Cultural differences in multicultural teams can create misunderstandings between team members before they have had a chance to establish any credibility with each other. Thus, building trust is a critical step in creation and development of such teams. As a manager of a multicultural team, you need to recognize that building trust between different people is a complex process, since each culture has its own way of building trust and its own interpretation of what trust is.

Harnessing the Power of Diversity. Diversity is a specialized term describing a workplace that includes people from various backgrounds and cultures, and/or diverse businesses. You can find a strategic competitive advantage in organizational and cultural context by seeking to leverage, rather than diminish, opposite forces. “An important but widely overlooked principle of business success is that integrating opposites, as opposed to identifying them as inconsistencies and driving them out, unleashes power.” This is true on both a personal level (the balanced manager is more effective than his peer at one end of the control spectrum) and on organizational level as well.

 

  Text 2. The role of corporate culture and ethics in business world.

Every company strives for its own organizational style, philosophy and traditions, for its special way of problem solving, its values and internal socializing.

All those components constitute the policy of in-company communication and belong to its culture. The core of a corporate culture represents the staff convictions and company philosophy. Any company can strengthen its principles of activity by selection of new team workers, which aim and behavior will be suitable for its corporate culture. It’s well known that the internal environmental factors are closely connected with a corporate culture and include all organizational resources. Finally, choosing a company, people choose a life style; corporate culture can shape not only their approach to work, and career forming, but also their life.

Therefore corporate culture represents values, convictions, rules and behavior standard. In some companies, corporate culture is very strong, and all staff members know their goals, and work day-to-day to reach them. Moreover, corporate culture influences the work of everyone and affects everything; in other words, the strong corporate culture impacts the whole business and, finally, leads to success.

Factors, which influence the organizational culture:

- corporate vision, mission and goal;

- strategy;

- work maintenance;

- education and experience of personnel;

- personality of employer;

- economic conditions;

- nation and culture of staff members;

- business environment.

Corporate culture allows to differ one organization from another and helps save and strengthen organizational values.

However, corporate culture is put to the changes in course of time. A company has seven key-points to change corporate culture. The employer together with employees should:

- understand the “old” corporate culture;

- listen to people, who know some ideas relating to the new corporate culture;

- “keep the nose to the wind”, “probe the ground” and search the better traits of corporate culture;

- not wait for miracle;

- foresee for 5-10 years;

- be patient (and the win comes)!

The effective corporate culture intends the strong management level and high morale – the marks of corporate ethics.

Text 3. Business ethics

Ethics is the system of moral principles, rules of conduct, and morality of choices that individuals make..

Business ethics is the application of morale standards to business situations. Business ethics has become a matter of public concern.

All business people face ethical issues daily, and they stem from a variety of sources. Although some types of issues arise infrequently, others occur regularly. Let’s take a closer look at several ethical issues.

1. Fairness and Honesty. Fairness and honesty in business are two important ethical concerns. Besides obeying all laws and regulations, business people should refrain from deceiving, misrepresenting or intimidating others.

2. Organizational Relationships. A business person may be temped to place his or her personal welfare above the welfare of the organization. Relationships with customers and coworkers often create ethical problems – since confidential information should be secret and all obligations should be honoured. Unethical behaviour in these areas includes not meeting one’s obligations in a mutual agreement, and pressing others to behave unethically.

3. Conflict of interest. Conflict of interest results when a business person takes advantage of a situation for his /her own personal interest rather than for the employer’s or organization’s interest. Such conflict may occur when payments and gifts make their way into business deals. A wise rule to remember is that anything given to a person that might unfairly influence that person’s business decision is a bribe, and all bribes are unethical.

4. Communication. Business communications, especially advertising, can present ethical questions. False and misleading advertising is illegal and unethical, and it can infuriate customers.

5. Relationships.   Business ethics involves relationships between a firm and its investors, customers, employees, creditors and competitors. Each group has specific concerns, and each exerts some type of pressure on management.

Investors want management to make financial decisions that will boost sales, profits and returns on their investments.

Customers expect a firm’s products to be safe, reliable and reasonably priced.

Employees want to be treated fairly in hiring, promotion and compensation.

Competitors expect the firm’s marketing activities to portray its products truthfully.

All these expectations are relatively easy for management to respond in ethical manner when the business is good and profit is high.  However, under the pressure of circumstances ethical behaviour may be compromised.

What affects a person’s inclination to make either ethical or unethical decisions is not entirely clear. Three general sets of factors influence the ethics of decision making.

First, an individual’s values, attitudes, experiences, and knowledge influence decision making.

Second, the absence of an employer’s official code of ethics may indirectly encourage unethical decisions.

Third, the behaviours and values of others, such as coworkers, supervisors and company officials, affect the ethics of a person.

If you are a manager you should stick to the following rules in our everyday activities.

- Don’t order, ask and be polite.

- Remember that people work with you, not for you. They like to be related as associates, not slaves.

- Keep your promises, both important and less important promises.

- Criticize, if you must, only in private – and do it objectively. Never criticize anyone in public or in anger.

- You should say “Good morning” when you came in and “Please” and “Thank you” at every opportunity.

Text 4. Business ethics and corporate culture nowadays.

Today people understand the business ethics as the integral part of their daily work, and managers should serve as role models preferring the key elements of ethical behaviour; they should act in supporting their corporate culture. As for the firms, they should not be obstacles for that activity in local and international market. Remember: the more bureaucratic a firm is, the greater the danger would be for unethical staff behaviour within it.

People at work must apply the socially acceptable, tension reducing behaviour: they must be capable of keeping their instincts under a relatively tight control and maintain the favourable social environment; they must prevent irritability and arousal in communication and focus on systematic decline of any conflicts. The English proverb says: people are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges. There is the rub.

The rules of the game, what behavior is ethical and accepted, the mood of the organization, and the enthusiasm of employees are all contained in the culture. So, culture can be a powerful, hidden asset or it can be a liability - a time bomb waiting to go off. If your leadership team has not actively created a corporate culture to support the company’s purpose, then chances are that the culture is a hidden liability. This is the foundation for all actions and decisions within a team, department, or organization.

Visible Manifestations of Culture

Dress Code

Work Environment

Benefits

Perks

Conversations

Work/Life Balance

Titles & Job Description

Organizational Structure

Invisible Manifestations of Culture

Values

Private Conversations (with self or confidants)

Invisible Rules

Attitudes

Beliefs

Worldviews

Moods and Emotions

Unconscious Interpretations

Standards of Behavior

Paradigms

Assumptions

The energy fields that make up a group’s culture are dynamic and change continuously. Culture is created and constantly reinforced on a daily basis through conversations, symbols, rituals, written materials, and body language. It is the small, mundane actions and behaviors that create a culture and can shift a culture.

Creating and sustaining a healthy, vibrant culture requires reinforcement of the culture through daily and proactive conversations and communications. The failure to discuss the values, purpose, and rules within a group often leads to a culture that is at cross purposes with the stated intention of the group. Poor communication creates a lot of confusion and often a crisis of meaninglessness

Since a culture is created every time a group of people come together to form a team, a company will have many sub-cultures that exist within its main culture. For example, the marketing and technology teams may have different worldviews, jargon, work hours, and ways to do things. A big challenge for today’s company is to create a strong, cohesive corporate culture that pulls all of the sub-cultures together and ensures that they can work as a unified team.

Most companies try to “fix” perceived problems by addressing the parts of the corporate culture that are easy to see. Some quick-fixes include holding Friday beer bashes and company picnics or adding fringe benefits and perks. None of these actions will have a powerful or lasting effect on a company’s culture.

The CEO and leadership team of a company have a powerful impact on culture through their conversations and behaviors. Business leaders can pro-actively create a thriving culture by understanding what culture is (and is not) and learning how to have fundamental business conversations. Unfortunately, most business leaders receive little to no education on how to have powerful conversations that generate culture and actions. Culture building can be learned, but it takes an honest commitment from the leadership team of an organization.

Questions to Unit 7

1. What is culture concerned in general?

2. What different cultures can a person belong to depending on his/her birthplace?

3. What cultural dimensions do you know?

4. How can awareness of cultural differences and similarities help you in business?

5. What are the symptoms of cultural shock?

6. How do we usually interpret others when we don’t understand them?

7. How is the word “trust” understood in different countries?

8. Why is it considered especially important to build trust in multicultural firms?

9. What does the term “diversity” describe?

10. What components constitute in-company communication policy and its culture?

11. What does corporate culture represent?

12. What factors influence the organizational culture?

13. How is ethics defined?

14. What ethical issues do business people have to face daily?

15. What do fairness and honesty mean in business?

16. What ethical problems can relationship in organization create?

17.  In what situations can conflicts of interests occur?

18. What kind of ethics problems can a company face with in its relation with outside world?

19. What factors influence the ethics of decision-making?

20. What rules related to culture should you as a manager stick to?

21. How do people understand business ethics today?

22. Why do you unethical behaviour prevails in bureaucratic organizations?

23. What must people do to avoid conflicts at work?

24. Why can a corporate culture become a hidden liability? What can be done to avoid it?

25. Name visible manifestation of culture and explain how you understand them.

26. Name invisible manifestation of culture and explain how you understand them?

27. Why can poor communication within a company create confusion or even crisis?

28. What kind of sub-cultures can be created within a company?

29.  How can CEO and leadership team influence corporate culture?

Vocabulary to Unit 7

1. dimension  n    измерение, величина, размах, аспект

2. directness   n    прямота, открытость, откровенность

3. consensus   n     единодушие, согласие

4. dissent   n     несходство взглядов, расхождение, разногласие

5. unanimity   n  единодушие, единство (во взглядах)

6. challenge   n   вызов, проблема, сложная задача

7. explore v    исследовать, анализировать, устанавливать

8. anxiety  n   беспокойство, тревога, опасение

9. weird   adj.   странный,  непонятный, причудливый

10. awareness   n  знание, осведомленность, понимание

11. assumption   n   допущение, предположение

12. correlation   n    взаимосвязь, соотношение, корреляция

13. trust  n   доверие, долг, ответственность, надежность

14. harness v   использовать ( в определенных  целях)

15. diversity   n   разнообразие, разновидность, многообразность

16. seek   v    добиваться, стремиться, пытаться, искать

17. leverage   v   усиливать, использовать в качестве рычага

18. diminish v   занижать, недооценивать, преуменьшать

19. unleash   v   высвобождать, дать волю

20. inconsistency n  несовместимость, противоречивость, 

21. strive  v    - прилагаться усилия, стараться, бороться с …

22. impact  v   влиять, сильно воздействовать

23. probe the ground   прощупывать почву

24. stem (from, out of)   v  происходить от, являться результатом чего-л.

25. infrequently  adv.   редко, не часто встречаться

26. fairness    n     честность, справедливость, совестливость

27. honesty  n   правдивость, искренность, честность

28. obey  v  повиноваться

29. ethical concerns    этические отношения

30. deceive   v   обманывать, вводить в заблуждение

31. misrepresent v   искажать, представлять в ложном свете

32. intimidate   v  запугивать, наводить страх, угрожать

33. welfare   n   благополучие, благосостояние,  соц. Обеспечение

Syn.: prosperity, well-being

34. bribe  n    взятка, подкуп

35. mislead v вводить в заблуждение; вести по неправильному пути   

36. infuriate  v выводить из себя, приводить в ярость     

37. boost v    поднимать, помогать подняться, поддерживать