Cultural Competence In The Workplace

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Pages: 7

Cultural Competence

The United States is a melting pot now more than ever. The biggest reason for this change is largely due from immigration and birthrates. Over the past thirty years immigrants who have come to American have been primarily non-Europeans including Asians, and people from South and Central America. In the year 2000, the United States census recorded 2.4 percent of the population in the United States to have multiracial backgrounds. Although this may not sound like a big number, Americans have had to adapt to being more culturally competent. Cultural competence is, “The process by which individuals and systems respond respectfully and effectively to people of all cultures, languages, classes, races, ethnic backgrounds, religions,
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I am a Business Economics major and I hope that this internship will be a positive experience as to what I want to do in my career. I have been to the office building before and have seen that the employees come from different cultural backgrounds. I will be working for a broker who is from China. His name if Alan and he has lived in the United States for the last twenty years and speaks perfect English. Developing a positive attitude towards other people’s values and beliefs can be more effective in the work World because in any given situation they can offer a different perspective, which could end up being a better decision for the company. Since I will be working for a broker we are not only looking at markets within the United States, but also internationally. Having someone like Alan I can imagine would be very helpful in exploring markets in Asia of companies that would be good investments. Cultural differences aren’t a bad thing even when they collide with your own values and beliefs. This can be seen a lot in Politics especially with the topic on diversity and equality. It is hard for a white politician to go against a black politician on a matter such as this because white people haven’t been exposed the same way as black people from a history standpoint. White people have not dealt with as much discrimination as black people so that is why we need their voice to be …show more content…
The last component necessary for conquering cultural competence is skill. Managing differences can be tough at times, but to solve any problem effectively, skill is a required ability that one must possess. Developing skill takes a lot of time and practice to help further improve your awareness and knowledge of cross-cultural backgrounds. Lack of skill can translate into lack of efficiency and could effect your way of doing business in the work World. The twenty-first century has brought about huge cultural differences especially in instances where white cops shoot innocent black people. This issue has brought about outrage from the public and that is why there needs to be a solution on closing competency gaps. The gap gets stretched when incidents like this surface to the public and effects work productivity. Dating back to 1954 another huge incident regarding cultural differences was the Supreme Court case, Brown vs. Board of Education. The ruling of this case was that the Court declared separate public schools for blacks and whites and coined the term, “Separate but Equal.” In no way shape or form was this solution held true as black people were still at a huge disadvantage from the conditions of their schools and the education that they were receiving. The only positive thing that came from this ruling was that it in infuriated the black community so much that they protested for