This research studied an NHS organization as a case to explore how it is responding to cross-cultural issues against a backdrop of policy expectations about equitable and good quality mental health service provision to service users of a minority ethno-cultural group in the UK. Data were collected by conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 participants from three hierarchical levels of the organization. The research found that the concepts of culture and ethnicity are used in a fixed way in the interventions (staff diversity training and ethnic matching) taken by the case organization. It is argued that this fixed understanding of cultural concepts and related interventions may not be helpful in meeting the needs of service users, especially in the context of United Kingdom, which is characterized as a super-diverse society. It appears that the interventions are developed and implemented on the conceptualization of cultural identity as generic and fixed. Organizations working in a multicultural society, or where they have service users from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, need to develop and implement interventions based on individualized and fluid understanding of such concepts. The findings of this study contribute to cross-cultural management scholarship by taking a critical stance on the concept of culture, as it is operationalized by a large organization. We show how, even when required by national policy, this one-dimensional model of culture causes human resource management interventions, intended to address cultural diversity, to be perceived as ineffective.

这项研究以一个NHS组织为例，以在为英国少数族裔文化群体的用户提供公平，优质的精神卫生服务的政策预期的背景下，探讨其如何应对跨文化问题。通过与来自组织的三个层次级别的20位参与者进行半结构化访谈来收集数据。研究发现，案例组织采取的干预措施（员工多样性培训和种族匹配）以固定的方式使用文化和种族的概念。有人认为，对文化概念和相关干预措施的这种固定理解可能无助于满足服务使用者的需求，特别是在英国这个超级多元社会的背景下。看来，干预措施是在将文化特性概念化为一般性和固定性的基础上制定和实施的。在多元文化社会中工作的组织或拥有来自不同种族和文化背景的服务用户的组织，需要根据对此类概念的个性化和灵活的理解来制定和实施干预措施。这项研究的结果通过对文化概念的批判性立场而得到了跨文化管理的学术研究，因为它是由一个大型组织实施的。我们展示了，即使在国家政策要求的情况下，这种一维文化模型也如何导致旨在解决文化多样性的人力资源管理干预措施被认为是无效的。