To assess the impact of managing cultural diversity within the workplace

Equality and Diversity In The Workplace

The title of this research project is "to assess the impact of managing cultural diversity within the workplace on the productivity of Morrisons"

Research Aim

The aim of this research project is to analyse the extent of management of cultural diversity within the Morrisons supermarket. The project also strives to identify the economic progress of the supermarket by managing a culturally diversified workforce.

Research Questions

• What is the essentiality of diversified culture in business organisation?
• Which factors are to be considered for contributing cultural diversity in the working environment of Morrisons for enhancing its productivity?
• What are the challenges faced by the employees of the supermarket in culturally diverse environment?
• What recommendations can be provided for mitigating the challenges faced by the employees of Morrisons?

Research Objectives

The objectives of this research are as follows,

• To assess the significance of cultural diversity within a business organisation
• To identify the factors that are to be considered to contribute cultural diversity in the working environment of Morrisons for increasing the productivity
• To analyse the challenges faced by the employees of the supermarket in culturally diverse environment
• To recommend suggestions to the management of Morrisons for overcoming the challenges faced by its workforce

Significance of the Study

This research would be conducted for analysing the importance of culturally diverse workforce within a business organisation like Morrisons.Morrisons is the fourth largest supermarket chain in the market of UK. The previous records of 2016, it has been observed that the supermarket possessed approximately 498 superstores in the market of Scotland, Wales and England (Morrisons-corporate.com, 2020). Moreover, the supermarket employs approximately 1, 10,000 employees serving around 11 million consumers in respective weeks. Additionally, the annual turnover of the supermarket has increased to 17.74 billion GBP in 2019 from 15.41 billion GBP (Statista.com, 2020).Thus, this research would help in acquiring knowledge regarding the way management of cultural diversity helps the supermarket in enhancing its annual turnover rates.

Reasons for choosing this report

Cultural diversity acts as an important aspect within business organisations as it helps the management of the organisation to foster a learning environment that would be productive in nature. With this, the business organisations are able to become more productive and increase their annual income with inclusion of roles of all individuals. From this, I would be able to acquire knowledge regarding the cultural diversity and would be able to increase my knowledge in the same field. This would also assist me in my future professional career when I would be working in a culturally diversified environment. Moreover, I would also be able to identify the issues that might arise in the culturallydiverse workplace and incorporate the knowledge that would help me in evolving strategies for mitigating the issues.I think that with the help of this research I would be able to analyse the extent of cultural diversity contributing for improved productivity of the business organisations. Therefore, I feel that attainment of information in managing cultural diversity within workplace in necessary for increasing its annual productivity.

Literature Review

Significance of cultural diversity at workplace

Cultural diversity within workplace occurs when the management of business organisations recruits candidates for their organisation from different parts of the nation, irrespective of race, sex and cultural backgrounds. Based on the philosophical viewpoint of Anjorin and Jansari(2018), it is observed that promoting cultural diverse working environment enable employees with a sense of respecting each other. This further helps the business organisations in enhancing their productivity. In this respect, it can be mentioned that cultural diversity within workplace assists in enhancement of the performance of the employees as well as productivity of the business organisation. This is achieved by sharing of knowledge and experiences of different employees. However, there are employees with different personality traits and characteristics which might be similar to each other or might be different. These traits might be positive as well as negative. The positive personality traits include honesty, intelligence, reliability, patience and trustworthiness (Goswami and Rangaswamy, 2019). On the other hand, the negative aspects inculcate laziness, self-centred, obnoxious, unfriendly and rude attitude towards others.

Cultural diversity within business organisations also help in developing creativity among different individuals. This is further enhanced with sharing of ideas and thoughts of different employees of the workplace as they belong to diverse backgrounds and possess a variety of diverse knowledge.In addition to this, in the views of Anjorin and Jansari(2018), cultural diversified workforce also helps the management of business organisation to increase the profit margins. In this context it has been evaluated that approximately 56% of the business organisations in the UK have acquired a rise in their profit margins with their diversified workforces (Basterretxea and Storey, 2018). From this, it can be mentioned that diversified workforce helps business organisations to excel in their performance and also help them in advancing their decision making strategies for further economic progress. Furthermore, it helps the business organisations in managing the progress of productivity of the business organisations effectively.

Factors to be considered for contributing cultural diversity in business organisations for improving productivity

The promotion of culturally diverse workforcedepends on various factors of different business organisations. It depends on the guidelines and rules of a companythe way the management of different business organisations treats its diverse workforce. In this respect, Medeiros Leopoldinoet al. (2016) stated that the management of business organisations are required to take into account several factors during adoption of diversified workforce. These factors include, type of organisation, its location and the organisational culture.The size of the company plays a vital role in deciding to employ diverse workforce. The management needs to ensure that the involvement of diverse workforce would help in evolving better outputs. This is generally the case of large sized companies that aims to incorporate employees from diverse backgrounds for enhancing their profit scales.

In context to decision making regarding hiring of diverse workforce also depends on the culture and location of the business organisation. It is believed that every business organisation possess its own set of rules, policies, values and history (Razmeritaet al., 2016). From this, it is encountered that every business organisation possesses different business organisational culture. Apart from this, the location of the business organisation is also required to be considered. There might be business organisations in remote locations where people from different areas might not prefer to work and the organisation might face an increased employee turnover rate. Henceforth, it can be mentioned that by considering the above mentioned factors, business organisations can evaluate the decision of employing diverse workforce for increasing the annual revenue generation.

Barriers for employees to work in culturally diverse environment

In a culturally diverse workforce, there might be a wide variety of issues within the working environment. The research works of Lvinaet al. (2019) emphasizes on the barriers that affect the culturally diverse nature of the working environment. Some of these barriers include integration of the diverse team, misinterpretation of communication, inadequate information and knowledge regarding visa, accommodation services and charges and employment laws. In addition to this, other barriers include differences in the professional etiquettes (Velten and Lashley, 2018). Apart from this, there are several employees who acquire a sense of dominance character and unable to accept other's point of views and ideas. This results in incidences of conflicts among the employees from different backgrounds. Furthermore, it enhances degrades the integrity among the workforce thereby degrading the quality of performance and also the productivity of the company. The enhanced integrity also helps the business organisations in improvising their revenue generation with sharing of values and opinions during decision-making procedures.

Theoretical Framework of Cultural Diversity

Theory of Cross Culture Adaptation

The theory of Cross Culture Adaptation allows the people to learn and attain knowledge regarding the different cultural norms and values. In the opinion of Lee (2018),Cross Culture Adaptationenables the people to learn and acquire information regarding the customs, language and beliefs of different culture. Adaptation is considered to be dynamic procedure. However, with respect to this theory, the employees of business organisations are able to enhance their knowledge regarding the social norms, beliefs and values of different culture. Moreover, with the assistance of this theory, employees are able to become competent in communicating with the employees from different cultural background. However, in this respect, Croucheret al. (2017) stated that employees are required to be provided with proper training for adapting the norms of other culture. From this, it can be further mentioned that the employees of different business organisation would be able to minimise the conflicts of interests and would also be able to respect each other's values and opinion. This would further help the employees of the organisation to contribute with their efficient performance for the productivity of the organisation.

Activities and Timescale

Milestones

Carrying out primary (quantitative and qualitative) and secondary (literature review) research

Formulating and communicating the outcomes of the research

Gantt Chart

Research Methodology

Research Philosophy

The research scholars would be carrying out this research with the help of philosophy of positivism. This enables the researchers to acquire true facts and figures regarding the management of diverse workforce and its impact on the performance of Morrisons.

Research Design

This research project would be conducted with the assistance of descriptive research design. It is believed that with descriptive design, researchers are able to acquire answers to a wide range of questions (Atmowardoyo, 2018). Therefore, from this design, the researchers would be acquiring productive information regarding the impact of diverse workforce on the organisational performance.

Research Approach

In this research project, the research scholars would be carrying out collection of information with the assistance of deductive approach. Deductive research approach helps the researchers in identifying new information in a step wise manner thereby acquiring appropriate results. From this approach, it is believed that researchers would be able to acquire a wide variety of information regarding the effectiveness of diverse workforce within Morrisons.

Research Strategy

The research study would be carried out with the help of both quantitative and qualitative methods. This strategy of utilising both qualitative and quantitative method is called mixed methods that assist the researchers in acquiring quantifiable data.In this context, it can be mentioned that for collecting information for literature review section, secondary sources would be utilised where online journals and articles would be searched.

Data Collection Techniques

For gathering information with the help of mixed methods, questionnaires for survey and interview would be developed. The selected participants would be surveyed and interviewed for acquiring unbiased responses. The questions of survey would be open ended, semi structured and for interview, it would be close ended and structured(Moser and Korstjens, 2018). On the other hand, the secondary sources for literature review would be searched with the help of Boolean Search Strategy.

Methods of Data Analysis

The gathered information in the research project with the help of survey, interview and secondary sources would be analysed with the help of statistical tools and thematic analysis respectively. Specifically, responses of survey would be measured with the assistance of statistical tools and interview and secondary sources information would be evaluated with thematic analysis.

Sample Size and Sampling Technique

The research scholars would be selecting 51 employees from the supermarket of Morrisons for acquiring their opinion regarding diversification with survey. On the other hand, 2 managers of the supermarket would be selected for interview. The employees would be selected with the help of random sampling method whereas the managers would be selected with non-probability sampling method(Elfil and Negida, 2017).

Ethical Consideration

The participants would be selected with their consent by providing them a form of informed consent. Moreover, the acquired information from the participants would be sustained till submission with the help Data Protection Act 2018 (Legislation.gov.uk, 2020). In addition to this, it would also be made sure that the research study is accomplished within the stipulated timescale.

Gap in Research

In this research project, the strategies with the help of which the employees would be able to overcome the challenges of diversification are not mentioned. However, the research is therefore continued for identifying the strategies for mitigating the barriers to cultura diversification within workplace.

Anticipated Outcomes

With the help of this research, the scholars would be able to acquire knowledge regarding the effectiveness of cultural diversification in the supermarket. Moreover, it would also help in analysing the benefits of diversified workforce in enhancing productivity of Morrisons.

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