Manage Employee Relations and Diversity. Overview of the Bhutanese Culture and Concept for a Diversity Policy

Submitted Assignment , 2017 , 8 Pages , Grade: competent

Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance

This assignment includes a critical essay that provides a brief overview of a foreign culture and attempts to put it in the context of its relations and various implications in a cross-cultural working environment. The second part of the assignment develops a comprehensive Diversity Policy for Marine Deluxe, a fictional yacht building company. The policy covers important aspects like policy implementation and monitoring and evaluation plans.

Manage employee relations/Manage diversity policy

This section of the assessment provides a brief overview of the Bhutanese culture and attempts to put it in the context of its relations and various implications in a cross-cultural working environment.

For its small size, the cultural diversity of Bhutan is considered quite profound. Bhutanese culture is hugely entrenched in and influenced by Buddhism – the primary belief system practised by most of the populace. From birth through marriage to death, Buddhism has shaped Bhutan and its culture and value system(Pommaret, 2009). The Buddhist belief in the law of karma – dictating a person’s fate because of his or her deeds –forms the cornerstone of Bhutanese culture.

An essential feature of the Bhutanese culture is its elaborate and refined system of etiquette(Aris & Hutt, 1994). It forms the bedrock of everyday life. It serves as a code of conduct emphasising respect for elders, authority, faith in the institution of marriage, filial devotion, and dedication to civic duty. Bhutanese culture also prescribes elaborate forms of protocol and procedures to mark important events in one’s personal as well as official life. For instance, the assumption of office or promotion is often incomplete without elaborate ceremonies that involve Buddhist rituals invoking one’s guardian deities for protection, reaching out to elders and superiors for blessing and seeking friends and relations for support.

Women are given equal stature in Bhutanese culture and are not at all isolated or disenfranchised. As opposed to most societies in South Asia( Harmful Traditional Practices in Three Countries of South Asia: culture, human rights and violence against women, 2012), the girl child is not discriminated against in Bhutan. Her birth is celebrated with as much joy as is a son’s. Men and women work alongside in most professions, converse freely and without any distinct or subtle forms of segregation.

Bhutanese culture, as Dorji (2017) writes, is considered progressive. It is not at all shackled in an outdated and restrictive belief system that stifles innovation and progress, or neither is it overbearing or prescriptive with rigid laws that are quite often seen to be bordering on the extreme. Hence, no significant implications are anticipated for a Bhutanese in a cross-cultural work environment. Employees from such cultural backgrounds generally do well in a regular work environment. Additionally, there are no specific provisions that employers need to put aside to ensure that cultural sensibilities are addressed adequately(Pommaret, 2009).

However, some sticking points do exist when pitched against the setting of a western business environment, say Australia, for instance. A culture of respect for superiors and the influence of a strong etiquette system invariably holds back individuals from such backgrounds from being too forthcoming and overbearing. This is often misinterpreted as a lack of confidence and low self-esteem. A comparison by Hofstede Insight (a Dutch institution specializing in organizational culture)between Australia and Bhutan on the cultural dimensions put forward by the celebrated Dutch Professor Geert Hofstede bears out this fact(“Country Comparison - Hofstede Insights,” 2017).

Professor Geert Hofstede described the effects that a society’s culture has on the values of its members and how these shape our behaviour in the workplace, and identified six so-called “dimensions of national culture” based on his comprehensive studies. A very high score of 94 on the dimension of “power distance” for Bhutan in comparison to Australia’s 36 reveals the extent to which Bhutanese culture accepts superiors and the tradition of maintaining a formal channel of communication and conduct with figures of authority.

Similarly, like elsewhere in most Asian countries, Bhutan is known for its close-knit society. Bhutanese are used to a culture of dependency, of one looking out for your own, providing a sense of security and something to fall back on. Such a culture of inter-dependence inadvertently leads to a lack of initiative and self-reliance. Conversely, Australia, with a score of 90 on the “individualism” dimension is fundamentally a highly individualistic society(“Country Comparison - Hofstede Insights,” 2017). One is often considered on your own and hence, requires to be self-reliant, forthcoming and display initiative. In such a setting, an employee would be considered indecisive, lacking in the ability to work unsupervised, or even labelled incompetent if he or she consults and seeks discussion and approval in a typical show of innate humility. It may therefore take some time before employees from a Bhutanese cultural background learn this aspect of a loose-knit society.

In keeping with an increasingly diverse workplace, the Human Resource Management department must undertake diversity management as one of its key responsibilities.

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• Course: Advance Diploma of Business & Leadership Management
• Grade: competent
• Author: Lakey Lakey (Author)
• Publication Year: 2017
• Pages: 8
• Catalog Number: V1184525
• ISBN (PDF): 9783346617910
• Language: English
• Tags: employee relations, diversity policy, cultural influence, business, environment, stakeholder, plan, communication