THE IMPACT OF CULTURAL AND EDUCATIONAL DIVERSITY ON THE ROLE OF THE NURSE MANAGER
This research reviews the impact of cultural and educational diversity on the role of the nurse manager. Such diversity affects the role of the nurse manager within the contexts of both organizational human resource management, where diversity characterizes the nursing staff, and the management of patient care, wherein diversity characterizes both nurse and patient populations. The focus of this current research is on the organizational human resource management context of the role of the nurse manager.
Within the context of organizational human resource management, the cultural and educational diversity of a nursing staff can affect several responsibilities of the nurse manager. These responsibilities, all associated with human resource management, include human resource development, organizational communication, and personnel performance appraisal (Swanburg, 1996).
While the United States has long been considered to be a nation of immigrants, the bulk of the newcomers during most of the nation's history were from the various European cultures with which their predecessors also identified. Beginning in the 1960s, however, the proportion of Europeans among immigrants to the United States has decreased steadily, while the proportion of immigrants from other regions of the world have steadily increased (Sabatino, 1993, pp. 23-26). Thus, an ever increasing number of ethnic communities have developed and continue to develop in this country whose social mores are quite different from the European cultural values that tend to characterize the behaviors of the majority of the American population. As these immigrants move into mainstream occupations, organizational human resource managers are confronted with new challenges. Such challenges are crucial for the nurse manager because effective patient care is dependent upon the delivery of coordinate...