Managing Mixed Cultures in Organizations: A Consultant's Report

This report delves into the multifaceted concept of managing mixed cultures within organizations, approached from the perspective of a business consultant. It provides a comprehensive discussion on the implications and management strategies for fostering cohesive contributions from a diverse workforce. The report emphasizes the importance of managing mixed cultures to address diversity concerns and leverage the unique skills and perspectives of individuals from varied backgrounds, ultimately enhancing organizational efficiency. It explores both theoretical underpinnings and practical applications, supported by real-world examples from companies like Johnson & Johnson, PayPal, HP, Securitas Belgium, and Starbucks, illustrating how these organizations cultivate diverse cultures to respect and integrate the contributions of all employees. The report also highlights crucial aspects such as effective communication, team building, and the removal of power gaps to ensure a productive and inclusive work environment. Furthermore, it suggests the use of mentorship programs and data-driven approaches to manage culture effectively, ensuring employee behavior is regularly assessed and reward systems are revisited at regular intervals.

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Executive Summary:
The purpose of the report is to discuss the concept of managing a mixed culture in an
organization. The paper presented an extensive discussion about mixed culture in the
workplace setting from my perspective as a business consultant. Implication and management
of mixed culture for a cohesive contribution is discussed in the paper. Management of mixed
culture is essential for the purpose of addressing diversity concerns. Mixed culture helps in
contributing skills and opinions from diverse background, which in return increases the
efficiency of organizational functions. The paper presented various examples including,
Johnson and Johnson, PayPal, HP, Securitas Belgium and Starbucks. These organizations
indulge in shaping a diverse culture for respecting and including the contribution of every
single group of employees.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
Mixed Culture in Workplace..................................................................................................3
Managing Mixed Culture.......................................................................................................5
Real-Life Examples................................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Culture is one of the most critical factors that determine the long term growth and
success of any business organization. It is one of the most discussed topics in today's business
environment. Most of the CEOs and I, as a business consultant, agree to the fact that attitude,
behaviour and innovation of people are mostly dependent on culture prevailing within a
workplace. Workplace culture refers to the personality and character of an organization,
which is a summation of thoughts, beliefs, values, interactions, traditions, behaviours and
attitudes (Cravens et al. 2015). Culture varies from place to place and from organization to
organization. One single organization recruits people belonging from various areas of the
world, and it creates a mixed culture in the workplace.
A mixed culture includes people from various race, age, ethnicity, ability, language,
religion, nationality, status, gender or sexual orientation. The more different cultures work
together, the more there are chances of problems within the organization (Cho, Kim and Mor
2017). At the same time, cultural diversity is a necessity for smooth and efficient growth of
an organization. It is necessary for the management to properly manage cultural diversity
within an organization for better cooperation and coordination. The purpose of the paper is to
present an extensive discussion about the management of mixed culture in an organization
with a theoretical and practical perspective. The paper will discuss various examples in
support of the discussion.
Discussion
Mixed Culture in the Workplace
Mixed culture means a place consisting of people from various backgrounds having
different perspectives. The results of such culture are innovative. Managing a mixed culture
is not an easy task. From the perspective of a business consultant, I think, the application of

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change through diversity; it is necessary that corporate philosophy is valued and most
importantly, it should be well integrated with the company practices. It takes considerable
time to celebrate cultural diversity. Bringing about a sense of belongingness into a diversified
workforce requires the workforce to be open-minded on the values of differences. It requires
a commitment. Even though the task of managing is one of the toughest challenges of
management, yet organizations prefer it because of its economic benefits. Diversity helps in
increasing profitability. Being a business consultant, I think, a diversified workforce helps in
reaching a diversified target market. It increases the brand value of organizations (Cui et al.
2015). Mixed culture help in bringing most talented people from across the world and
provide them with an opportunity to exchange ideas and information for superior
productivity. A synced diversified workforce helps in better understanding of the diversified
market, and hence product development becomes easier. It is for all these benefits that most
of the organizations generally prefer mixed culture irrespective of its managerial
requirements.
The question is how to manage this diversified culture in the workplace. Mixed work
culture is managed by properly empowering the employees of the organization in making
complex decisions, support and interactions. The more different cultures within a workplace,
the more will be the requirement of cultural competency training for its management. The
issue with diversity is that most of the people come out of their comfort zone in such cases. A
mixed culture creates fear in working, which in turn affects focus and productivity (Turney
2017). Diversity can be dangerous if the hiring managers focus more on the leadership
qualities and bring in those people who are always in demand to be in charge. The situation
can become dangerous if competition goes out of control.
Being a business consultant, I have witnessed that in most cases, workers become
overqualified in the job that they are doing. The mixed culture within the organization creates

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a lot of opinions as well. Therefore if every employee gets the chance of being heard, then the
operations of the organization can slow down as quickly as it increases. To prevent the
diseconomies of mixed culture, it is necessary that along with a mixed culture, a strong
management group is also present. The key to the effective management of mixed culture is -
effective business communication, team building, timing, schedules and leverage training for
all age groups within an organization.
Managing Mixed Culture
Effective communication refers to providing timely and accurate information that is
important and critical for increasing the effectiveness of work and team performance. It
focuses on three things connect, create collaboration and constant communication. Every
people are driven differently, and hence, it is essential to communicate with the employees
and to understand their motive (Noe et al. 2017). People feel important when they are heard
and understood. By putting an effort to know about them and doing inquiries and regular
feedbacks will help in uncovering their motivating lever.
Understanding helps in better transfer of ideas and information. For the purpose of
understanding the offerings from each cultural groups better, the gap between the employees
must be removed. Power gaps between employees at a different level of the organization can
alienate the workers who have bright and fresh ideas. It stifles innovation and employee
engagement. Therefore the I as a business consultant believe that it must be ensured that these
power gaps are removed in order to make the employees feel engaged (Cho, Kim and Mor
Barak 2017). The power gaps are to be removed not just between the managers and the
employees but in every aspect of the organization like culture, gender, religion and
generation as well. From my experience, as a business consultant, I think that one easy way
to bridge these gaps is that the managers and administrators must request input from all the
people around them. The inputs will help the top-level authority to understand out of their

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personal experiences and close the power between them and their subordinates. The same is
applicable irrespective of all religions, cultures and genders.
Jennifer Brown, on management expert, stated that unconscious biasness could also
impact the workplace negatively, and it should be taken care of in case of managing mixed
cultures. She stated that this problem could be solved by making fewer statements, learning
more, asking more questions and checking for better understanding. Collaboration requires
setting up small teams of people and explaining them about expectations (Simón and Ferreiro
2018). Competitions among these small teams and setting checkpoints help in increasing the
coordination and cooperation slowly. This initiative helps in team-building exercises.
According to Elissa L. Perry, Psychology and Education Professor at Columbia
University, investing only on the young workforce is not a solution to workforce
management. For the purpose of managing a diversified workforce, the management requires
to focus on the workforce as a whole. Workforce keeps on ageing, and if management only
relies on younger people, then the organization will not have enough people to work for
them. If all the age groups are considered in the training initiatives, then the organization can
avoid having skill gaps in the workforce. A different set of ages and people from different
backgrounds have different skill set and experience (Argyris 2017). It encourages
constructive and productive ideas and engagement among the employees. One primary
solution to get people across various religion and ages to engage with training is to use
mentorship programs. In a mentorship program, an older, experienced employee can be
tagged with a younger one, and that would help in providing their real-world experiences to
the junior person (MorBarak 2015). In this way, both the employee will feel motivated, and a
sense of cooperation and coordination will develop.

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According to Pamela Tudor, the Wharton Business School consultant, the members of
a team must be dedicated towards a shared goal. She has observed that strong commitments
to a common goal can help in overcoming mixed cultural barriers. The diversified culture
must be supported by several departments that will help in uniting employees around a
common goal. In order to get a positive result, both culture and engagement require CEO
level commitment and strong HR support in order to understand, measure and improve the
diversified workforce. Other than simple communication, I suggest the managers should also
focus on holidays, work from home, flexible work schedules and limited supervision, just like
Netflix Culture for better management and achievement (Larcker and Tayan 2018). Being a
business consultant, I think it is essential to work for hand on hand with the top management
on data-driven approaches for managing culture (Kundu, Bandal and Chawla 2015).
Employee behaviour must be regularly assessed, and reward systems and business practices
must be revisited at regular intervals.
Real-Life Examples
Many practical examples can come up in this regards. Companies like Amazon,
Google, Deloitte, HSBC, Netflix, Nordstrom, Johnson and many such organizations are
composed of mixed culture workforce. These organizations are true examples of how they
manage such a diverse workforce from all over the world. Thousands of different people
follow one specific standard operating procedure across the globe, and it is possible only
because of their strong managerial capabilities. Nordstrom has formed a People Lab Science
Team for defining a culture that will help in attracting top talents and enable them to compete
with tech giants like Microsoft and Tableau (Deloitte Insights 2019).
Johnson and Johnson are one of the top examples of a diversified workforce. The
board of directors consisted of two black men and three white women from among ten
members. The executive team od the organization also comprised of different groups

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including, women, black people and Hispanic that contribute their efforts in the
organizational productivity. It also sponsors Scientist Mentoring and Diversity Program that
helps in pairing ethnically diverse students with the leaders in the industry. It was ranked 17th
most LGBTQ friendly company by Glassdoor. Google facilitates access to information in
every language, covering around 4000 languages (The Balance 2019). The company is
employee-friendly and ensures an informal grievance redressal system that helps in better
management of the diversified workforce.
Starbucks tried to understand the problem of the employees through the viewpoints of
the employees only. It was possible by analyzing thousands of social media entries on how
people feel about the organization and its culture. Then, it took specific actions to reinforce
cultural strengths and remove the weaknesses (Voigt, Buliga and Michl 2017). This approach
contributed to a better understanding of the employee problems and addressing it, which
resulted in better employee satisfaction irrespective of their culture.
Securitas Belgium performed an analysis of the current state of the organization and
its employees. It studied the behaviours associated with a vision for culture and developed a
suitable change plan for around 150 managers.
Another practical example that can be highlighted is the splitting of Hewlett-Packard
Co. Into HP Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. The split was done to reinvent sales culture
and create a high sales supporting environment. It helped in analyzing complex sales
behaviour, activities and sales competencies, which in turn helped the sales leaders in making
cultural commitments at a global sales meeting (Fluker and Murray 2017).
Another example is the spinoff of PayPal. After the spinoff, eBay redefined its
culture and started to manage it actively. The CEO of the company introduced a new business
purpose and values to create a one brand strategy that focuses on the bold working

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environment (Kimball 2016). These value statements are frequently monitored by using a
quantitative approach. There is an active team of data scientists and managerial experts who
measure the strength and adoption of these values actively. The group surveys the employees
regularly on over 50 cultural attributes that are mapped to these new values formed after the
spinoff. Employee engagement surveys are also conducted. These data that are collected are
integrated, combined and analyzed for assessing the extent of compliance with the core
cultural values that impact the performance of the organization.
Conclusion
It can be inferred from the above paragraphs that managing a mixed culture is a
crucial part in determining the future success of any organization. The bottom line of the
discussion is that although the mangers and the HRs play a distinctive role in driving cultural
change, yet the challenge of this management must be owned at the highest level. It is the
leaders at the highest level who must take the initiative of imbibing culture within the
diversified workforce. Although there are several disadvantages attached to the mixed
culture, yet, it provides with the best result if adequately managed. The proper management
can be done only with the help of appropriate communication and understanding ability. For
appropriate management, it is necessary for the workers to be open-minded and also to bridge
the power gap between the superior and subordinates. For the purpose of getting a positive
result, it is the duty of the managers to take regular feedback from the employees and
continuously monitor that the corporate philosophy is integrated into the company practices.

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