Managing Multiculturalism in Organizations
Scenario
Recepee Co. is a trading company in Malaysia with more than 100 employees. The recent staff survey of Recepee Co. shows that 50% of employees are dissatisfied with the company, and 30% of them intend to leave the company in near future. One of the company’s largest projects is seriously behind schedule as a result. Samira is recruited as a project manager to resolve the situation. Samira calls the first team meeting and notices that the team is diverse in terms of gender, age, ethnicity and religion. She emphasises that despite people’s difference in cultural backgrounds they must all work together to deliver the project. She sets ground rules by setting hard deadlines and micromanaging people to make sure that they understand tasks and deliver them on time. Two team members inform her that one of the deadlines falls within a Hindu festival that is celebrated in their community and they cannot deliver the tasks on that week. Samira dismisses this and says that the company cannot accommodate individual requests (these are the only Hindu colleagues in the company), and will only respect national holidays. Another team member complains that she cannot work with her colleague because he constantly undermines her and asks her to do all the menial tasks, keeping the important tasks for himself. When asked about it, he says that, as a young woman, his colleague cannot possibly have the experience to take on important tasks and it’s best if she sticks to simple tasks for this important project. A third team member complains that she is always asked to write the minutes of meetings, but she has already declared that she is dyslexic (HR are aware of this). Samira reprimands the team for making excuses and urges everyone to pull themselves together to deliver the task, or there would be penalties.
The team disengage from the project, ignore Samira’s requests for meetings and updates, and two of them quit. In trying to replace the colleagues who have left the project, Samira misses every single deadline and the project fails.
- Identify the problem(s) and analyse the contributing factors to the problems in this case. Suggest solutions using relevant academic literature, refer to the case study guidelines and follow the given template.
