Vol. 4 Issue 4. – Article: ‘The Concepts of Multiculturalism-Strengthening through Soft Skills’ by K. Babitha

This paper is submitted by Mrs.K.Babitha (Ph.D), Kakatiya University, Warangal, Andhra Pradesh.

Good soft skills include the ability of people to balance the commercial needs of their company with the individual needs of their staff. Being flexible and able to adapt  the ambience of an organization and being able to collaborate with others and influence situations through lateral and more creative thinking. The ability to deal with differences, multiculturalism and diversity is needed more than ever.

The term ‘multiculturalism’ emerged in the 1960s in Anglophone countries in relation to the cultural needs of non-European migrants. It now means the political accommodation by the state and/or a dominant group of all minority cultures defined first and foremost by reference to race or ethnicity; and more controversially, by reference to nationality, aboriginality, or religion, the latter being groups that tend to make larger claims and so tend to resist having their claims reduced to those of immigrants. Very few companies are untouched by the ever-widening influence of other cultures and good soft skills facilitate better communication and people’s ability to manage differences effectively.

Developing Interaction – Corporate necessity 

Soft skills are no easy thing in the most progressive companies, managers are looking for people’s ability to communicate with clarity openly, respond empathetically by listening. Multicultural teams have become very common in recent years. With cross border mobility becoming much easier the number of people moving from one country to another has grown significantly. This has also led to more people from different cultural and national backgrounds through inter caste marriages. Their children could be born and grow up in different countries and have cross cultural identities. Globalization advances in communication and moving technology have reduced trade barriers and increased interaction among people.

Soft skills are needed to interact with people from varied backgrounds especially at work and outside the workplace. Because in the workplace we are at different hierarchy’s and there are many constraints to our attitude. So any problems arising in this area will definitely spill over onto the individual’s life and the whole work place is polluted.

The national assertiveness associated with multiculturalism has been part of a wider current of ‘identity’ politics which has transformed the idea of equality as sameness to equality as difference. Black power, feminist, and gay pride movements challenged the ideal of equality as assimilation and contended that a positive self-definition of group difference was more liberator. The rejection of the idea that political concepts such as equality and citizenship can be color-blind and culture-neutral, the argument that ethnicity and culture cannot be confined to some so-called private sphere but shape political and opportunity structures in all societies, is one of the most fundamental claims made by multiculturalism and the politics of difference. It is the basis for the conclusion that allegedly ‘neutral’ liberal democracies are part of hegemonic cultures that systematically de- marginalizes minorities. Hence, the claim that minority cultures, norms, and symbols have as much right as their hegemonic counterparts to state provision and to be in the public space, to be ‘recognized’ as groups and not just as culturally neutered individuals.

Sharpening Communicative skills Strengthens Soft Skills

A plethora of soft skills dimensions has been identified for the management of projects (Belzer, 2004; Moreira, 2004). These soft skills include, amongst others, communication skills, team building skills, flexibility and creativity skills, leadership skills and the ability to manage stress and conflict. Moreover, a number of research initiatives are underway to sensitize stakeholders and project managers regarding the importance of such skills to achieve smooth execution of projects. Software projects, in particular, warrant a careful selection of project managers to achieve project objectives. Mazarr (2000) mentioned that human beings know more that just “rote, mechanical operations and endless repetition of tasks” and he observed that the best workplaces are filled not by those with the most intimidating technical knowledge but rather by those with the best soft skills.

Communication skills refer to the ability to convey ideas easily and clearly in order to ensure that the team moves towards a common goal (Belzer, 2004). Effective communication is a very important soft skill required by software project managers. According to Belzer (2004), “project managers must have the ability to convey complex ideas easily, clearly articulate what must be accomplished, keep the team moving towards a common goal, foster an environment that allows team members to communicate openly and honestly, admit their own mistakes without losing respect, negotiate, listen and facilitate”. It is generally agreed that effective communication is the key to the success of any endeavor in which people are involved.

Developing communicative behaviour plays a central role among the soft skills. Generally, trainings designed to impart communicative behaviour contain face-to-face settings, interactive activities, role plays and group discussions. The participants’ performance in the activities are addressed and discussed to enhance their skill set (Jaskolski, 1999). Communicative behaviour consists of two parts: expression and speech reception. Speech productive parts of communicative behaviour are mostly focused and the receptive skills which consist of individual cognitive skills are hardly accessible and thus neglected (Rummer, 1996).

Influence of Multicultural –Leadership skill

Looking carefully into the factors that affect multicultural team leadership or management, we can identify five factors that operate at team levels:

1. Indigenous culture
2. Corporate culture
3.  Practical culture
4. The Development stage
5. Individual fundamentals

Indigenous Culture – There are ample theories and much research into how indegenous cultures of various nations affect team behaviour. Ger Hofstede’s Culture’s Consequences (1980) and Cultures and Organizations (1991) are two examples. National culture has many dimensions like orientation to time, style of communication, personal space, competitiveness and worldview. Generally we are dealing also with stereotypes and cultural biases here. Regional and personal life experience or character traits can override these ascribed ‘national’ culture traits. In real life this means that an Italian team member can be a shy, quite person or a German can be hopeless ansd so on with timetables.

Corporate Culture in the Organization – Corporate culture is very closely related to the practical culture and it is a result of a historical process where the founder and Successive leaders have left their marks. A large multinational organization is bound to have a more structured, hierarchic and bureaucratic approach to running its affairs while an Internet web design company with a minimum of five young creative artists would be an entirely different environment.

Practical Culture – Web designers and international bankers would seem to come from different worlds. Attire, language, etiquette, unwritten codes of behaviour, accepted practice and skills needed on the job vary to a great extent. It is of vital importance that the industry, the organization or the environment allows team members to display a sense of pride in one’s professional identity.

The Development stage- If the team is just developed with no practical knowledge or experience, the rules of the game have to be learnt by everyone. If the team has a history of performing efficiently, novice can rely on established practice and older members to teach them the skills required. The stage of development of the team member also plays a great role here. If the team is in the formation stage, the rules of the game are still being negotiated and people are learning their own roles. The ‘veteran’ team member has carved a secure role for himself while the entrant has to struggle.

Individual fundamentals -The other factors like personality, competence profile, the individual’s experience, expectations of rewards, acknowledgement and satisfaction working with the team is essential for the growth of the team work and the organization.

The first three factors are static factors, which mean that their characteristics cannot be easily changed by individual action. Team members or even the whole team cannot change the national culture. Individuals, teams and organizations have to learn to adaptability. In fact the efficiency of the team is directly correlated to how well this adaptation has been achieved. But intervention can greatly affect the last two factors of the practical stage and individual fundamental. A team can accelerate progress from formation stage to the stage of maturity and an individual can change personal attributes by acquiring new competences. Superior sustainable team performance can be achieved only if team members learn to take into account dimensions of national culture like orientation to time, style of communication, personal space, competitiveness and worldview and have successfully adapted their working practice to reflect the team members’ background realities.

Strengthening of Soft Skills                                                                      

Communication is an important part for any business. Especially in international business, any mistake in communication will prove costly for a firm. Firms have to be careful when negotiating business deals and using non-verbal communication. The various forms of non-verbal communication are kinesics, polemics, appearance, posture, eye contact, and symbolism. Any person who has to work in a multi-cultural business environment should attain cultural fluency, which is the ability to perform like a person of the native culture.

The learners not only gain knowledge about communicative skills but also learn to apply as well to change the actual behaviour in every day situations (Henninger & Mandl, 2000). The learner often knows the effective and adequate behaviour in certain situations but is not able to perform the behaviour and thus returns to the older rather dysfunctional behaviour. One of the reasons for the hiatus between the ideal and the practice can be the automaticity of communicative behaviour (Leontiev, 1981). In everyday life, communicative behaviour occurs quickly and the individual rarely has to think of the same as underlying communicative skills are automated. The automaticity of communicative behaviour enables the use of language in complex situations but also makes communicative behaviour difficult to change. According to the literature (Ohlsson & Brooks, 1993), automated skills can be de-automated by bringing the steps of action into consciousness.  In order to allow the learner to ‘function’ in everyday life the skills then have to be re-automated again.  This can be achieved by repeatedly training and exercising the acquired or modified skills (Hacker, 1998). In short, the actual behaviour is to be brought into consciousness then reflect one’s own behaviour and then exercise and train the new forms of communicative behaviour. One possibility for bringing automated cognitive processes like communicative behaviour into consciousness is to verbalize them (Schooler, 1993). The learner should verbalize what they have understood of speech receptive behaviour for de-automation.

Each organization functions according to the culture of the society in which it functions. Culture is the sum total of values, beliefs, behaviors, customs, and attitudes that differentiate one society from another. The elements of culture include values and attitudes, religion, communication, language, and society. All these elements interact with each other and cause an impact on the environment in which a business organization functions.

Comprehension of Multiculturalism – Key to Success

Managers who work in a multinational business environment need to equip themselves with all the necessary skills required for functioning efficiently. They have to develop their multicultural skills by understanding the culture of a particular country and respecting its customs and traditions. There are various elements of culture, like customs and traditions, mannerisms, values and attitude, religion, etc., that are of importance to international business.

All these elements have to be thoroughly understood before entering new markets. The culture of the country influences the culture at the workplace. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions help in understanding the various dimensions under which culture can be classified. They are power distance, individualism vs collectivism, masculinity vs femininity, uncertainty avoidance, individual vs collectivism and finally, long term orientation.

Everyone already has some form of soft skills. They also want them to have equally well-honed written skills so that their correspondence (including emails) doesn’t undo all the good work their face-to-face communication creates. These skills are called soft because they impact our day to day life and are also transferrable to our workplace. Not only that, the best news of all is that soft skills can be developed and honed on an on-going basis through good training, insightful reading, observation and of course, thorough practice,

References

Buhler, K. (1934). Speech theory: the representational function of speech.Jena: Fischer.

Cohen, S. L., & Rustad, J. M. (1998). High-Tech/High-Touch: High Time? Training and Development, 52 (12), 30-37.

Farzad Ehsani and Eva Knodt Sehda. “Speech Technology in Computer-Aided Language Learning: Strengths and Limitations of a new CALL Paradigm”, Vol. 2, No. 1, July 1998: pp. 45-60.

Henninger, M., Mandl, H., & Law, L.-C. (2000). Training of reflection In K. J. Klauer (Ed.), Cognitive Training (pp. 235-260).

Law, L. C. (2000). Overcoming the gap between knowledge and action from a situated point of view. In H. Mandl, & J. Gerstenmaier (Eds.).