1.
Language barrier:
Language is the basis thing to identify a person origin or personality. In order to
express emotions, feelings and needs common language is required. Basically communication
takes place when both persons know what the other person is saying. Communication includes
everything our expressions, tone, voice and physical settings as well. But If anyone could not
understand than the communication becomes complex and the confliction starts. At work place
the communication barriers the most common thing that leads to a bigger problem. That’s why
in project management courses we taught first to use common language so the things can take
place smoothly. In the country like Pakistan the where almost there is 74 languages are spoken
including minor ones the confliction at workplace is very common. In books we were taught
about over national language that is Urdu but in the race or progress we could not use Urdu in
offices. Due to the lack of common language companies cannot perform ideally which
eventually effect on national economy. For example if a job involves a customer services, there
is a high chance that both customer and operator face difficulty to understand each other due
to language barrier which leads to a misleading information. Another example is of free lancers,
they are given a project. But unfortunately they could not complete the project because they
have language barrier (team including members from different countries and origin). In
Pakistan the most affected sector by language is IT companies because their most of clients are
foreigners so they face difficulty in understanding of their requirements in provided task. In
order to overcome this situation we have to learn basic common language.
2. Acceptance issues
Acceptance at workplace means that the group members don’t judge there colleague on the
basis of culture, color or race. Basically in diverse group teams members are usually are of
different age, gender and culture. If we talk in Pakistani context the acceptance rate of other
employ is too low. Many of the new employ left their jobs due to harsh behavior of their senior.
This ended up with the high unemployment rate. The two major causes of non-acceptance in the
diverse group are following:
EGO is the major and most effective drawback of diverse group. Especially in Asian culture most
of senior do not accept their junior employ. They tried their best to create a great hinder at their
work place. Secondly they do not allow them to learn anything from them, most probably the
reason behind is that senior employ thinks if we let them to learn or be trained, their own career
can be endangered . In short this is the cost of being more innovative teams.
Harassment is another major drawback of using diverse group. In Pakistan harassment at work
place is very common. Due to lack of education and moral ethics women are being harassed. In
diverse group, if a women is harassed than the whole group environment is tainted with
negativity which result them into low productivity.
Acceptance issue in the team lowers the productivity of the company. This is why the diverse
group is more harmful than the homogenous group.
3. Cultural Clashes:
In Asia cultural clashes are too common. In the scenario like this it really hard to
practice diverse teams at companies. Pakistan is full of cultures; there are more
than 14 major cultures exists currently. There is tradition of cast (bradari) system
in Pakistan that’s why everyone tried to hire new employ of their cast or the
whom that belongs to their culture or town. If it is not possible than due to this
other members did not accept the new one and clashes start.
The other issue that rises in workplace due to diversity of culture is respect issues.
In Pakistan context if a junior ask any question or query to their senior, the
seniors their ego hurts or he/she disrespect them. Let’s take an example of
McDonald’s, when the McDonalds tried to entered in a Indian market they
brought their trademark big Mac made with beef patty to India. Beef patty was
not liked by customer as well as employees who do not want to work with beef
as it interferes with their religious beliefs this has create an issue at McDonald’s
franchises.
tell stories, and convey complex messages and knowledge (Kim & Mattila, 2011).
Communication is
the exchange of meaning, when there is a language barrier; effective two-way communication
becomes
even more difficult (Adler, 1991; Rabbani et al., 2017). Language is a very important issues in
manag-
ing expatriates (Rubin & Rubin, 2011). Moreover, language provides a significant frame of
reference
and a relational context that can representative a person's identity. Therefore there are
differences in
language cause by culture difference in expatriates. Understanding of the relationship between
lan-
guage barriers and social identity patterns of an expatriate is important to determine the
work perfor-
mance. Language barriers are a common challenge when working with expatriates. What
native speak-
ers often do not realize is that frequently it is not the other person's accent but their own way
of speaking
that creates the greatest barriers to effective communication (Berardo & Deardorff, 2012;
Javadpour &
Samiei, 2017).
