2023 / Robert Engle and Christopher Schlaegel

Cross-cultural impacts in the domestic workplace: multicultural work environment, cultural intelligence, and extra-role performance

Multiculturalism in the workplace has been increasing over the years in many countries, including the United States, with the United Nations indicating there have never been more immigrants than seen today (Titzmann & Fuligni, 2015). Multiculturalism has been increasingly viewed as beneficial, and even as “essential,” by business organizations as it is seen to positively impact such things as better decision making, greater creativity, and innovation (Aghazadeh, 2004; Cox & Blake, 1991; Evans & Suklun, 2017; Fitzsimmons et al., 2017). However, despite the performance benefits of cultural diversity seen by organizations in the workplace, some challenges have been identified resulting from a multicultural organization, such as the employee’s feeling of exclusion, communication breakdowns, and group conflict, which may be seen to also impact employee performance as well as personnel turnover (Stevens et al., 2008; Pasca & Wagner, 2011).


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