Artigos

Dancing in the Rainbow

“Morning - Outside is cold and dry. A chilly and cold wind almost freezes my face. I try to quickly cross the round cement park targeting the entrance of the high buildings. Looking at the high buildings gives me a crisp in the spine! I go in directly to my office.

“Good morning! Good Morning! ” Quickly everyone disappears in the offices.

Lunch-time - Everyone runs to the cafeteria. No need to get instructions on how to go there. Just follow the traffic. People dress with jacket and ties, traditionally or modern dresses, national costumes, with a sari or a chador, such a multicolor environment!

I get a surprise! The multicolored people walking around brings me a sense of being at home.

First section meeting - I meet the colleagues and get a feeling of the multidisciplinary and multicultural environment. The Russian colleague does not have the cold dry face of the cold war movies! The Indian near my ‘box’ – uups,  my office - is more reserved and calm. He fits well in my picture of the ancient Indian culture. The Austrian secretary talks to me in German, everyone else in English. What a mixture! My head is burning at the end of the day! How quickly can I learn to switch from English to German and back to my own thoughts in my mother tongue?!”

Many times, I have thought about those first days at the Agency. A time when all my efforts were to understand the environment, how the people react, what are their expectancies, how to deal with everyone in such diversification of cultures and expectations, and how these would influence my work and life here.

I felt some similarities with my own culture, where a mixture of people from different races, emigrants from different countries built up the country’s society. Such society has an inherent synergy. Here, a mixture of people from different cultures, working together, using a common language – the Agency or UN English, and preserving the own culture are trying to get into synergy!

Born in a mixed and multicolored society, you are often confronted with diversity of behaviors and perceptions. Therefore, you should learn how to quickly acknowledge people diversity and overall, you have to learn respect.

Respect to each other is a key word in any relationship. In multicultural relationships, it is essential! You cannot respect others unless you honor and even celebrate individual differences.

Just imagine how ineffective and boring would be if everyone looked the same, thought the same, believed the same and did the same?

Most of us readily accept the notion that diversity of talent and perspective strengthens a work group and contributes to excellent results. Yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that the differences also get in the way. The hard truth is that many of us more often tolerate than celebrate differences.

There are important differences in origins, histories, languages, religious practices, material culture, as well as artistic and creative work among people. In the 80’s, Hofstede[1] conceptualised culture as embodying four dimensions: (1) Power Distance or the acceptance to unequal distribution of power in society, (2) Uncertainty Avoidance, which reflects aversion to ambiguity and risk (3) Individualism-Collectivism and (4) Masculinity-Femininity. For Hofstede, individualism ‘implies a loosely knit social framework in which people are supposed to take care of themselves and their immediate family only, while collectivism is characterized by a tight social framework in which people distinguish between in-groups and out-groups’. Finally, Masculine societies value assertiveness and material acquisition, whereas Feminine societies emphasize human nurturance and quality of life. Hofstede further created an index to measure these four dimensions in each culture. Hofstede index gives 91 for individualist values in the American culture, 90 for Australia, while Colombia gets only 13, by being a highly collectivist society. Japanese are very high in uncertainty avoidance (index 92) while Americans are much lower (index 46). These indexes have helped to study the values of market for multinational enterprises in the process of globalisation.

Although analysing the complex culture features may be limiting, it can also help to understand cultural behaviours and management styles. Such analysis bring good insights on how to avoid conflicts deriving from cultural diversity.

For instance, a manager from a culture very high in Uncertainty Avoidance might not accept mistakes at any stage, for this manager risk should be avoided always, while an individual coming from a high feminine culture who sees more the human nurturance would be more flexible and sympathetic to the same behaviour.

Cooperation is another culture component. Cultures which include a strong element of cooperation may conflict with an independent individualistic culture.

 Due to culture conditioning, managers from distinct cultures perceive, interpret and evaluate behaviours differently! This can create friction in the organization!

The diversification of cultures influences all aspects of life: your work, the way you perform it, the way the others see you, your relationships, etc.

Now, how to manage such differences? Should we ask the managers to do it for us? Or should we work together to bring the differences to a minimum in the negative aspects and a maximum in the positive ones?

There are of course, advantages and a couple of disadvantages. Some say, there are more disadvantages in managing multicultural organizations than advantages. Those are usually talking about multinational enterprises where short-term profit is the goal.

International organizations can build on the multicultural environment to gain on creativity, innovative ways of performing a job, of management, of leadership, etc. Those aspects that bring disadvantages could be managed if we are aware of them.

In a multicultural organization is also essential to bring the flavour of freedom. Only free individuals can bring innovative features from the own culture to the work place. 

Essential is not only to keep the own believes and culture, but also to fully accept other cultures and belief systems. Nevertheless, acceptance is not tolerance! We often tend to tolerate instead of accept. When you accept others, as he/she is in the frame of his/hers origins, history, culture, religion, material culture, you truly overcome cultural barriers. It is therefore, an individual and a collective task! It is a task for the individual and for the management!

Working in a multicultural environment is an expression of acceptance and respect to each other.

There is neither place to Individualism nor Collectivism, neither Masculinity nor Femininity, but harmony! Nevertheless, each of us still brings its culture in the bag with its index points of Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism/collectivism, Femininity/Masculinity, but being aware of them, of how they are part of our bag, we may be able to dance in harmony.

We could see our culture baggage as part of a dance where we are the dancers.

In this dance, the dancers are dressed with the diverse colours of our own cultures. We freely dance together, each one in the special own rhythm but in harmony with each other. The dance evokes a society which evolves with time to consider not the individual needs neither the collective needs, but the needs of the individual and the society and the environment with all aspects that will bring, but overall with a inherent harmony.

Our diverse cultural views, ideas and aspirations belong in the community we live, the work environment, the classroom, the laboratory, and in the social and political life of the scientific community/organizations.

Who we are as unique individuals and members of communities/cultures should not be left at home when we go to work. Nevertheless, they should be integrated in the society or organization we are part of.

Science, and the conduct of research, seems to be a culture unto itself: formal, highly technical, difficult to perform, even hostile to new ideas or unorthodox approaches. The management of such organizations also bear the same challenges, but… at the end everything depends on us!

We are the players of this dance! We make the rainbow colours! We will be dancing in the rainbow and building our rainbow society!

This article was published at ECHO, the IAEA staff newsletter by Rejane Spiegelberg-Planer

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[1] Hofstede’s formulation is one among many frameworks that may prove useful to understand diversity.