The multicultural organization

TLDR

Organizations are increasingly diverse, offering benefits such as improved decision‑making and innovation while also risking higher turnover and conflict, so leaders are urged to guide change toward multicultural structures. The article seeks to define the characteristics of multicultural organizations, contrast them with post‑diversity models, and outline mechanisms and tools that enable such transformation. The authors present a conceptual model of multicultural organization features and evaluate practical tools used by leading firms to implement the transformation.

Abstract

Executive Overview Organizations are becoming increasingly diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. This diversity brings substantial potential benefits such as better decision making, greater creativity and innovation, and more successful marketing to different types of customers. But, increased cultural differences within a workforce also bring potential costs in higher turnover, interpersonal conflict, and communication breakdowns. To capitalize on the benefits of diversity while minimizing the potential costs, leaders are being advised to oversee change processes toward creating “multicultural” organizations. What are the characteristics of such an organization, and how do they differ from those of the post? What mechanisms are available to facilitate such a change? This article addresses these questions. It also describes a model for understanding the required features of a multicultural organizations and reviews tools that pioneering companies have found useful in changing organizations toward the multicultural model.