7.1. ASSIMILATION AND MULTICULTURALISM
Until the 1960s the emphasis was on assimilation in much of the Western world. People from a minority group were expected to change and become like the members of the rest of the work environment.
But the world is changing. Multiculturalism is emerging as the typical pattern in many places. In multiculturalism each group is allowed to retain those of its own attributes that it finds most important. People are allowed to satisfy their special needs and rights to express their cultural identity. People are treated equally, regardless of ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, or physical disability.
Multiculturalism is increasingly recognized as desirable, as people realize that talent is not linked to specific demographic factors, and the optimal utilization of personnel resources requires that all talent be used.
Yet some of the old attitudes still persist. All humans are ethnocentric (Triandis, 1994). That is, they use their own culture as the standard to judge other cultures. The more another culture is like their own culture, the "better" it is, which explains why the "Golden Rule" works best with people from similar cultures.
People are attracted by similarity. In one experiment, psychologists measured how much people liked a set of first names. They found that the more the letters of a name were the same as the letters of a respondent's first name, the more the respondent liked that first name! In short, we may be "wired" to like similarity. As a result, many of us find that "otherness" is a deficiency. We feel that having an organization that is too diverse is undesirable. We think that people who express discomfort with our values are a bit strange (to say the least). We feel that those who work with us should assimilate to our norms. We believe that fair and equal treatment is to treat people the way we perceive fairness. We think that if there is a non-fit between our culture or organization and an outsider, it is the outsider who must change rather than our culture or organization.
In sum, there are tensions between assimilation and multiculturalism. What does the scientific literature say about the advantages and disadvantages of each?
A review of the topic of diversity (Triandis, Kurowski, and Gelfand, 1994) identified several advantages and some disadvantages. Among the advantages of heterogeneous groups is that they are more creative, they are more likely to solve difficult problems, and they are less likely to engage in "groupthink," a process in which the leader of the group convinces everyone else that his or her solution is the best. Groupthink often results in disastrous decisions, as was discussed in previous chapters and again in this one.
However, not every kind of heterogeneity is desirable. Heterogeneity in ability within the work group is not desirable; it is only heterogeneity in attitudes, background, culture, and the like, that is desirable (Triandis, Hall, and Ewen, 1965). Heterogeneity in ability can result in some members of the group looking down on other members. But heterogeneity in perspective means that different ideas can be placed in front of the group, and confronting different ideas can often generate new ones. In one study of the top management of 199 banks it was found that heterogeneous management teams were associated with more innovative banks. Diversity also increases the quality of ideas and decreases the chances that a major mistake will be made by the group. In a famous example, General Motors introduced a car called Nova to the Latin American market, with disappointing results. Had that name been determined by a team that included Spanish speakers, they might have detected a problem: No va (does not go) is not a good name for a car in that part of the world.
Research has found that the mental health of those who assimilate (give up their own culture to become indistinguishable from members of another culture) and those who separate (stay with fellow members of their culture in enclaves) is not as good as the mental health of those who are bicultural (retain their own culture, but also use most of the elements of the other culture). It is parallel to the comparison of a person who is monolingual with a person who is bilingual. If both languages are needed, the bilingual will behave more effectively.
On the other hand, diversity is often related to less interpersonal attraction, and that increases turnover. Group cohesion is lower in heterogeneous groups. The more diverse the team, the more communication problems are likely to emerge, and poor communication predicts low interpersonal attraction. Dissatisfaction with the job is likely, and that increases turnover. Cordero, DiTomaso, and Farris (1996) studied 2,331 R&D professionals in regard to creativity and morale. They found that male professionals were more innovative and likely to remain in their jobs when they worked in male-dominated work groups, and females were more satisfied when working in female dominated work-groups. Heterogeneous groups often experience delays and distortions in communication. Language differences can result in misunderstandings. More than that, people engage in paralinguistic communication, such as touching or not touching, keeping a small or a large distance between their bodies when they talk to each other, using different body orientations, such as facing each other directly or at an angle, and looking or not looking in the eyes. Major differences in paralinguistic behaviors result in low group cohesion. Furthermore, differences in demographics and religion can result in increased stress.
When we look at the total picture we note that some teams manage diversity well and others do not cope with it. Those who manage it well have members with certain personalities, who have had a wide range of experiences, have traveled a lot, and have developed intercultural skills. People who are authoritarian, low in tolerance for ambiguity, and use narrow categories do not do well in intercultural situations. There are tests that can measure these personality attributes. For example, a test can be used to find out whether a person uses narrow or broad categories. The test consists of 10 pages. At the top of each page is a nonsense word (e.g., a zupf), and a nonsense shape. Under that line are 20 other nonsense shapes. The instructions tell the respondent that the nonsense shape is called a zupf, and ask him or her to circle all the shapes that appear to be zupfs. A broad categorizer would circle most of the shapes. A narrow categorizer would circle only the one or two shapes that are almost identical to the shape at the top of the page. Doing this ten times provides a score that is reliable. Broad categorizers do better in other cultures because when they see a behavior that is strange they fit it in their existing cognitive framework.
Special training programs that teach people how to deal with differences in culture are especially useful (Black and Mendenhall, 1990). Consultants provide such training, but some of them are incompetent. We discuss, at the end of this chapter, some clues for identifying the most effective consultants.