Diverse workforce management - Essay Example

Diverse workforce is necessary for the successful management of cross cultural business. For example, it is impossible for American company Apple to manage their business successfully in China with the help of American employees alone. It should be noted that the locals have better knowledge about the local market and hence their services are essential for Google like big international companies to manage their business successfully at different parts of the world. Moreover, immigration has been increased a lot in the recent past because of globalization.

Exchange of workforce between countries is a common thing nowadays because of globalization. In America, Middle East and European countries, manpower is extremely scarce and hence it is extremely expensive there. On the other hand, in India and China like countries manpower resources are abundant and hence it is cheap there. Globalization helps expensive labour oriented countries to utilize cheap labour force available in India and China like countries. In short, management of diverse workforce is essential in most of the international companies at present.

This paper analyses management of diverse workforce by taking American company Apple Inc. as an example. . Torrington (2011) pointed out that “Apple is currently facing lot of difficulties in its recruitments and selection processes. “The key difficulty in recruitment process is the lack of specialist skills in the labour market” (Torrington et al., 2011, p.43). America is a country which is labelled as an expensive labour oriented country. In other words labour costs in America are extremely high compared to the labour costs in other parts of the world.

So, in a heavily competitive business world, it is difficult for Apple to manage their business functions with the help of locals alone. It is necessary for Apple to exploit the services of overseas workforce not only for their American operations but also for their international operations. Kirton & Greene (2005) mentioned that “Diversity exists among men and women of the same ethnic group. It also exists among women community as well as men community of the same ethnic group (Kirton & Greene, 2005, p.14). In other words, diverse workforce is not at all a term related to people from different cultures or communities.

Diversity can exist even among domestic workforce since no two individuals are alike. So, managing diversity means managing individuals of different kind. “It can be the integration of different parts of an organization; it can be the issue of national culture within a multinational organization and it can be the development of equal opportunities” (Kandola and Fullerton, 1998, p.6). Even though Apple is keen in maintaining a diverse workforce, several overseas employees working in Apple has many complaints about the attitude of the company towards them.

Many of the top managers in Apple Company behave like