The "business case for
diversity", theorizes that in a
global marketplaceA multinational corporation or transnational corporation , also called multinational enterprise , is a corporation or enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country...
, a company that employs a diverse workforce (both men and women, people of many generations, people from ethnically and racially diverse backgrounds etc.) is better able to understand the
demographicsDemographics or demographic data are selected population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research...
of the marketplace it serves and is thus better equipped to thrive in that
marketplaceA marketplace is the space, actual or metaphorical, in which a market operates. The term is also used in a trademark law context to denote the actual consumer environment, ie...
than a
companyA company is a form of business organization.In the United States, a company is a corporation—or, less commonly, an association, partnership, or union—that carries on an industrial enterprise." Generally, a company may be a "corporation, partnership, association, joint-stock company,...
that has a more limited range of employee demographics.
An additional corollary suggests that a company that supports the diversity of its workforce can also improve employee satisfaction, productivity and retention.
The "business case for
diversity", theorizes that in a
global marketplaceA multinational corporation or transnational corporation , also called multinational enterprise , is a corporation or enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country...
, a company that employs a diverse workforce (both men and women, people of many generations, people from ethnically and racially diverse backgrounds etc.) is better able to understand the
demographicsDemographics or demographic data are selected population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research...
of the marketplace it serves and is thus better equipped to thrive in that
marketplaceA marketplace is the space, actual or metaphorical, in which a market operates. The term is also used in a trademark law context to denote the actual consumer environment, ie...
than a
companyA company is a form of business organization.In the United States, a company is a corporation—or, less commonly, an association, partnership, or union—that carries on an industrial enterprise." Generally, a company may be a "corporation, partnership, association, joint-stock company,...
that has a more limited range of employee demographics.
An additional corollary suggests that a company that supports the diversity of its workforce can also improve employee satisfaction, productivity and retention. This portion of the
business caseA business case captures the reasoning for initiating a project or task. It is often presented in a well-structured written document, but may also sometimes come in the form of a short verbal argumentation. The logic of the business case is that, whenever resources such as money or effort are...
, often referred to as
inclusionThe term inclusion began as a policy to ensure that all children regardless of ability are mainstreamed into classrooms and become part of their school community...
, relates to how an organization utilizes its various relevant diversities. If a workforce is diverse, but the employer takes little or no advantage of that breadth of that experience, then it cannot monetize whatever benefits background diversity might offer.
In most cases, US employers are prohibited by federal and state laws from giving race or ethnicity any consideration in hiring or assigning employees. However, the US Supreme Court has upheld the use of limited preferences based on race, ethnicity, and sex, when there is a “manifest imbalance” in a “traditionally segregated job category.”
Workplace diversity
Workplace diversity refers to the extent to which an organization is culturally diverse. Cultural diversity includes the range of ways in which people experience a unique group identity, which includes gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnic and age. An organization’s culture tends to determine the extent to which it is culturally diverse.
While diversity in the workplace brings about many benefits to an organization, it can also lead to many challenges. It is the responsibility of managers within organizations to use diversity as an influential resource in order to enhance organizational effectiveness. In the
Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, C.L. Walck defines managing diversity in the workplace as "Negotiating interaction across culturally diverse groups, and contriving to get along in an environment characterized by cultural diversity".
In a journal entitled
The multicultural organization, by Taylor Cox, Jr., Cox talks about three organization types which focus on the development on cultural diversity. The three organization types are: the monolithic organization, the plural organization, and the multicultural organization. In the monolithic organization, the amount of structural integration (the presence of persons from different cultural groups in a single organization) is very minimal. "In the United States, this organization usually represents white male majorities in the overall employee population with few women and minority men in management jobs". "The plural organization has a more heterogeneous membership than the monolithic organization and takes steps to be more inclusive of persons from cultural backgrounds that differ from the dominant group". The multicultural organization not only contains many different cultural groups, but it values this diversity.
Benefits of diversity in the workplace
Diversity is beneficial to both the organization and the members. Diversity brings substantial potential benefits such as better decision making and improved problem solving, greater creativity and innovation, which leads to enhanced product development, and more successful marketing to different types of customers. It provides organizations with the ability to compete in global markets. Diverse organizations will be successful as long as there is a sufficient amount of communication within them. Because people from different cultures perceive messages in different ways, communication is vital to the performance of an organization. Miscommunication within a diverse workplace will lead to a great deal of challenges.
Scott Page’s (2007)
mathematical modeling research of team work supports this view. He demonstrated that heterogeneous teams consistently out-performed homogeneous teams on a variety of tasks. Page points out that diversity in teamwork is not so simple in the messy real world. Too often the cultural differences create problems. The goal is to manage diversity to take full advantage of it.
Challenges of diversity in the workplace
There are challenges to managing a diverse work population. Managing diversity is more than simply acknowledging differences in people.
Many organizational theorists have suggested reasons that work-teams highly diverse in work-relevant characteristics can be difficult to motivate and manage. There are many challenges which face culturally diverse workplaces, and a major challenge is miscommunication within an organization. In an article entitled
Developing Receiver-Centered Communication in Diverse Organizations, written by Judi Brownell, she explains that meanings of messages can never be completely shared because no two individuals experience events in exactly the same way. Even when native and non-native speakers are exposed to the same messages, they may interpret the information differently. It is necessary for employees who are less familiar with the primary language spoken within the organization to receive special attention in meeting their communication requirements. "In high context cultures, communicators share an experiential base that can be used to assign meanings to messages. Low context cultures, on the other hand, provide little information on which to base common understandings and so communicators must be explicit". Because of this fact, it is better to view all diverse organizational environments as low-context cultures.
Cultural biasCultural bias is a bias effected by one's culture. The alleged problem of cultural bias is sometimes considered central to social and human sciences, such as economics, psychology, anthropology and sociology. To counter perceived cultural bias, some practitioners of the aforementioned fields have...
is an additional factor which challenges culturally diverse work environments. Cultural bias includes both
prejudiceA prejudice is a preconceived belief, opinion or judgment especially toward a group of people characterized by their race, social class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or religion...
and
discriminationDiscrimination is a sociological term refering to treatment taken toward or against a person of a certain group that is taken in consideration based on class or category. The United Nations explains: "Discriminatory behaviours take many forms, but they all involve some form of exclusion or...
. "Prejudice refers to negative attitudes toward an organization member based on his/her culture group identity, and discrimination refers to observable adverse behavior for the same reason".
Another challenge faced by culturally diverse organizational environments is
assimilationAssimilation may refer to more than one article:*Assimilation , a linguistic process by which a sound becomes similar to an adjacent sound...
. According to the journal
Cultural Diversity in the Workplace: The State of the Field, Marlene G. Fine explains that "Assimilation into the dominant organizational culture is a strategy that has had serious negative consequences for individuals in organizations and the organizations themselves. Those who assimilate are denied the ability to express their genuine selves in the workplace; they are forced to repress significant parts of their lives within a social context that frames a large part of their daily encounters with other people." She goes on to mention that "People who spend significant amounts of energy coping with an alien environment have less energy left to do their jobs. Assimilation does not just create a situation in which people who are different are likely to fail, it also decreases the productivity of organizations".
Creating the Multicultural Organization
"The key to managing a diverse workforce is increasing individual awareness of and sensitivity to differences of race, gender, social class, sexual orientation, physical ability, and age". There are several ways to go about creating the multicultural organization that performs extremely well.
Cox mentions language training as a way to promote a multicultural organization. "Language training is important for companies hiring American Asians, Hispanics, and foreign nationals. This type of training helps to communicate to employees that languages, other than English, are highly valued". Equal opportunity seminars, focus groups, bias-reduction training, research, and task forces are methods that organizations have found useful in reducing culture-group bias and discrimination".
In her article, Judi Brownell identifies three skills which help to develop effective communication in diverse organizational environments. These skills include self-monitoring,
empathyEmpathy, which literally translates as 'in feeling', is the capability to share and understand another's emotions and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes".-Etymology:...
, and strategic decision-making. Self-monitoring refers to a communicator's awareness of how his or her behavior affects another person, and his or her willingness to modify this behavior based on knowledge of its impact. Empathy enables the receiver to go beyond the literal meaning of a message and consider the communicator's feelings, values, assumptions, and needs. Strategic decision-making implies that the communication sources and channels used to reach organization members, as well as the substance of the messages conveyed, are mindfully selected.
Managing diversity tools
Managing diversity goes far beyond the limits of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action. High performing diversity managers recognize that specialized skills are necessary for creating a productive, diverse workforce. They seek out continuous learning opportunities and some go as far as acquiring certification. Managers must be willing to work towards changing the organization in order to create a culture of diversity and inclusion. Assessment skills and diversity education are key elements of culture change. However, the leadership’s support of the change cannot be understated.
Implementation
Diversity issues change over time, depending on local historical and dynamic conditions. Overt "diversity programs" are usually limited to large employers, government agencies and businesses facing rapid demographic changes in their local labor pool and help people work and understand each other. The implementation of diversity is often limited to the
Human resourcesHuman resources is a term used to refer to how people are managed by organizations. The field has moved from a traditionally administrative function to a strategic one that recognizes the link between talented and engaged people and organizational success. The field draws upon concepts developed in...
department when there is also a good economic case for UK companies to use it as a tool to reach new
market shareMarket share, in strategic management and marketing is, according to Carlton O'Neal, the percentage or proportion of the total available market or market segment that is being serviced by a company. It can be expressed as a company's sales revenue divided by the total sales revenue available in...
s.
Legal frameworks
USThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
anti-discrimination lawAnti-discrimination law refers to the law on people's right to be treated equally. Most developed countries mandate that in employment, in consumer transactions and in political participation people may be dealt with on an equal basis regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality and...
s prohibit employers giving any consideration to customers’ preferences for being served by employees of a given gender, ethnic group, or color. In general, the laws also prevent consideration based on religion, although the law allows major exceptions of this provision for religious organizations. Many countries are also introducing anti-discrimination laws (for example the
DDAThe Disability Discrimination Act 1995 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which makes it unlawful to discriminate against people in respect of their disabilities in relation to employment, the provision of goods and services, education and transport. It is a civil rights law...
in the UK) forcing companies to be more aware of diversity. The law student organization
Building a Better Legal ProfessionBuilding a Better Legal Profession is a national grassroots organization founded by students at Stanford Law School in January 2007. The group collects and publicizes employment data at large private law firms as a way of encouraging workplace reform at these companies...
generated significant controversy in October 2007 for reporting data suggesting that most private law firms themselves lacked demographic diversity.
See also
- Affirmative Action
The term affirmative action refers to policies that take race, ethnicity, or gender into consideration in an attempt to promote equal opportunity or increase ethnic or other forms of diversity. The focus of such policies ranges from employment and education to public contracting and health programs...
- Diversity (politics)
In the political arena, the term diversity is used to describe political entities with members who have identifiable differences in their backgrounds or lifestyles....
- Reverse discrimination
Reverse discrimination is denial of equal protection of the laws and is viewed as discrimination on the basis of race by opponents of racial quota programs Reverse discrimination is denial of equal protection of the laws and is viewed as discrimination on the basis of race by opponents of racial...
- White privilege