Diversity : Aspects and Impact on the Workplace

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Diversity Aspects and Impact on the
Workplace
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• Americans eat oysters but not snails. The French
  eat snails but not locusts. The Zulus eat locusts
  but not fish. The Jews eat fish but not pork. The
  Hindus eat pork but not beef. The Russians eat
  beef but not snakes. The Chinese eat snakes but
  not people. The Jale of New Guinea find people
  delicious.
• (Robertson, 1987).

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DIVERSITY

• No easy answer as to what is diversity. For some
  it is racial, ethnic and gender differences, but
  broadly speaking it includes the multitude of
  social, cultural, physical and environmental
  differences among people that affect the way they
  behave. It includes dimensions such as race,
  ethnicity, gender, physical abilities, sexual
  orientation, age etc.

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Three Foci of Diversity

• Focus on the individual.
• Focus on developing sensitivity.
• Focus on the organization.

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Focus on the individual

• Individuals differ on primary and secondary
  dimensions. Primary dimensions include age, race,
  sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity and
  physical abilities/qualities. Secondary include
  education, work background, income, marital
  status, parental status, religious beliefs,
  geographic location(Loden Rosener, 1991).

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Focus on the individual

• Another broader focus on the individual depicts
  the individual within a family embedded in an
  environment comprised of diverse cultures. This
  view recognizes that the individual faces the
  pulls of diverse generations as well as the pulls
  of a diverse non familial environment.(Szapocznik
  Kurtines, 1993).

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Focus on the individual

• The third view focuses on the conflict faced by
  individuals living in cultures with conflicting
  values. For instance, the conflicts faced by
  Hispanics who are born into a traditional group
  culture but who must also live and work in a more
  individualistic culture.

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Focus on sensitivity.

• Locke(1997), described how the individual is
  influenced by some contexts in developing
  sensitivity(family, community, cultural, global).
• Another approach is examining the stages in
  sensitivity learning(Bennett,1986). The stages
  are denial, defense, minimization, acceptance,
  adaptation, integration. The first three are
  ethnocentric and the last three are ethnorelative
  stages.

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Focus on the organization

• Individual, intergroup and organizational factors
  collectively have an impact on the diversity
  climate of the organization(Cox,1993).
• Action plan for changing organizational climate,
  by looking at the culture of the organization and
  then having a plan for diversity management, by
  identifying aspects in the culture that hinder
  diversity(Thomas,1991).

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Focus on the organization

• Another approach is to manage differences by
  accommodating to individual needspolicies,
  systems and practices(Jamieson OMara,1991).
• Corporate approaches to managing
  diversity(Palmer,1989).

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Diversity can provide competitive advantage to
organizations.

• Cost argument with increasing diversity, the
  cost of a poor job in handling diverse workers
  will increase.
• Resource-acquisition argument those companies
  having the best reputations for managing
  diversity will get the best human resource.
• Marketing argument for multinational
  organizations, the insight and sensitivity
  brought by members with roots in other countries
  to marketing efforts will help.

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Diversity and competitive advantage

• Creativity argument diversity of perspectives
  and less conformity to norms of the past should
  lead to greater creativity.
• Problem-solving argument heterogeneity in
  decision and problem solving groups produces
  potentially better decisions through a range of
  perspectives and mote critical analysis.
• System flexibility argument system will become
  less standardized, more fluid, thus creating
  greater flexibility to environmental changes.