Cultural Awareness in Global Business

This assignment analyzes the significance of cultural awareness within large-scale organizations such as ANZ Bank and PwC. It highlights the role of emotional intelligence in leadership and emphasizes the need for management to respect diverse ethical values among employees. The report also stresses effective communication strategies and organizational policies that promote inclusivity and combat discrimination based on gender, religion, or race.

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Executive summary
The purpose of this report is to highlight upon the issues encountered by ANZ Bank and PWC
due to high level of cultural diversity in the workplace. Report will provide detailed description
about the company background and work place profile that leads to cultural issues.
The report will provide detailed theories that needs to be incorporated in the business policies so
that it is possible to improve upon the level of cultural awareness among the workers. This is
essential in providing workplace motivation and improving the communication between the
employees.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Summary of the Chosen Firms........................................................................................................5
Analysis and justification of best cultural practice..........................................................................7
Recommendations............................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
Reference.......................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
The ANZ group is fourth largest bank in Australia, which currently has more than 50,000
employees, who are recruited from diverse race and cultural background. Most of the employees
are the bank are from New Zealand and Australia and regions. The major cultural issues that is
raised by the organisation is due to the fact discrimination in various social identities, which
includes gender religion and nationalism. According to Ang and Van (2015), few of the major
impact that are associated with poor cultural diversity in the workplace poor motivation level
among the employees and low rate of productivity. In the ANZ bank the cultural inequality
among the workers are currently causing poor coordination among the trade partners of the
organisation. The management of the company could not provide effective leadership, which is
necessary to maintain a high level of cultural diversity within the workplace. There also has been
serious report against the company about discrimination that are based upon the cultural
background of an employee. This discrimination is evident from the pay package that are being
provided to each employee.
Being one of the largest multinational corporations, the Pwc is facing issues related to
workplace cultural diversity. The difference in the cultural behaviour among employees of
various Nation is affecting the overall motivation level. Most of the cultural issues error
encountered by the company are at the root level, which is one of the major challenge of the
human resource manager. The company is also not able to deliver profile risk management plan
that is necessary in dealing with several number of culturally diverse working employees. The
management of the company is also not able to provide emotional support to the cultural values
of the minority groups within the workplace, which has a strong impact upon the motivation and
performance level of the employees (PwC, 2017).

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The cultural ethics is also one of the important aspect of large-scale multinational
corporations, which is necessary in building up of reputation and employee performance. Due to
discrimination among workers at various level in the office culture, it is not possible for PWC to
maintain the ethical standards that are needed to deal with most of the cultural issues. Effective
level of coordination is also not achievable between the employees as they are not able to support
and maintain trust among themselves. The interference of the third party organisations is
believed to be one of the major cause of cultural issues.
Summary of the Chosen Firms
PWC is currently one of the world's largest professional service network providers. The
company has it’s headquarter in London and was established in the year 1998. The company has
its network spread in 157 different nations, which altogether have a total revenue of 35.9 billion
dollar. The company is also currently providing professional service to 422 of the top 500
Fortune companies. With the employee number of 236,000 in the year 2016, the company is also
one of the top private recruiters in the Global market. Most of the employees are from the Asia,
Australia and Pacific Island regions. The diversity among the employees is believed to be one of
the major cause of success for the company over the past several years. In spite of its growing
network, the company is able to deliver high quality customer care service business management
of organisations. The Global leadership of the company is able to ensure the corporate social
responsibility that are being followed by the company in their working protocol. The high level
of repetition of the company has been able to build trust with all the corporate partners ( PwC.
(2017).

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The high level of cultural diversity that the company instrument in within the workplace
over several years is believed to be one of the major cause of higher productivity. The company
have introduced define type of managerial policies in various Nations. The protocol for this
policies and implemented according to the local cultural diversity, which is believed to be
effective in recruitment process of local employees. The cultural values and organisational
objectives are also different.
ANZ, bank is one of the biggest financial institute in Australia and New Zealand. The
bank was established in the year 1835 and is one of the oldest financial institution all over the
globe. Over the past several years the bank has been able to establish high level of cultural
awareness within the workplace, which has been able to improve upon the workplace
performance. Currently the total asset value of the company is estimated to be 21.7 billion
Australian dollar. With a total number of employees of more than 50,000 the ANZ Bank is one
of the biggest employer in all over Australia and New Zealand. Most of the employees are also
from the local region, which helps management to properly organise the cultural diversity and
bring about coordination among the employees (Anz.com, 2017). One of the major
organisational objective of ANZ Bank is to maintain high level of employee motivation, which is
believed to be helpful in maintaining the workplace reputation and employee performance level.
The cultural diversity of the organisation is one of the major component of maintaining cultural
diversity. The management of the company is aiming to maintain the healthy what is reputation,
which is believed to maintain future sustainability within the organisation.

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Analysis and justification of best cultural practice
According to Bellini et al. (2013), it is essential for all large-scale multinational
corporations to incorporate effective human resource policy, which will be able to maintain high
level of cultural diversity in the workplace. In the given case of PWC and ANZ Bank, the
organisational objective of the management is to provide high level of employee motivation that
can help to maintain their performance level.
Emotional intelligence is one of the major element of maintaining cultural diversity
within the workplace. It is important for the management of the company to recognise and give
importance to individual emotional feelings from people belonging to different culture.
According to Brunow and Blien (2014), emotional intelligence in the modern days is considered
to be one of the major component of effective leadership, which can help the manager to provide
better level of what is motivation at individual level. Having high level of self-awareness is the
primary element of emotional intelligence, which can help the leader to become self-aware about
various aspects related to strengths and weaknesses of individual employees. It is also essential
to respect the individual value that is related to their cultural background. These components are
highly essential in providing workplace motivation on helping the employees to respect the need
of other employees. As the workers are able to inherit social skills, they are able to improve upon
their emotional intelligence level that can also help in improving the level of workplace
communication. This is highly essential for large scale culturally diverse company like ANZ
Bank and PWC, which will minimise the chance of internal conflict between the employees
thereby helping them to improve perform their teamwork coordination.

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It is also important to mention about the program of perform, grow and break out
program that was initiated by ANZ Bank. The main purpose of this program is to prioritise the
importance of customer and thereby provide better level of customer service. It is also important
to perform according to the cultural value of a shareholders that is essential in building up new
reputation and maintain the level of Trust within the community. Sabharwal (2014), has
mentioned about the importance of initiating innovative techniques that can ultimately has the
company to maintain cultural diversity and respect individual emotional value. Theory of
emotional intelligence need to be incorporated in this program, which will help the employees to
improve the level of cultural awareness. This can be achieved by providing effective workplace
training to the Employees that can help them to learn new method of communication within the
organisation.
Barak (2016), has mentioned about the importance of maintaining strong cultural
diversity ethics in all major segments of the workplace in large scale operations. Both in case of
PWC and ANZ Bank, the management of the company has been able to on the reputation of
being a culturally diverse company, which have been able to respect the cultural values of every
stakeholders.
Dalton et al. (2015), have hi light it up on the importance of cross cultural leadership
Theory that needs to be implemented in every major multinational corporations. Along with the
component of emotional intelligence, it is possible to incorporate elements of cross cultural
leadership among the managers of both ANZ Bank and PWC. It is the duty of the management
of every organisation to prioritise upon the cultural issues that has affected upon the workplace
performance level. With the Rising level of complexity in the business environment of modern
day, it is highly essential for the business leaders to have detailed information about the human

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resource within the organisation. The component of emotional intelligence is believed to be one
of the essential element of cross cultural leadership. It is important to mention in this context that
for multinational corporations, which will have the capacity to retain workers from culturally
diverse background will have the ability to sustain better for future generations and thereby
improve upon their workplace reputation.
Recommendations
In order to resolve the cultural diversity issues that are encountered by ANZ Bank and
PWC, it is highly recommended for the company manages to gain proper information about
cultural background of every employee. As mentioned in the earlier section motor companies are
facing workplace concerned due to the fact that they are not able to respect the ethical values of
every employees belonging from different race and cultural background. It is highly
recommended for the company managers to understand and respect the value of every workers
by using their emotional skills (Nathan and Lee 2013).
It is important for the management of the company to maintain effective level of
workplace communication with every employees. Nevertheless, it can be said that the method of
communication can differ with every employees depending upon their cultural values and
working capability. It is also highly recommended what the management of the companies to
have strict organisational policies to provide penalty against any employees, who will encourage
discrimination within the workplace depending upon gender, religion and race. Workplace

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cultural training is also one of the essential part of improving cultural awareness among the
employees (Guillaume et al.2017).
Conclusion
Concluding note it can be said that it is essential for large-scale organisation like ANZ
Bank and PWC to have the ability to improve the cultural awareness within the stakeholders.
This can help to maintain better workplace reputation and sustainability in the future Complex
environment of Global Business. The report has highlighted up on the importance of emotional
intelligence, which can be incorporated in the leadership Theory. It is also important for the
company management to respect the ethical cultural value of every employee that is essential in
maintaining effective workplace communication.

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Reference
Ang, S. and Van Dyne, L., 2015. Handbook of cultural intelligence. Routledge.
Anz.com. (2017). About us | ANZ. [online] Available at: http://www.anz.com/about-us/
[Accessed 12 Oct. 2017].
Barak, M.E.M., 2016. Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage
Publications.
Bellini, E., Ottaviano, G.I., Pinelli, D. and Prarolo, G., 2013. Cultural diversity and economic
performance: evidence from European regions. In Geography, institutions and regional
economic performance (pp. 121-141). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Brunow, S. and Blien, U., 2014. Effects of cultural diversity on individual establishments.
International Journal of Manpower, 35(1/2), pp.166-186.
Dalton, L., D'Netto, B. and Bhanugopan, R., 2015. Cultural diversity competencies of managers
in the Australian energy industry. The Journal of Developing Areas, 49(6), pp.387-394.
Guillaume, Y.R., Dawson, J.F., Otaye‐Ebede, L., Woods, S.A. and West, M.A., 2017.
Harnessing demographic differences in organizations: What moderates the effects of workplace
diversity?. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(2), pp.276-303.
Nathan, M. and Lee, N., 2013. Cultural Diversity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship: Firm‐level
Evidence from London. Economic Geography, 89(4), pp.367-394.

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PwC. (2017). Our Purpose. [online] Available at: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/about-us/purpose-
and-values.html [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017].
Sabharwal, M., 2014. Is diversity management sufficient? Organizational inclusion to further
performance. Public Personnel Management, 43(2), pp.197-217.