Culture is the unique arrangement of rules, attitudes, opinions, and behavior that characterizes the way people and institutions collaborate to accomplish goals. Culture establishes how members of an institution should behave under particular conditions and how their actions affect their relationships with others. It impacts everyone, from the seasoned CEO to the newly hired intern.
The Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI) is a frequently used instrument for assessing culture. Rather than describing the significant cultural forms, the OCI outlines three groupings of comparable civilizations: constructive, passive, and aggressive cultures. Attempts to establish a comprehensive taxonomy of cultural dimensions have detractors, particularly those who emphasize the host society’s impact on corporate cultures. Culture is also shaped by many other elements, including heritage, previous management, innovation, and ownership in a globalized economy.
For example, there is a strong correlation between cultural diversity and increased innovations, company performance, and better selection processes in today’s diverse workforce. A culturally varied workplace provides opportunities for individuals to develop their abilities and skills. A comprehensive set of information and concepts helps individuals to benefit from a more varied group of employees. Cultural diversity has been shown to improve problem-solving ability, as well as contentment and effectiveness. Additionally, an appropriate culture within an organization, such as implementing a cultural diversity approach, can increase its attractiveness to potential employees worldwide.
Understanding culture is essential for IO psychologists due to the following reasons. First, the cultural experience would enable IO psychologists to realize the importance of diversity training in their workforce. Modernization and growth in the number of women, racial minority employees, and the elderly in the workplace have resulted in corporations increasingly relying on cultural training to increase staff knowledge. Diversity training promotes competencies that facilitate the collaboration of people of diverse backgrounds.
For instance, in response to a well-documented occurrence in 2018, in which African-American males were jailed for sitting in a Starbucks store without purchasing, the coffee chain closed 8,000 locations in the United States to guarantee that all employees received compulsory diversity training. Additionally, IO psychologists would be able to understand the individual differences that exist between their diverse employees. Different employees with different cultural backgrounds possess personal characteristics.
As such, they would develop fair and just recruitment methodologies in their selection processes. For example, understanding their corporation’s culture and developing a marketing and employment plan around it will attract the talent your business requires to prosper.