only one member (Pamela Thomas) in the executive board is female (Choudhury & Elisa 1); However, this organisation should increase female representation to become more customer friendly company. In addition, Choudhury & Elisa (1) stated that the female candidates will explore their talent and capture the top level position within the short period though there were only two members Iris Bohnet and Noreen Doyal represent the Board of Directors;
• The organization adopted major changes in the remuneration policy and incentive award plans for the top management and the employees to attract and retain the best talent;
• In addition, it provides more opportunity to the young talent; therefore, 51% young employees stated that they are satisfied with the excellent organizational culture and job responsibility. However, it is a dream job to the 86% employees, while 46% of the total employees are happy with remuneration, and 73% employees can easy communicate with management;
• This financial institute had received numerous award for mitigating problems related with the people from different culture, promoting equal treatment for the LGBT, ensuring safe and healthy working environment without discrimination, reducing harassment, promoting an inclusive working environment and so on. However, it received award from The UK Times and Dave Thomas Foundation for 100 Best Adoption-Friendly Workplaces and score of 100 points in the corporate equality index

The UBS Bank

Initially, it is important to consider the trends of organizational behavior, critical success factors, as well as the strengths of UBS. According to Diversity Careers (1), UBS is an extremely global bank with its operations in more than 50 countries; moreover, it possesses a varied customer base worldwide, for which it is necessary for it to assemble uniformly diverse workforces; conversely, Denise Hebner, local IT chief of the institute, noted that for this reason, diversity should be UBS’s key feature. The organizational behavior of this institute is quite incomprehensible; however, the organization possesses a delegated decision making system together with a democratic leadership style. It is important to state that leadership style is the critical success factor and strength of UBS, since from 2002 to 2006, it practically enhanced its leadership, impelling to the successful enhancements among worker, groups, and economic performance; moreover, such organizational behavior was reflected in a Harvard case study, and UBS got the Best Company for Leaders (Europe) 2005 honor.

Roebuck (6) has pointed out that UBS has introduced several diversity connections in 2000, which comprised females, employed parents, workers from diverse racial backdrops, as well as physical handicaps; on the other hand, according to Diversity Careers (1), this organization has made cultural responsiveness network models for encouraging the cultural diversity issues in the organizations. UBS (19) noted that it has 891 offices in 56 nations; in addition, last year, this organization had 36 percent employees in Switzerland, 35% in the USA, and 17% in other European states; moreover, it recruited 62628 workers last year, whilst the worker turnover was above 11% in Switzerland, nearly 14% in the USA, and above 15% in Asia Pacific.

It is important to state that UBS has to face numerous complex challenges while ensuring diversity in its departments throughout the nations in which it operates; to be specific, the administrative authorities of the bank noted that these challenges deter the formation of diversity, making it intricate to oversee, govern, or handle workers in longer term after recruiting ethnic minorities. On the other hand, UBS (21) has pointed out that the subordinate policy-makers, immediate bosses, and coworkers habitually find it excessively strenuous to respect workers from diverse races, to combat against unfairness, or to cheer and endorse extensiveness; therefore, it seems moderately logical that it is far harder to execute the tasks of diversity implementation than merely to articulate it.

The annual report of this globally recognized financial institution has further noted that the employers’ functioning evolutions or bank’s yields and proceeds are obstructed when ensuring diversity because of a number of dilemmas; to be specific, ensuring diversity causes associates or coworkers failing to muddle through unusual cultures and races, ultimately ensuing in high staff turnover and poor outcome level. UBS has put forward concerns that such troubles may also result in depletion of cash in schooling workers, elevated overheads due to unfairness, chauvinism, grumbles, and ensuing litigation made in courts against this bank for verifying these assertions; in addition, court dealings will always be pricey and failing to refute these assertions could bring about elevated fines or sentences inflicted. According to UBS Bank (33), it has been identified that a massive obscurity that a bank trying to ascertain diversity could confront is the menace of pessimistic philosophical patterns amid coworkers and cruel demeanors, which are applied to natives from dissimilar races; the bank confirmed that these activities are capable of wounding functioning relations and indulging self-worth and general effectiveness.

Several researchers carrying out firsthand investigations in such organizations have made it clear that the pessimistic philosophical patterns or cruel demeanors at offices might contain insularity, categorizing human resources, and practicing discrimination with them; as a result, it is extremely essential for such firms to weed out the probable problems and solve those at their soonest convenience. In addition, UBS Bank (15) has intensely recognized an extremely primary dispute that banks taking initiative to structure diverse labor force must judge critically; to argue particularly, this primary dispute is the improper communication patterns amid human resources of unusual ethnic backgrounds within the organization, which subsequently causes the foremost trouble in this particular field in an assortment of methods. The annual report of this renowned financial institution had further suggested that some employees ignore the diversity concerns, leading to malfunction in sharing themselves in those circumstances, causing breakdown to satisfy diverse patrons by inadequately looking after transnational distribution channels, and accepting imperfect stratagems, thus slowing down progression and stifling pioneering observations.

Solution

Alternative

This research paper suggests the following alternatives to deal with the people of different ethnic background and develop good organizational culture:

Table 1: Alternatives for the future development. Source: Self generated.

Assessment

In order to create a customer-responsive culture, the service providers have to realize the cultural differences among the employees and endeavors to point out them through introducing external or formal cultural communications and presenting the standard interference within these parameters. It has already noted that companies can develop a diverse workplace by engaging employees from different culture for which the company can provide outstanding service since the employees will be empowered to comprehend diverse customers’ requirements, for example, Japanese customers may feel comfortable to seek assistance from Japanese staff, and black customers feel comfortable asking assistance from black employees.

Recommendation as a researcher

In order to achieve competitive advantage by focusing on cultural strengths effectively, all firms should link cultural differences with human resource supervision and assessment in service, grouping, placement, sequence array, achievement supervision, along with wage models; so, organizations should engender brainwaves and gratifications in addition to commitment of assorted co-workers to enhance an inclusive standpoint in the offices. Conversely, the organizations should set up outfitted yardsticks manifestly and neutrally, by professionally corresponding to decisive dealings disregard of chauvinism; alternatively, bosses must be aware of the difference between elegant and obnoxious demeanors, and they should originate handy rejoinder with reference to sundry labor-forces they control; however, this should be in perspective of the diversification-schema commenced by the upper administration. However, in order to achieve competitive advantage by focusing on cultural strengths, it is important for the companies to focus on the following recommendations:

• Focusing immensely on straightforward and deliberate vocalizations:

While addressing to human resources in an organization where there is presence of cultural differences, in sake of giving relieve to the ethnic minorities with unusual linguistic accents, the bosses must deliver little, explicable, and uncomplicated words; furthermore, it is also essential to be wary that the boss does not chat hurriedly generating high-level of perplexity and misapprehension inside.

• Authenticating and reassuring the dialogues again and again:

Business leaders should try to circumvent peril of ambiguous misstatements, and try to authenticate the idea conveyed repetitively; moreover, business leaders would be able to do this by wanting to know from the staff whether she realized the discussion, instead of shouting whether she was able to understand the key argument; since subordinates possibly will keep silent for staying well-mannered.

• Trying to prevent extreme form of glee, staying broadminded through admiration of the cultural differences, and preventing others from trying to impose extreme control over ethnic minorities:

The leaders must be attentive regarding the distinctiveness of different types of humorous practices in different races and stay forbearing and cautious that any such ludicrous humor does not upset others; in addition, the boss should respect cultural divergences and if he gets infuriated over any staff, he must first calm down before giving notice to the staff’s statements.

• In every sphere of the working environment, the bosses of the business organizations should remain commiserate to subordinate’s sentiments and aid them to remain contented; in addition, bosses need to be gentle to their subordinate’s activities even if they perform something wrongly rather than following their instructions.
• Keeping away from native terminologies and preventing creation of novel lexis:

On the other hand, it is highly essential for the businesses to consider the fact that a subordinate member of the staff who came from a different culture or ethnic minority might not be to a huge extent accustomed to aboriginal English language; therefore, managers should not deliver colloquial speech, and give elucidation of noteworthy bureaucratic terminologies in the inauguration.

• Staying courteous and calm besides of keeping away from using vulgarism:

It is highly essential to maintain a good association and remain congenial with all the member subordinates; therefore, the top management should compulsorily be decent and easygoing; in addition, if in any case, the staff fails to comprehend a single idea and repetitively keep on asking clarification on it, the boss must not, in anyway, verbalize in strident tone.

• Staying remarkably vigilant and perceptive throughout conversation with workers:

It is highly important for corporate leaders to watch out while conversing with someone recruited from minorities; additionally, boss needs to be predominantly alert in course of providing messages to subordinates by phone or mail or even in course of carrying out any vocal dialogue; moreover, bosses need to care if subordinates cannot see them, or request for urgent clarification.

Action Plan

In order to achieve competitive advantage by focusing on cultural strengths, it is fundamental for the business organizations to try to implement the following action plans and lead the organization in a calculated way:

Table 2: Evaluating and implementing the action plans. Source: Self generated.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be said that the organizations need to recruit employees from different social, cultural and racial background; at the same time, the management teams have to struggle for developing diverse workplaces for the employees to ensure good workplace environment. Therefore, this research paper assessed the present situation of the organizations to handle several challenges and explained the process by which the company can use cultural strengths to achieve competitive advantage in the competitive marketplace.

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