TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR Term Paper

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR - Term Paper Example Therefore, cultural competency simply entails peoples abilities of understanding the differences between group contexts like in work environments. Thus, organizations are increasingly implementing cultural competency plans with an aim of encouraging a cultural tolerance culture. In particular, this piece of work strives to outline the best way through which an organization can implement cultural competency plan with a deeper search for the different definitions of the concept. There are different definitions of cultural competency, but all of them point to the tolerance of diversity within a group. Kirmayer (2012) defines cultural competency as a group of harmonious behaviors, policies, and attitudes that integrates into an organization, among professionals or agencies and allows for efficient functioning in cross-cultural situations. A deeper definition of cultural competency posits that the concept involves transformation and integration of knowledge about individuals or groups into explicit standards, practices, attitudes, and policies within the appropriate cultural settings (Lie et al., 2011). The transformation and integration increases service quality thus leading to greater organizational performance. A culturally competent individual considers his or her perception of the world and compares it to others. The perception is also important in organizational situations and executives should understand that that different cultural background is what constitutes the universe. On the other hand, cultural competence refers to the act of obtaining particular cultural information and applying the knowledge in the right manner (Lie et al., 2011). Therefore, cultural competency enables all people in the organization to see the real picture about other employees and helps in improving quality of services and business operations. However, acquiring different cultural perspectives and practicing them compels individuals to be