Purpose and Rationale of the Research

Introduction

The action research aims to address the low participation of foreign employees in a cross-cultural organization. By applying Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, the internal constraints, specifically the people in the organizational system was identified as the focusing and limiting factor for management of the operational system. The issue is pressuring leaders’ responsibility of encouraging their subordinates to actively engage in company’s various events to support company’s core value of diversity advocacy. Moreover, the issue prevents to build relationship and harmonious working environment for employees of different nationalities since these favorable opportunities are not grasped, which on the contrary become reason of misunderstanding and wrong perception between local and foreign groups. With aim to solve problems generated from this issue and improve the status quo, I strongly believe the change should be effected through my learning from action research subject, diverse approaches and theories proposed in Coghlan & Brannick (2010), and my collaboration with the foreign employees, leaders and company management team.

Purpose and Rationale of the Research

The main issue this action research strives to address is the low participation of foreign employees in a multinational organization. The initial issue was noticed when there was a Corporate Social Responsibility Outreach Program carrying out by the company, which advocating employees’ active participation. After the registration period, it was found out that most of participants were local employees and out sixteen sixteen participants, only three foreigners joined this activity. This event recalled me with the Halloween party held before, which encouraged employees to do cosplay for celebration of the festival. Out of eleven role players, we could only found one Thai and two Korean figure in the picture of our cosplay participants. BOSCH supports diversity as its core value, however, with the real situation that not many foreigners are joining the activities implemented by organization, its diversity advocacy is not obviously demonstrated which even shows a long way to achieve this goal.

Gail Robinson and Kathleen Dechant (1997) said in the article that, “most companies acknowledge the importance of making diversity a business consideration, diversity is often not a business priority.” (Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol.11, No.3, P2). With less predictable and tangible benefits that could be seen after the investment of the diversity initiatives, companies would tend to pay less attention to this area. However, Gail Robinson and Kathleen Dechant emphasized that,” diversity increases the likelihood of obtaining the leadership commitment and resources needed to successfully implement diversity initiatives.”