Sociology Essay: Multiculturalism's Impact on Australian Workplaces

This sociology essay examines the multifaceted impact of multiculturalism on Australian workplaces. It begins with a scenario illustrating the welcoming nature of Australia towards immigrants, highlighting the country's diverse cultural landscape. The essay then delves into the benefits of multiculturalism, such as fostering innovation, enhancing creativity, and attracting a diverse talent pool, citing examples like Wesfarmers and LJ Hooker. However, it also acknowledges the challenges, including communication barriers, cultural stereotypes, and differing work ethics, which can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts within teams. The essay references various authors and their research to support its arguments, ultimately concluding that while multiculturalism offers significant advantages, organizations must proactively address the associated challenges to create a harmonious and productive work environment. The essay emphasizes the importance of adapting policies and fostering understanding to effectively manage a diverse workforce.

Running Head: SOCIOLOGY 0
MANAGING MULTICULTURALISM AND DIVERSITY
SystemJP

SOCIOLOGY 2
It was the start of Spring and Wang who was from China, recently got shifted to
Australia to avail the lucrative job offer in an Australian company, as coming to Australia, Wang
had various apprehensions about how the country would welcome him as a Chinese person, on
the day of his first joining, he was oriented with the staff there, the boss welcomed him warmly
but inside of him, Wang was missing the joy of attending the spring festival with his family who
have accompanied him to Australia as he felt himself as a minority in the country, on the day of
festival, his boss got shocked to see him coming and told him that it was the paid holiday for
nearly 40 percent of Australian employees who have Chinese origin or those employees who
have shifted to the country just like him. On knowing this he felt the burst of joy and found
himself lucky to get settled in the multi-cultural country where the interest of people from
different culture is taken care of. The situation described above points out multi-cultural history
of Australia where people from different cultures share the understanding of each other festivals,
traditional practices and languages. The following essay would be discussing that how
multiculturalism in Australia has created both opportunities and challenges in working with
diverse population in an effective manner.
According to author Arasaratnam, Australia is a multi-cultural country which consist of
people who are Australian natives, Britishers and immigrants from various countries. The
population of Australia which is 23.4 million is considered as one of the most linguistically and
culturally diverse populations in the world. Around 3 percent are Australian natives and 75
percent of the population have their origin other than Australia. The countries which contribute
majorly to the culturally diversified population of the country are England, New Zealand and
China and around 200 languages are spoken in Australian. In 1970, Australian multi-culturalism
policy replaced its assimilation policy which means the culturalism is defined not by a religion
but by recognition of all the cultures which reside in Australia (Arasaratnam, 2014).
According to the authors Syed & Kramar,the cultural diversity has been of great
advantage to Australian Organizations as it has inculcated discrimination free environment
making employees more receptive to other people cultures just like Wesfarmers which is
committed to ensuring diversity within its group through its great diversity policies, the diversity
creates the harmonious and healthy working environment where people are understanding
towards each other religious sentiments and emotions (Syed & Kramar, 2010). Another

SOCIOLOGY 3
important advantage was that it helped in instilling innovation and creativity in projects thus
helping in creative problem solving with different cultural perspectives of employees. The author
Matthews considers diversity at workplace a means to gain economic advantage as the
organization gets benefitted with diverse set of skills thus helping in easier completion of
projects (Matthews, 2012). For example, Mad comfy CEO said that with their diversity
inclusive policy, they have achieved a working environment where their diverse talents have
been utilized to a great extent. The author Walsh discusses in the journal article that the real
growth of a company lies in exploring new market places and catering to the needs of new
population which can be achieved with the knowledge of employees hailing from different
cultures (Walsh, 2014). For Example, the Australian real estate company LJ Hooker with the
help of its diverse workforce developed the marketing strategies which rightly meet the needs of
the segment.
As there are culturally diverse employee so attracting good pool of candidates towards
filling the organizational vacancy is not a big problem. For example, Bench, a Sydney based
programmatic media solutions have spread its recruiting efforts to various employees working
globally. The authors Cope and Kalantzis says that the culturally diverse workplace helps in
increasing the productivity of the whole workplace in the organization as employees with
different talents bring in competition thus increasing the work performance of employee at
workplace (Cope & Kalantzis, 2010). The diverse set of skills also helps in the formulation of
innovative products and services for example the Australian company “Seek” with its multi-
cultural employees develops various innovative brand strategies for its customers.
Despite so many benefits of the cultural diversity in Australian organizations, there are
various challenges which come up, as the culture diversity means employee from different
cultures are working together so it becomes tough for employees from some cultures to get their
voice heard for example employees from countries like Japan or Vietnam would feel less
comfortable in sharing their ideas in a team as compared to individuals from USA or Western
Europe who would more likely to present their ideas or thoughts According to author Collins, it
is important for individuals from different cultures to work together as a team as it helps in
increasing the productivity of an organization but sometimes negative judgments or cultural
stereotypes affect the performance of a team (Collins, 2013).For example An American and

SOCIOLOGY 4
Indian are working in an Australian company where Americans feel Indians to be less polished
and incapable of achieving things thus breeding an stereotype which hampers the performance of
a team resulting in company’s productivity.
The authors Okoro and Washington state that every culture has different ways of
communicating their desires through verbal or non-verbal means, which are sometimes got
misinterpreted by members of other cultures (Okoro & Washington, 2012).For example Arabs
have an etiquette of speaking by coming close to a person which might freak Australian
employees and could be misjudged negatively. The authors Bennett describes that as individuals
from cultures having varied professional etiquette will be working together, it might create
difficulty for them to connect with each other for example Australians have a very tough attitude,
they are straight forward and not concerned with forging a long term relationship with colleagues
except for business purposes so Indians might find it difficult to connect with them as they value
relationship and are soft-spoken (Bennett, 2014). The way the work is done is also affected by
the culture as every employee attitude towards doing a task differs for example Asian employees
are more comfortable working in teams in other words, they value collectivism as compared to
Americans, who value individualism more. According to the authors Myers and Dreachslin
retaining the diverse employees in an organization is the biggest challenge as every employee
motivation to work differs so understanding every employee motivation can help in retaining
them in organization (Myers & Dreachslin, 2007).
The multi-cultural history of Australia is being proved good for some organizations who
were able to utilize the multi-cultural aspects of the population to their benefits by developing
intelligent policies to manage the diverse population but for some companies it was a chaos
leading to more conflicts and confusions in the working environment of the organization. Those
organizations which utilized multiculturalism to their benefit also had to face some challenges
initially like conflicting situations where some employees reported dominance of one cultural
group over another but with time by bringing changes in the policies, the companies were able to
accommodate the diverse employees in organization.

SOCIOLOGY 5
Bibliography
Arasaratnam, L. A. (2014). A discussion of multiculturalism in Australia from educators’
perspective. SpringerPlus , 36.
Bennett, J. M. (2014). Developing intercultural sensitivity: An integrative approach to global and
domestic diversity. Diversity collegium , 147-165.
Collins, J. (2013). Multiculturalism and immigrant integration in Australia. Canadian Ethnic
Studies, , 133-149.
Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2010). Productive diversity: A new, Australian model for work and
management. Sydney: Pluto Press. , 55.
Matthews, J. (2012). Innovation in Australian small and medium enterprises: Contributions from
strategic human resource management. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources , 193-
204.
Myers, V. L., & Dreachslin, J. L. (2007). Recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce:
Challenges and opportunities. Journal of Healthcare management, , 290.
Okoro, E. A., & Washington, M. C. (2012). Workforce diversity and organizational
communication: Analysis of human capital performance and productivity. Journal of
Diversity Management , 57-62.
Syed, J., & Kramar. (2010). What is the Australian model for managing cultural diversity?
Personnel Review. , 30.
Walsh, J. P. (2014). The marketization of multiculturalism: Neoliberal restructuring and cultural
difference in Australia. Ethnic and Racial Studies, , 280-301.