Managing workplace diversity - Essay Example

?Introduction Rapid development and adoption of technology in addition to liberalisation of the world economy has brought people of diverse backgrounds closer than ever before. In view of this phenomenon, educational institutions, businesses and other entities are consistently seeking better methods of serving the highly diversified workforce and constituents (Tsui and Gutek, 2000:41). One of the major objectives of the current management practices is attracting and retaining the best and most competent employees. Organisations capable of formulating and implementing appropriate policies of managing diversity acquire an important competitive edge compared to their counterparts in addition to improving on their efficiency. However, when organisations comprise of highly diversified workforce, reconciling the inherent differences between them becomes an important priority in order to minimise conflicts and promote cohesion and teamwork (Mike 2004:105). This paper is a critical examination of managing diversity and conflicts in workplaces. For the last decades, the term diversity has been used to mean the “demographic constitution of a particular group or team” (Caleb, 2006: 204). In experimental studies, the diversity of a team is normally determined using compositional technique, which focuses on how demographic characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, age among others are distributed within the team. Assessment of diversity in workplace entails determination of the extent in which members are similar or dissimilar to one another. According to Caleb (2006:208), diversity represents the numerous individual disparities existing among people in particular organization. In studies of diversity in workplaces, various attributes of employees have been proved to be of critical importance in the current management practices. They include gender, ethnicity, length of service in the particular organization, areas of specialisation and skills, level of education, cultural values in addition to personality of the individual (Caleb 2006: 210) The content of diversity in workplaces has been a subject of many research studies. Aparna and Susan (2000: 60) classified the content of diversity into two categories, namely task and relations oriented. Relations oriented diversity involves the availability of traits or attributes that are influential in determining interpersonal associations. In normal circumstances, relations oriented diversity does not have direct noticeable effects on the performance of tasks (Aparna and Susan, 2000: 60). Mike (2004: 157) consider relations oriented diversity as the social -category diversity. Task oriented diversity is the distribution of the performance-relevant attributes. Examples of attributes that are more likely to be relationship-oriented diversity include age, sex, race, ethnicity, religion, political association, sexual orientation and nationality. These attributes are readily indentified or recognised in a particular context (Caleb, 2006). Other relationship oriented attributes are not readily detected in workplace setting. They include gender, attitudes, values, personality, racial and ethnic identity, sexual and class identity among other social identities. Task oriented diversity attributes in the work place include readily identified qualities such as education level, membership to an organisation or department, association with professional bodies, formal credentials and titles in addition to organisation tenure. However, some task oriented diversity attributes are not obvious, or easily detected. They include knowledge and expertise, cognitive skills and abilities, in addition to physical skills and capacities (Aparna and Susan 2000: 201). Research on performance of employees in a multicultural background indicates that diverse teams perform differently from homogenous groups (Kreitner and Kinicki 1995:72) Although the exact mechanisms that cause the disparity in performance remain speculative, various existing theories provide feasible explanation to the difference. Sociological theories hold that social groups compete with one another for the available social and material resources, resulting to creation of an environment that inclines toward conflict rather than cooperation (Kreitner and Kinicki 1995; 76). Social groups are classified in several demographic categories based on easily detectable attributes such as age, race and gender. Therefore, easily detectable attributes are indicators, which provide valuable insights about group membership and whether the resulting interactions would be cooperative or competitive (Kreitner and Kinicki 1995: 86). Physiological theories on the other hand underplay the role of attributes such as age, gender and race in causing the disparities in diversified workplaces. However, psychological theories emphasise the role of underlying attributes such as individual values and beliefs in influencing the performance of a person in a particular work setting. Social identity theory postulates that psychological and social process influence each other equally in determining the performance of an individual in workplace (Mioara and Vasile 2007: 63). Both private and public organizations undertake various activities in order to manage diversity in their workplaces. Several research studies have demonstrated that organisations that put emphasis on collectivism or teamwork in the workplace acquire more benefits from workplace diversity than those that stress on individual effort. In addition, stressing on teamwork nurtures better interactions in various departments within the organisational structure promoting identity that goes beyond superficial differences. Other potential benefits of managing diversity in work place include promoting participatory decision-making, creativity and innovation in the workplaces (Joshi, 2002: 39). Managing diversity promotes success in marketing organisations’ products and services to foreign and local minority groups in addition to creating an opportunity of enhancing distribution of wealth and other economic benefits in the society (Joshi, 2002: 81). Various research studies have been conducted to establish factors that lead to improved performance in diverse workplace. A study conducted by Chatman and Spataro (2005:300) found that groups consisting of culturally diverse members are more effective in job performance and forms better relationships compared to homogenous teams. However, these benefits are realised after the diverse group has been working together for a considerable period (Chatman and Spataro, 2005). According to Caleb (2006:49), wider diversity in the workplace could promote dissatisfaction and high employee turnover in an organisation. Nonetheless, managing workplace diversity is crucial for improving representation and access to equal opportunities in the work force, employment equity, and affirmative action in addition to legislation of human rights. Various differences exist between managing workplace diversity and equal opportunities. Equal opportunities are intended to reduce discrimination in the labour force while managing diversity utilizes the potential, skills and talent of employees to the maximum. Hence, equal opportunities approach is operational while diversity is strategic. Equal opportunities is inclined towards moral and ethical consideration while diversity is more business oriented, focusing on enhancing the profitability of the enterprise. Within an organisational structure, it is the responsibility of the human resources department to ensure implementation of equal opportunities while managing diversity is the duty of all managers. Equality and managing diversity have different focus and perspectives. Equal opportunities focus on groups or teams while managing diversity deals with individual. The perspective of equal opportunities is to deal with diverse needs of different groups while managing diversity integration. In addition, the solution for creating equal opportunities involves transformation of the system and practices while the remedy for promoting workplace diversity is changing the culture of the employees (Butler and Rose, 2010). Equal opportunities and managing diversity present various benefits to the employees. Due to the virtue of its focus on ethics and morals, equal opportunities improve the access of the disadvantaged groups to the available opportunity by setting achievable targets in the workplace. On the other hand, managing diversity improves opportunities to all groups (Butler and Rose, 2010:106) Equal opportunities and managing diversity have various implications to the organisational behaviour. According to Butler and Rose ( 2010: 128) the organisations are obliged to make decisions regarding the use of available resources to either develop a particular diversity in the workplace such as race at the expense of the building capacity of all employees. In addition, organisations do not view equality as of strategic importance and hence it is often relegated to the lower levels in the organisational structure. It is therefore not surprising that senior management of many organisations lack diversity, focusing more on individualism at the expense of collectivism (Butler, and Rose, 2010). Both equality and diversity present unique economic considerations in an organisation. Empirical studies have demonstrated that diversity offers an organisation with strategic economic benefits (Butler and Rose, 2010). However, equality is not usually compatible with economic and other organisational strategies. Other implications of diversity and equality on organisational behaviour are on performance of the employees. Equality is normally regarded as specific to human resource or to “equality expert”. However, in diversity, all employees have a responsibility in the organisation. The expert perception encourages employees to think equality as responsibility belonging to somebody else, which discourages responsibility (Butler and Rose 2010:pp130-131). Equal opportunities in the work places have become a legal requirement to protect minority groups from discrimination. According to Joshi (2002:52), legal compliance compels the organisation to be within the laws governing employment instead of creating a more pragmatic approach on benchmarking against the best organisational behaviour as far as equality is concerned. Integration is the main aim of equality while diversity aims at encouraging inclusion (Butler and Rose, 2010). In respect to these objectives, organisations may recruit diverse employees, but structure of internal policies and training remain unfavourable for promoting the benefits of integration. Therefore, managing diversity appreciates the differences brought by an individual employee, maintaining it for the positive contribution it offers to the organisation. According to Gerhart and Fang (2005: 208), interactions between diverse groups consisting of members belonging to discrete entities often cause disruptive conflicts. The negative outcomes could be best explained by the social identity theory. This theory postulates, “that people are expected to exhibit biasness towards others who are regarded as members of their in-group while they will view themselves as being in conflict with out-group members” (Mioara and Vasile 2007: 88). Within team settings, classification of members into categories of those belonging in-group and out-group forms an impediment to cooperation in the assigned tasks and other social interactions. This could enhance development of aggressive or competing behaviour within the team. Various research studies have been undertaken in the past to investigate the development of competitive behaviour within groups that results to disruptive conflict. From these findings, it has been established that categorising an individual as a member of the out-group or in-group influences how that person interacts with others. Jayne and Dipboye (2004: 405) argue that in-group members are considered to have common goals and interests, which enhances development of cooperative behaviours in the workplaces and other social activities. Joshi. (2002) attributed cooperation within in groups to consistence of self-interests among all members. Occurrence of conflicts increases in groups with readily detectable individual attributes, such as ethnicity, race, gender, age and organisational tenure. These attributes trigger perceptions within both in-group and out-groups, leading to higher probability of initiating conflicts (Dwyer, Richard, and Chadwick 2003: 990). Hence, members with low diversity regard each other as being in the same in-group. Consequently, more cooperative behaviour results in homogenous groups compared to significantly diversified teams. Heterogeneous teams groups undermine in-group identification because of the considerable differences creating disunity and conflicts. Policy oriented analysis of managing workplace diversity and conflict Managing work place diversity remains one of the most challenging operations in the current business environment but it is in the best interests of an organisation to implement an appropriate policy. Managing diversity in the current workplace setting intends to create an enabling environment where employees can maximise their potential and performance. To achieve this noble objective, transforming the culture and structure of the organisation is of critical importance (Caleb, 2006). According to Mioara and Vasile (2007:2404), an effective management diversity policy is characterised by six important traits. The first is behavioural which stresses on the need of inculcating particular skills and formulating policies that bring out the best performance from every employee in an organisation. The instilled behaviour should be reflected through monitoring and evaluation the achievement of targeted goals and objectives. Managing diversity is strategically driven process. This implies that the policies and behaviours should play a major role in contributing to a better performance of the organisation, in terms of profitability and productivity. The third trait of managing diversity is pragmatism or expediency. The organisation and the employees should all benefit through improved motivation, profits and productivity. Managing diversity presumes that the all the different groups would create a synergic model, that promotes better and innovative ways of working effectively in a highly diversified setting (Mioara and Vasile 2007:2407). The fifth important aspect of managing diversity is that it opens up the system affecting virtually all management practices and policies. Finally, managing diversity is characterised by resistance that is mainly caused by denying of demographic realities, the necessity of formulating and implementing alternative approaches and benefits attributed to the resulting transformation or change. In addition, resistance is witnessed due to challenges in learning new skills, changing the available organisational structure and creating suitable time frame to achieve group solutions or objectives. Despite the formidable challenges of managing diversity, it remains one of the best business strategies of enhancing productivity and profitably in the modern highly globalised business environment (Mioara and Vasile 2007:2411). Organisational and individual barriers are the major impediments in managing diversity in the current workplaces. These two factors inhibit recruitment, retention, development, and promotion of different groups of people within an organisation setting. Organisational barriers originate from the working environment while individual impediments are founded on individual employees beliefs, attitudes and values among other personality factors (Joshi, 2002). Mioara and Vasile (2007:2411) listed six common organisational impediments that inhibit diversity in the work place. These include negative perceptions and unease toward particular group of diverse people, unwarranted biasness, racism, discrimination, prejudice and stereotyping. At an individual level, especially among employees the major threats to diversity and collectivism in work environment include inadequate skill preparation which contributes to incompetence at work and poor career planning. In addition, lack of appropriate education level, low esteem and self-confidence in addition to lack of social competence, especially in establishing relationships with other diverse people in the workplace undermine diversity (Chatman and Spataro 2005). Definition of diversity in the work places is quite limiting and it fails to take into account numerous attributes that are inherent in different people. Hence, in order to manage diversity effectively in the workplaces, it is important to make the broadest possible definition of the term in order to ensure majority of people are included. Broad definition ensures that everyone is recognised as an important member of the organisation. In the current workplaces, the major factors that determine diversity include demographic changes, the nature of global market, economic state of an organisation, contentment in being different and diverse consumer base or segments, in addition to Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action policies (Mioara and Vasile, 2007:2412). Improving productivity, enhancing competitiveness and encouraging better working relationships among the employees remain the major reasons of managing diversity in the workplaces. However, changes in the labour and employment policies have necessitated the need of organisations to manage diversity in order to deal with the legal implications. Moreover, managing diversity is currently an ideal approach of promoting corporate social responsibility in multicultural business environment (Jayne, and Dipboye 2004. Human resources specialists advocate for several approaches of managing diversity in the workplace. They include developing training and education programs and formulating policies that provides and promotes equality, fairness among all employees. Other approaches widely used include implementing mentoring programs, and non-discriminative performance appraisal mechanisms in addition to initiating outreach and career progression programs. Furthermore, seeking management support from appropriate professionals, integrating diversity in all departments in the organisation and combining various strategies that enhance establishment of corporate culture that promotes variety are important strategies of managing diversity (Tsui and Gutek, 2000: 252). The strategy and approach applied in training the concept of managing diversity in the workplaces plays an important role in determining the effectiveness of the strategy in instilling the requisite skills and behaviour. Mioara and Vasile (2007:2412) argue that training the skill is a multistep process that should begin with enhancing awareness about the concept of diversity and its importance in a organisation’s setting. This should be followed by provision of particular information in order to stimulate changes of behaviour necessary to manage and work with diverse people effectively. Finally, it is important to provide appropriate strategies and relevant support needed to promote awareness about diversity in addition to the accompanying skills needed to promote productivity in the workplace (Mioara and Vasile, 2007). Instilling appropriate skills of working effectively with diverse people remains one of the most important goals of the current human resource professionals. These skills are inculcated by formulating an effective training program, which should comprise of the necessary components (Aparna and Susan 2000). The main components of an efficient diversity-training program include dedication and support from the senior management and it should be a constituted in the strategic plan of the organisation. The program should meet the particular needs of the employees and the organisation. In addition, it is important to apply the services of qualified professionals to teach and train employees in an organisation (Mioara and Vasile, 2007:2416). An effective training program should be flexible, in order to allow application of other diverse approaches. It is important for all targeted people to attend such programs without failing. Programs that include all people in an organisation ensure that all individuals are well informed and this promote favourable environment for embracing diversity in all levels of the organisation. Effective training programs in managing diversity should be confidential in order to promote trust among all stakeholders involved. Equally important the program should require accountability from the people and provide an avenue for monitoring and evaluating their behaviour, performance and other measurable aspects (Hartel, 2004: 95). Conflict is one of the common occurrences in the workplaces and employee diversity plays a significant role in causing the problem. According to Mike (2004:109), emphasising on the importance of diversity among all employees accompanied by the relevant conflict resolution mechanisms is one of the most effective mechanisms of addressing the problem. Most conflicts involve disagreements between in-groups and out-group. Therefore, it is important to incorporate other approaches such as team building activities in order to promote the communication and integration within the diverse groups (Kreitner and Kinicki, 1995). Conclusion Diversity remains an integral part in the society and workplace. The society has become more diverse than ever before and in every organisation, employees from different backgrounds play an influential role in determining its productivity and competitiveness. Business managers apply different approaches of managing diversity in the workplace depending on their strategic goals. However, diverse workforce creates conflicts between different groups and it is important for managers to formulate effective policies that promote positive attributes from the employees. Managing diversity encourages all business stakeholders including employers and employees into becoming global citizens, capable of transcending their inherent biasness, prejudice and other attributes. This enhances the capacity of the people to embrace and indentify with other diverse people across the globe. References Aparna, J., and Susan, J.(2000). Managing workforce diversity to enhance cooperation in organizations.[online]. 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Tsui, A., and Gutek, B.(2000). Demographic differences in organizations. New York: Lexington Books. Read More