Preparing Public Agencies to Manage Multicultural Workplace Effectively: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Since there is scarcity of research relating to the cruise industry in general and its workplace in particular, this study aims to explore the factors creating a successful culturally competent workplace in the US industry cruise. In completing this study and presenting the results, lessons and a framework are provided that are intended to assist the public administration sector develop an effective workplace. According to what this paper found, the cruise industry gives lessons to be learned. Public administration has to take advantage of others' experiences dealing with diversity. Adopting the concept of cultural competency does not benefit only the public administrators at the workplace but it goes beyond that to enhance responsiveness. It is not only the workplace that has diversity but also the entire community; therefore, public administrators have to be culturally competent to be able to interact with citizens and co-workers successfully. This exploratory study ends up with five factors generating a successful multicultural workplace in the cruise industry. Many lessons have been extracted to develop a framework for public administration as an initiation to overcome the challenges of inevitable diversity either in the workplace or community.