The business case for managing cultural diversity

Answer

The table of contents:

Section 1: The business case for managing cultural diversity

• Understanding diversity management
• Diversity management: The big picture
• The industry environment: Cultural diversity and business challenges
• The business case for managing cultural diversity
• Stages of diversity management
• Developing a business case for managing cultural diversity

Section 2:  Cross cultural communication

• Understanding culture and cultural diversity in the USA
• Current statistics
• The four (4) basis elements of cross cultural communication
• Understanding the process of cultural adaption
• Developing organizational and personal cultural competence

Section 3: Managing culturally diverse teams

• Competencies for managing culturally diverse teams
• Managing culturally diverse teams
• Recent trends
• Skill for building trust and communication

Section 4:  Factoring cultural diversity into business planning

• An integrated framework for diversity management
• Diversity analysis checklist exercise: Project analysis
• Developing a cultural diversity management action plan
• Forecasted trends

Using the Web sites listed, present information about trends in the U.S. populations regarding the following information:

• Immigrant versus native
• Religion
• Age
• Race

Latest information on the U.S population shows that the country is increasingly becoming diversified over time (Pierce, 2015). According to Passel and Cohn (2008), this diversity is greatly attributed to the increase in immigrant population which is expected to rise from 12% of the total US population as of 2005 to 19% of the total population by the end of 2015. Nonetheless, the country is also diversified in terms of religion gender and age (Pew Research Center, (2015). All these factors affect how people relate at the workplace and other institutions and thus managers should address these factors to prevent any form of discrimination or strife (Pierce, 2015). Consequently, this study will analyze the demographic changes in the workplace and how supervisors can handle these differences in their various teams.

To begin with, it is important to review the various demographic compositions in the US. First, this study will focus on the religious inclination of the U.S population. According to Pew Research Center (2015), the share of Christian population fell from 78.4% to 70.6% in the period between 2007 and 2014. On the contrary, non Christian faith membership grew from 4.7% of the population to 5.9% of the total population.  This represents a 1.2% increase in the overall number of Muslims and Hindus (Pew Research Center, 2015). The second demographic concept is the racial composition of the country. Passel and Cohn (2008)  note that the current US population is made up of 67% white, 14% Hispanic, 13% Black and 5% Asian.  The authors further anticipate that given the current trends, the previously dominant white population is expected to fall to 47%, the Hispanics will increase to 29 percent, and the Black may remain the same at 13 percent while the Asian population will grow marginally to 9%.

Lastly, it is important to also note that the US age groups are also changing with time. According to Passel and Cohn (2008), the population of people in the working age (18-64 years) is expected to increase from 186million in 2005 to 286 million people in 2050. Furthermore, the immigrant working age population will increase, implying that the workplaces will have more Hispanic whites, blacks, Hindus and Muslims. It is thus critical that the organization and especially its leadership understand how to manage the diverse workforce (Pierce, 2015).  This is especially critical since different ethnic backgrounds come with different values and believes about work that have to be respected for peaceful co-existence (Pierce, 2015). This manual will therefore offer resourceful directions for current and future managers towards reducing strife caused by the diversity within the workforce.