THE CHALLENGES OF DIVERSITY [3]
Diversity is a fact, and it is not going to go away. Not all cultures in the world are going to become like yours. Most people in the world actually think others ought to try to imitate and adopt their culture. This is true, no matter who "we" and "they" are. Pakistanis who work in the oil-rich emirates of the Middle East, Poles who work in Germany, Peruvians in Canada—whoever they are, people tend to believe their view of the universe, as shared by many others and verified by their experiences, is familiar and normal and home. Especially when confronted with another view of the universe, humankind takes refuge in the comfort of the familiar.
Somehow we need to learn, in Hall's words, to "accept the fact that there are many roads to truth and no culture has a corner on the path or is better equipped than others to search for it. We can start with Hofstede's advice: "The principle of surviving in a multicultural world is that one does not need to think, feel and act in the same way in order to agree on practical issues and to cooperate." We can agree to be different and to allow for diversity. We can celebrate our own culture in terms of how it is or is not like another, and celebrate other cultures because they are different or similar. The more we know about other cultures the more we will know about our own. Then we can begin to explain why people from different cultures behave the way they do in business situations. Their behavior will differ, even if their workplace is in the same culture.
