Abstract
Globalization has contributed to the growth of a culturally diverse workforce in the world, including Singapore. The prevailing influx of foreign talents and immigrants in the last decade has led to growing diversity and multi-cultural trends in the workplace. There is a growing need to develop tools that could help in the operationalization of multicultural competencies so as to help counselors develop the awareness, knowledge and skills needed to build culturallysensitive working alliance and adopt culturally appropriate interventions in counseling.
Highlights
The beginnings of the concept of multi-culturalism could be traced to Horace Kallen who advocated for cultural pluralism in America and arguing against assimilation and melting-pot theories of his times
He defined multi-culturalism as “strategies and policies adopted to govern and manage the problems of diversity and multiplicity which multicultural societies throw up. ” according to him, the term, ‘ multi-cultural ’, when used adjectivally “ describes the social characteristics and problems of governance posed by any society in which different cultural communities live together and attempt to build a common life while retaining some of their ‘original’ identity [1]
In countries like Singapore and Canada, multi-culturalism has contributed to some degree of social integration and harmony, as accommodation and tolerance of different cultures is being institutionalized into legislation, so that it becomes part of the country’s value and over all culture
Summary
The beginnings of the concept of multi-culturalism could be traced to Horace Kallen who advocated for cultural pluralism in America and arguing against assimilation and melting-pot theories of his times It was sociologist, Stuart Hall who became known as the godfather of multi-culturalism because of his influential contributions in the fields of sociology and cultural studies, especially in the area of race, ethnicity and gender. He defined multi-culturalism as “strategies and policies adopted to govern and manage the problems of diversity and multiplicity which multicultural societies throw up. This is because a person’s cultural identity is influenced and shaped by cultural, contextual, and as well as diversity factors [8,9,10,11,12]
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