Feeling Respected as a Way of Managing Diversity - Essay Example

Valuing Cultural Diversity - “Feeling Respected” as a Way of Managing Diversity is Tapping Diversity’s True Benefits and HRM Role to Support ManagingCultural Diversity - Student’s Name Instructor’s Name Subject / Course Date Total Number of Words: 2,810 Table of Contents I. Introduction ……………………………………………………………… 3 II. Literature Review ……………………………………………………….. 4 a. Definition of Cultural Diversity ……………………………… 4 b. Comparison between Access-and-Legitimacy, Discrimination-and-Fairness, and Integration-and-Learning Perspective …………………….. 5 c. Making People Feel Respected is One of the Best Ways in Managing Cultural Diversity at Work ……… 8 d. How Integration-and-Learning Perspective could Help Identify Group Differences and Improve Organizational Learning, Growth and Renewal …………… 10 e. Role of HRM in Support of Cultural Diversity (under the integration-and-learning perspective) ……………………… 12 III. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………….. 13 References ………………………………………………………………………. 15 -17 Introduction As part of globalization, not only the movement of goods and services have become easily accessible across the world but also the human resources. For large business organizations to effectively compete in the global markets, human resource management (HRM) today are focused in managing cultural diversity particularly in three perspectives known as: (1) access-and legitimacy; (2) discrimination-and-fairness; and (3) integration-and-learning. After providing brief information with regards the definitions of cultural diversity in comparison with the concept of integration-and-learning perspective, cultural diversity in terms of the access-and-legitimacy perspective and discrimination-and-fairness perspective, and integration-and-learning perspective will be identified and analysed. There are many ways in which cultural diversity at work can be strengthened. One of the major factors that causes problem in managing diversity is the behaviours of people within the working environment. (Henderson 1994, p. 133) Therefore, making employees feel respected has been considered as one of the best ways in promoting cultural diversity within the working environment. In the process of examining the truth behind this statement, the student will conduct a literature review on how the application of integration-and-learning perspective could enhance organizational learning, growth, and renewal. Prior to conclusion, the role of HRM in support of cultural diversity (under the integration-and-learning perspective) in the workplace will be thoroughly discussed. Literature Review Definition of Cultural Diversity Organizational culture is actually referring to a set of norms, beliefs, principles and behaviour that gives the organization a unique character. (Naylor 1997, p. 1; Brown, 1995) In the case of David (1999, p. 143), the author defines organizational culture as “a pattern of behaviour developed by an organization to cope with problems related to external adaptation and internal integration aside from enabling the employees to feel and think positively.” The word ‘diversity’ means as “to include a variety of racial or ethical backgrounds and characteristics of humankind.” (College of the Mainland 2008) Considering the definition of diversity, the study of cultural diversity is focused on acknowledging one or more socio-demograhic traits like gender, race, ethnicity, and age (Janssens & Zanoni 2005). In other words, cultural diversity at work – also known as multiculturalism is about integrating culture in terms of employees’ age, gender, mental or physical abilities and characteristics, race, ethnic heritage, sexual orientation, geographic location, work experience, income, religious beliefs, language spoken, organizational role and level, communication style used, family status, work style, and/or educational background (Loden 1996). It is about building a paradigm which forms a strong pattern of acceptance and respect among the employees. Under cultural diversity, integration-and-learning perspective is more focused on encouraging employees to consider the development of relevant skills, insights and various perspectives as a valuable resources that could take advantage when defining its market, products and services, strategic plan, and over all business behaviors that could eventually enhance the quality of their work performance (Thomas & Ely 2001). Since integration-and-learning perspective enables the group of employees to easily learn and adapt with internal and external environmental changes (Ely et al, 2003, p. 324), this type of diversity perspective is often associated with diversity that is more favourable in improving the work processes of a business organization. Comparison between Access-and-Legitimacy, Discrimination-and-Fairness, and Integration-and-Learning Perspective Most of business organizations today are focused on promoting the importance of cultural diversity at work not only because UK employment law requires employers to treat employees equally but also to create a positive public image and/or increase the company’s profitability by enhancing the quality of its business operations. (Corner & Soliman 1996) In line with strengthening cultural diversity at work, there is a need for us to fully understand the three perspectives of diversity which includes: (1) access-and-legitimacy perspective (2) discrimination-and-fairness perspective; and (3) integration-and-learning perspective. Thomas & Ely (2001) discussed the differences between the three perspectives. The authors stated that access-and-legitimacy perspective is very much different from discrimination-and-fairness perspective and integration-and-learning perspective in the sense that the foundation of the access-and-legitimacy perspective is heavily based on acknowledging that domestic and international “markets and its constituencies are culturally diversed”. Unlike the discrimination-and-fairness perspective and integration-and-learning perspective, the paradigm of access-and-legitimacy can be applied immediately within the business organization in case the organization has an immediate business dealings with a foreign country. Both integration-and-learning and access-and legitimacy perspective acknowledges cultural backgrounds as an asset to the business organization in the sense that integration-and-learning perspective give employees the opportunity to learn from one another by encouraging employees strengthen their own cultural identity (Janssens & Zanoni 2005; Ely et al. 2003, p. 234; Thomas & Ely 2001) whereas access-and-legitimacy perspective provides the company with immediate solution when dealing with foreign businessmen (Thomas & Ely 1996, p. 368). However, there is a problem with staying too focused with the use of access-and-legitimacy perspective in the sense that allowing the cultural diversity of a business organization to be dictated by the culture of its consumers as its target market is that employees may end up feeling marginalized or exploited (Janssens & Zanoni 2005; Ely et al. 2003, p. 324; Thomas & Ely 1996, p. 368). Integration-and-learning perspective perceives cultural diversity as a valuable resources that could enable the business organization meet its organizational goals and business objectives. (Janssens & Zanoni 2005) Since employees under this perspective are encourage to learn from one another, managers who have chosen to adopt the integration-and-learning perspective strengthens cultural diversity within the organization normally encourage employees to develop their own cultural identity and allowing each employee to value and respect the cultural identity of their co-workers. Among the three diversity perspectives, discrimination-and-fairness perspective is one of the most common cultural diversity practices that most companies adopt. This type of diversity perspective is based on recognizing the fact that work discrimination is not a legally accpetable business practice. (Ely et al. 2003, p. 324; Thomas & Ely 1996, pp. 363 – 364) Under this perspective, rewarding employees based on gender, race, and class of employees is not permitted and is considered unethical. For example: Women are usually paid with low salary as compared to male employees even though both employees are performing the same work load (Ely et al. 2003, p. 281). In line with this matter, male employees have more opportunity for career advancement or promotion as compared to female employees (Ely et al. 2003, p. 322). Eventhough discrimination-and-fairness perspective is considered as a good strategic move in terms of strengthening the morally acceptable working practice by promoting fair treatment and justice to all people who wishes to be employed (Ely et al. 2003, p. 324), the integration-and-learning perspective is still considered as the best framework that will connect the organizations’ cultural diversity with employees’ work processes and tasks (Ely & Thomas 2001). This is because of the reason that integration-and-learning perspective strengthens the learning ability of employees in terms of being able to fully understand the real meaning of cultural diversity. With regards to the importance of integration-and-learning perspective, Thomas & Ely (1996, p. 85) stated that organizations need to “incorporate employees’ perspectives into the main work of the business organization so as to improve the quality of work by rethining the primary tasks and redefining markets, products, strategies, missions, business practices and even culture.” Failure to incorporate employees’ perspectives into the main line of work will make it difficult on the part of the managers to fully implement cultural diversity within the workplace. Making People Feel Respected is One of the Best Ways in Managing Cultural Diversity at Work A business organization is usually composed of major and minority groups. Regardless of the organizational structure, it is necessary on the part of the major groups to promote work diversity among the minority groups in order to enhance the overall business performance of a company (Maalouf 2003). Upon examining how respect affects the feelings of a subgroup in terms of being able to develop positive organizational attitude that could promote unity and diversity among the White Americans, African Americans, and Latinos; the study of Huo & Molina (2006) revealed that subgroup respect is present among the members of the ethnic minority groups particularly among the Latinos and African Americans but not the White Americans. Based on the authors’ findings, White Americans often practice ingroup favoritism more than subgroup respect. There has been quite a lot of past studies that has attempted to examine whether or not making employees feel respected is one of the best ways in promoting cultural diversity within the working environment. (Huo & Molina 2006; Janssens & Zanoni 2005; Foldy 2004; Simon & Stürmer 2003) When we talk about respecting other employees, we are basically referring to the acceptance of their value as a member of a subgroup which builds up the entire business organization as a whole. Respecting employees should not come solely from the managers or leaders of a business organization but also from other members of the workforce. In line with this matter, the ability of the managers to develop a pro-social culture could make employees more willing to cooperate and commit themselves in reaching the organizational goals (de Cremer 2002). After examining how disrespecting and respecting could significantly affect the performance evaluation of employees, Simon & Stürmer (2003) was able to verify that acknowledging the importance of respect within the working environment could increase the collective identification as well as employees’ willingness to participate in group work. Since employees are more willing to participate in teamwork, it will be so much easier on the part of the manager to be able to make employees comit themselves in meeting their target goals. With regards to the three types of diversity perspective, a qualitative research was conducted on three culturally diverse organizations to test the the impact of access-and-legitimacy perspective, discrimination-and-fairness perspective, and integration-and-learning perspective on how employees express and manage tensions that were built out of implementing work diversity. According to Ely and Thomas (2001), even though all of the three perspectives of work diversity are effective in terms of motivating managers to exert extra effort in diversifying their staff members, only the integration-and-learning perspective is capable of providing the workforce with rationale and guidance necessary in making the group achieve more sustained benefits out of promoting diversity since this type of diversity perspective enables employees to feel valued and respected. On the contrary, Foldy (2004) stated that the use of integration-and-learning perspective alone is not sufficient in terms of maximizing the benefit of cultural diversity on the part of the company. Instead, the author suggest that integration-and-learning perspective should be used together with a more generic learning frames and proper skills. How Integration-and-Learning Perspective could Help Identify Group Differences and Improve Organizational Learning, Growth and Renewal Under the eight preconditions in making the pardigm shift, Dewey & Levin explained that organizational leaders should deeply understand that implementing integration-and-learning perspective requires a different perspective and approaches to work which may need the opinions and insights of other people (Thomas & Ely 1996, p. 370). It means that managers should consider the personal suggestions of each employee and cultural diversity experts to be able to implement a long-term successful paradigm. Another way of making the implementation of this perspective successful is to promote learning opportunities to be able to address the challenges associated with the new perspective. (Thomas & Ely 1996, p. 370) Since integration-and-learning pespective is new, managers should read more about this paradigm to avoid unnecessary errors during the implementation stage. With regards to the importance of organizational learning, managers should also establish organizational mission and culture that will enable employees to become open with one another, meet the high standard of work performance, and stimulate the personal development of each employee (Thomas & Ely 1996, p. 371). Establishing a mission will enable employees to know about the long-term direction the manager is trying to implement whereas a culture dictates the behavior and beliefs that is acceptable within the business organization. In general, having a culture that encourage openness allows employees not only to avoid internal conflicts but also learn some new ideas from other employees. In the long-run, there is a better chance for employees’ work performance to improve as they develop their own personal knowledge and skills. “Organizational culture must also make employees feel valued” (Thomas & Ely 1996, p. 371) to make the implementation of work diversity successful since employees who feel valued also feel respected. For example: The team leader could gather his/her subordinates at least once a week to spend a little time discussing their weekly work achievements and personal experiences on how one could have successfully accomplished his/her tasks. By doing so, other team mates can learn new techniques from his/her own co-worker’s personal experiences at work. Aside from learning from one another, this simple weekly activity could enhance the working relationship and communication gap between each employee which could eventually uplift their morale and improve their work productivity collectively. When a business organization adopts the integration-and-learning perspective, the organization develops and strengthen its own cultural diversity. Therefore, there is a lesser chance for employees to feel devalues, disrepected, undermined, marginalized and/or exploited. As a result of strengthening its own cultural identity, employees end up establishing a learning culture by unfolding their own creativity in terms of developing new ideas. This way, employees have the opportunity to learn and grow from their own experiences that takes place within and outside the workplace. The last precondition requires business organization not to have bureaucratic structure since the different hierarchial levels will make it very complicated on the part of the manager to implement the integration-and-learning perspective effectively. (Thomas & Ely 1996, p. 371) Role of HRM in Support of Cultural Diversity (under the integration-and-learning perspective) Considering the tight competition in the global markets, the role of HRM becomes more complex as compared to its traditional role on selecting and recruiting human resources needed by the business organization. Since diversity at work becomes a significant part of the modern business transaction, the role of HRM is no longer limited with the need to study, search, and implement new diversity paradigms which could strengthen cultural diversity at work but also to solve and minimize organizational tension and conflict that may arise out of implementing the selected diversity paradigm. (Janssens & Zanoni 2005; Muncherji & Gupta 2004; Carey 1999) Organizational culture is a strong pattern of organizational behaviour that enables employees to cope with internal and external problems. (David 1999, p. 143) For this reason, HRM should effectively establish a diverse culture that will increase the competitive advantages of the business compared to its competitors aside from training employees on some important communication skills like dialogue to enable them to easily develop good working relationship with other employees. In support of cultural diversity using the integration-and-learning paradigm, HRM should establish and implement strong organizational policies and practices that will encourage employees to support cultural, demographic, technical, and cognitive diversity which are all necessary in increasing the overall work performance and employees satisfaction at work (Kochan et al. 2003) aside from carefully examine the limitations of this type of perspective (Pan Suk 1999). Knowing the limitations of integration-and-learning perspective will allow the HR manager to re-construct a new paradigm which could enable the business organization maximize the benefit of cultural diversity. Since the domestic and international environment is constantly changing, HRM should continuously upgrade his/her existing knowledge on the theories and concepts behind work diversity. In line with this matter, HR managers should develop his/her own creativeness, resourcefulness, and flexibility when it comes to developing a new paradigm that could increase the company’s profitability, learning experiences among the employees, and the organization’s ability to adopt with the continuously changing market trends. Conclusion To increase the competitive advantages of a company, managers should effectively promote work diversity. Between the three types of diversity perspectives, integration-and-learning perspective is the most effective in terms of motivating employees to adopt with diversity at work aside from enabling employees feel more respected and valued. Access-and-legitimacy perspective acknowledges that target markets and constituencies are culturally diversed. Since work diversity depends upon the customers and constituents of the company, there is a higher possibility for employees to feel marginalized and/or exploited. Discrimination-and-fairness perspective recognizes that work discrimination is not a legally accpetable business practice. Therefore, it prevents work discrimination and prejudism. However, it does not address a long-term learning goal which is necessary in increasing the overall work performance and profitability of the company. Integration-and-learning perspective is the best among the three types of diversity perspective. This paradigm consider work diversity as a valuable resources that could enable the business organization meet its organizational goals. Since employees are given the opportunity to explore and strengthen their own cultural identity, employees feel more respected and valued. As a result, employees are more eager to learn more from one another as they activity perform their best in reaching the orgnaizational objectives and goals. *** End *** Reference List: Brown, A. (1995). Organizational Culture. London: Pitman Publishing. Carey, L. E. (1999). ‘Ethical Dimensions of a Strategic Approach to HRM: An Australian Perspective’. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources , Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 53 - 68 . College of the Mainland. (2008). Retrieved September 2, 2008, from Succesfully Diverse & Intentionally Integrated: About Us: http://www.com.edu/diversity/ Corner, D. R., & Soliman, C. E. 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Making Differences Matter: A New Paradigm for Managing Diversity. Harvard Business School . Read More