Innovative Solutions in the Workplace

Running head: IG004-Innovative Solutions in the Workplace 1
Innovative Solutions in the Workplace
IG004 - Assignment
Samira Kamran
Walden University

IG004-Innovative Solutions in the Workplace 2
Introduction
Human interactions have increased globally on various aspects. The employees gained
knowledge and adapted themselves in working together with mixed cultures. The importance of
working with diversified group of people is prevalent now. These factors have made both profit
businesses and non- profit organizations certifies diversity by working hard. Workplace diversity
is the responsibility of the management as well as the human resource teams. As defined by
Webster, diversity refers to acknowledging the transformations in people’s race, background,
gender age, religion and disability. The company chosen for the purpose of this study is Eastman
Kodak Company (Eastman.com., 2019). The main problem faced by them company was that
there was lack of innovation to meet the changing needs of the customers and as a result it failed
to cope up with the technological changes taking place in environment. The main aim of
evaluation is to design a steady result to deal with the concept of diversity in an innovative way.
The problems of workplace diversity
Workplace Diversity refers to combination of people coming from different backgrounds
and working together within an organization. Since there are mixed culture under the same roof,
issues like conflicts between employees, consumption of more time, communication, resistance
to change, harassment and discrimination arises.
Because of the difference in opinions and interest, conflicts arise among the employees. The
individuals are exposed to this cross-cultural diversification since the grad school. But it often
fails in business as no agreeable solution can be reached by either of the parties involved. As per
Zakon (2016), lack in diversity impacts the innovation effort negatively. When there is
disagreement on any issues between two or more persons, it is termed as conflict. This problem
arises most of the time but if it is not dealt immediately with integrity, the organization will wind
up. There will be animosity among employees if the management ignores conflict. The vision
of struggle/conflict are interactionist views, human relation, traditional approach. Performance’s
impact over the organization can be explained by these views.
Conflict is unavoidable and natural as per the concept of human relation. It is being assumed
by the traditional view that one’s performance will always be affected by the conflicts. Most of
the conflict arises because of trust issues and communication lag (Mor-Barak, M. 2017).

IG004-Innovative Solutions in the Workplace 3
Managers must actively accept these issues and must frame solutions for the same in order to
ensure operational efficiency. The interactionist refers conflicts as either inter-personal or intra-
personal and either at inter-group or inter-organizational levels. The immediate reasons of these
conflicts are poor performance, cooperation, misunderstanding and competition. The above
highlighted issues will be resulted if we work in a diversified workplace. (Mor-Barak, M. 2017).
All the conflicts can be responded properly by constructing a common base, finding an agreeable
answer, mutual consideration, apologizing, differentiating the context and searching an arbitrator
(Mor-Barak, M. 2017).
Taking decisions upon a diversified workplace is time consuming that needs to be thought
upon. All the workforce beliefs and values must be taken under consideration before policy
making. This process is regarded as wasting valuable time, which could have been used for
productive purposes (Stockdale, M. 2010). Furthermore, the instructions are different for each
culture. Asians are more apprehensive about outcomes while Americans are concerned with the
concept of pleasing management (Stockdale, M. 2010). It is very tiresome to bring together the
both values. A comfortable and agreeable solution must be bought up by the administration. All
these steps take time and are expensive to small companies (Stockdale, M. 2010).
Differences in the languages create the communication barriers. The challenge is when one
cannot understand the language of management (Mor-Barak, M. 2017). Communication
problems reduce productivity. Bilingual managers are hired now a days in order to solve this
issue but it can increase the cost because of the higher pay involved. Communication challenges
occur because of language barriers, inactive listening, misunderstanding, communication
mixture, weak channels and privacy of communication (Mor-Barak, M. 2017).
Diversity brings change and people are resistant to changes. This increase conflicts. Most of
the employees do not value new ideas or newer ways of performing. It is hard to implement new
ideas and concepts if the belief of “If it’s not broke why fix it” or “things are always done this
way” prevail among the existing employees. The fear of failing and unidentified reasons of
resistance. The attitude will eliminate various alteration in the business. Conflicts can also arise
because of harassment and discrimination because of businesses’ failure to accept and
understand diversified individuals. Discriminations are done on the basis of gender, age, sex,