Unpacking Multiculturalism: Differences in Responses to Ict Workplace Situations for English and Non-english Speaking Backgrounds

Multiculturalism is one of the many factors contributing to the growing diversity found within the workforce comprising today’s organizations. This is particularly true in the ICT workplace. Diversity is often investigated in the context of teams and global organizations seeking to improve knowledge management and/or innovation strategies and practices. Understanding the role that culture plays in a multicultural society is complex, understudied and not well understood. Past studies into identifying and comparing different national cultures are difficult to apply to the multicultural context. Even the operationalisation of the culture construct can be problematic or impractical when many ethnic minorities exists. One approach commonly used in Australia is the categorization of individuals and groups into English (or Anglo) background and Non-English Speaking Background (NESB). In this paper we use these categories to investigate if differences can be found in the way in which individuals in these two cohorts respond to workplace situations.