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Muddles and Huddles: Facilitating a Multicultural Workforce Through Team Management Theory

The George Washington University

With the increasingly multicultural workforce, companies are implementing programs to address diversity. This paper suggests two avenues of guidance for organizations adopting a multicultural approach. First, businesses can profit from experiences in academia, where researchers have outlined areas of difficulty. For example, larger issues (ones that will surface in the workplace) revolving around sharing power and valuing difference have come to the fore front of academic debate. The inclusion of the "other"goes beyond token repre sentation and is more complex than assimilation, melting pot, and integration theories suggest.

Second, industry's own team management theory, which dismantles hierar chical structures in favor of participatory ones, suggests ways of dissolving barriers and creating unity. Working together to reach a common goal underlies team management theory. Successful teams in industry support the fact that collective decision making is more productive than that of the individual. New workplace structures should focus not on individual change but on cooperation and team goals. Pedagogical methods of inclusivity and workplace teams can assist companies as they prepare for the increasingly diverse workforce.

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