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Multinational Cultural Diversity

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What are examples of challenges and opportunities of multinational cultural diversity and affirmative action?

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This solution is about the challenges and opportunities of multinational cultural diversity and affirmative action.

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One of the basic challenges of a multinational company is to strike a balance between remaining a stable and continuous organization globally, and being flexible to local conditions. If the company strategy is focused only on the needs of its home company, ignoring the diverse needs of its multinational locations, this can cause employee resistance, an absence of buy-in, and in many instances employee resentment (Hazard, 2004). An example of this is how gender equality might affect the morale of the workforce for a company located in a country like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where Islamic law and Arab tribal customs supersede and even abrogate the concept of gender equality.

The challenger is that it is often difficult to distinguish what aspects of a company must be global and what aspects should become local. The area of diversity is a good example of this challenge, because diversity in the workplace itself started out in the US as a result of equal opportunity laws and affirmative action regulations. Because many US companies rolled out their diversity initiatives without adapting it to local cultures first, most such initiatives have been less than successful and have ...

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