Building Successful Multicultural Organizations: Challenges and Opportunities

With an emphasis on building success in today's multicultural workplace, Fine describes the truly multicultural organization, one that values the cultural differences among its employees and knows how to create policies and practices that encourage the full productivity of all employees. Fine maintains that just to remain competitive as the U.S. workforce becomes culturally diverse, organizations must not only recognize the inherent multiculturalism within their walls, but must actively transform themselves into such organizations. Her book thus explains how cultural differences affect workplace behavior and provides ways for management to work with them, not against them. A practical, challenging, research-based discussion for human resource professionals and management in public and private organizations. After reviewing the changing demographics of the workforce and discussing how present practices are exclusionary, Fine provides detailed descriptions of the values, norms, beliefs, and behaviors of various ethnic groups and women and the dysfunctional interactions among groups. Nine case studies document diversity initiatives in public, private, and not-for-profit organizations, and lead to numerous concrete ways to train employees in multicultural understanding and create policies and practices that acknowledge, value, and incorporate cultural differences into the organization itself. Fine offers no quick fixes, however; instead, she makes clear that building a successful multicultural organization is a difficult, unceasing process of creating and recreating organizational life. The result is an analytical, research-based discussion for scholars, researchers, and others in the academic community — and a practical guide to the complexities posed by multiculturalism for organization management at all levels in both the public and private sectors.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction The Changing Demographics of the Workplace Differences in the Workplace: A Theoretical Perspective Cultural Identity and Performance Dysfunctional Diversity: The Workplace as a Tower of Babel Organizational Responses to Cultural Diversity: Case Studies in Change Improving Interpersonal Relationships: Multicultural Literacy for Employees Organizational Strategies: Policies and Practices for Multicultural Organizations Epilogue: The Paradox of Difference References

About the Author :
MARLENE G. FINE is Dean of Graduate Studies and Professor of Communication Studies at Emerson College in Boston. With numerous articles in the scholarly and professional journals, Fine lectures widely on cultural diversity in organizations, with particular emphasis on gender and race issues.

Review :
Believing that organizations must be multicultural to be successful in the global marketplace, Fine explains the potential problems of a workforce of diverse cultures and gives organizations a framework to address these problems. She focuses on race, ethnicity, and gender, and clearly describes many of those cultural differences and their effect on work productivity. The author is sensitive to intra-group differences, and to the danger of reinforcing stereotypes. Her goal is not to manage diversity so that members of other cultures are taught to conform to the dominant one in the organization. Instead, it is to create transformed organizations--those that utilize the strengths of all workers, value all cultural perspectives, and empower all members to participate in all decisions. This is not a manual with specific exercises for transforming organizations. Instead, it provides a readable summary of demographics, different cultural norms, and management philosophy and processes for achieving change. - Choice In this book, Marlene Fine reviews the changing demographies of the North American workforce and describes current research regarding gender, race, and cultural differences. She also describes how these differences can result in dysfunctional interactions in the workplace... excellent background information for the personnal manager, the EAP professional and the corporate trainer assigned the task of implementing a program on cultural diversity. - Employee Assistance Quarterly