Marrying even within your own culture can be a challenging experience. Once you get past the wedding day and the romance you are left with the everyday task of loving somebody who is not like you. Differences can be a source of inspiration or conflict. But what are the challenges of marry into another culture? A desire to understand another’s culture will not prevent conflict. You have your own cultural beliefs that you bring to a relationship and you will in the first instance use that framework to judge a person or situation. However it is important to gather as much information about your partner’s culture as you can. For example their rituals, their religious beliefs, the role of extended family in your partner’s life and how much autonomy does your partner have in making decisions for their life. People in the West have a great deal of independence from their extended families. Those in the East value close family relationships. This will impact on your relationship.

Discuss issues like how much free time is normal in a relationship. Discuss your finances and whether both of you are going to work. How will you raise children? Where are you going to live and will there be the enough job opportunities for whoever is going to work. Communication is the secret to avoiding unnecessary conflict and to resolving conflict should it arise. Some cultures are more adept at direct communication than others. Nevertheless without some degree of commitment to discussing issues being made, your chances of a successful relationship become less and less.

Organizations around the world has been realizing the cultural diversity within organization is not a negative aspect, rather can facilitate organizational stalk for glory (Papers4you.com, 2006). However it is not an easy task to manage employees with different cultural backgrounds. Nevertheless there are many policy guidelines that can make task easy.

On a broader perspective, cultural diversity can be manage through communicating (creating awareness among all employees about diverse values of peers through communication), cultivating ( facilitating acknowledgement, support and encouragement of any employee’ success by all other workers), and capitalizing (linking diversity to every business process and strategy such as succession planning, reengineering, employee development, performance management and review, and reward systems) strategies ( Cascio, 1995).

There are many different innovative ways that organizations have adopted to manage diversity. For instance Tabra Incorporation, a small manufacturer of jewellery and accessories in California comprised of modest workforce is composition of Third World immigrants from Cambodia, China, El Salvador, Ethiopia, India, Laos, Mexico, Thailand, Tibet Vietnam and other nations. To acknowledge importance of their cultural association, at least 10-12 different flags are always hanged from the ceiling of its main production facility which represents the countries of origin of the employees. The owner’s view point is ‘I would like for this to be a little United Nations everybody getting along and appreciating each other’s culture instead of just tolerating it’. (Bhatia & Chaudary, 2003)

If cultural diversity can be managed effectively, there is a potential to use diverse workforce for organizational benefits. Cox and Balke (1991) asserts that multi-culturism is directly linked to organizational success as

Effectively managed multi culture companies have cost effective competitive edge

It helps in promoting minority friendly reputation among prospective employees

Diverse cultural corporations help to get better customers which has a variety of people

Diverse group of employees are perceived to be more creative and efficient in problem solving as compared to homogenous group

Ability to manage cultural diversity increases adaptability and flexibility of an organization to environmental changes.

Many organizational examples can be taken in this regard. In Australia, for instance, Hotel Nikko in Sydney has unique edge that staff members in direct guest contact areas speak a total of 34 different languages. Similarly Qantas Flight Catering has sixty-six nationalities on staff, with various overseas-born chefs. So dedicated diverse ‘ethnic’ kitchens gave Qantas a huge competitive edge that offers food based on customer’s ethnic taste and requirements. Moreover Don’s Smallgoods through literacy, language and cultural trainings increased cross-cultural communication and increased profits while lowering costs at the same time. Similarly The Cheesecake Factory had put special effort to understand Japanese quality and packaging culture as Asian employees assist management to understand Asian tastes so that they can target exports to Asia (Nankervis et al, 2002)

Hence the discussion suggests that it is imperative to realize that cultural diversity should be taken as a tool for better organizational progress rather than a managerial problem and if effectively managed, it can be a key to gain competitive edge and success