In a business world, there has been always a competition between different organisations and this is the reason why companies always formulate strategies so that they can eliminate their opponents out of the business (Kamp, 2004, p.15). Over the years, companies have relied on competitive advantage to ensure that they have long-term survival and making of profit.
The resources available, market strategy and its size are the major factors that determine competitive advantage in the organisation. One of the major sources of v competitive advantage has been incorporation of cultural diversity at the work force of companies. The cultural diversity has brought about to the companies innovation, creation of new ideas and input.
The classification of cultural diversities is based on race, religions, gender, morals, practices, and taboos of different kinds of people. Here we are establishing the impact of cultural diversity to competitive advantage and also e-ethical leadership and its practice.
Cultural diversity has played a major role at the realisation of competitive advantage. It is has evidenced in all the companies that have diversified their production in terms of cultures have been able to get a greater share of market globally (McCarthy, 2009, p.1),. Combination of different cultures will yield better results due to the incorporation of new and better ideas thus efficiency in organisations operation.
Some companies that have extended their operation from home to other nations have shown a tremendous growth. This has been because of people’s favourable structural organisation and beliefs. For instance in countries where communist culture is practised the labour is likely to be cheaper in comparison with capitalist societies. Therefore, culture diversity will enable the company to expand rapidly.
Companies through the management have effectively been making the use of cultural diversities and similarities in their success. Culture diversity in practice can be realised through harmonising different cultures through the creation of a corporate culture that all employees of that organisation will use.
For instance, a company can design a mode of dressing that is appreciative by all religions and all the generations. This corporate culture will shift thoughts of individuals form ethnic point of view to organisations point of view in all the matters that concerns that company. Company cultures should address their belief via mission and the vision statements. These statements will give clear stand of those companies’ in terms their business. Also through training different people will know how to embrace each other’s culture.
There have been many difficulties involved in management of cultural diversity in companies. These difficulties are due to the differences in beliefs and the practices of employees in organisations that tend to cause conflict between them. For instance, in a situation where there are two groups of people who profess different religions where one cannot consume certain food while the other does, introduction of such food will affect the group that does not consume it.
Another difficulty in management of cultural diversity is adaptation period whereby a movement from one nation to another creates confusion to both individuals and organisation as a whole. The confusion based on the cultural diversity makes organisations take much longer time to get used to the new environment (Palumbo, 2000, p.2).
These difficulties have a bad impact on the performance of the company. Due to the companies, expansion of their operations at the global level cross-cultural management has played a major role in the companies’ success. Leadership in cross-cultural context has proved to be difficult due to the different views and practises of the people involved (Douglas, 2001, p.23).
E-ethical leadership has played a bigger role in managing different cultures. Using electronic Medias has passed massages to different individuals for instance; websites have been able to give out a wide range of information that suits different kinds of people depending on the taste of each individual.
On the other side leaders at the organisations should also embrace concepts of e-ethical leadership at their place of work and ensure that those concepts favour both the organisations and employees at large. These concepts may include first, e-ethical leaders working towards the success of the institution while personal gains and ego being only a minor factor to them. Secondly, another concept of e ethical leadership is the creation of the environment where all matters concerning the welfare of stakeholders are taken care by the management.
The concepts of e-ethical management are only successful if only applied efficiently. In the case of cross-cultural management, putting every ones interests into the table is not a simple task as already proven.
Therefore, it is advisable to device a way on how to average the interests of people in an organisation for instance anything that brings conflict have to be avoided at the corporate culture while anything that widely accepted should be embraced. Once the organisation has put on its concepts, it must put up mechanisms of guiding the values so that they will not be obsolete. Therefore, there is a need of applying concepts efficiently
It is quite clear that cultural diversity has played an important role in the organisations competitive advantage therefore ignorance will cause a disaster. Besides e-ethical leadership has also been a key success to the management of cultural diversities thus its consideration is very important.
Bibliography
Douglas, M. (2001). Multicultural Management. U.K. McMillan Publishers. Kamp, A. (2004). Diversity Management in a Danish Context. Journal of Management.
McCarthy, S. (2009). Managing cultural issues in HR strategy. Web.
Palumbo, F. (2000). The Multicultural context of brand loyalty. Web.