1. Meeting the Challenge of Diversity
Chapter 13

2. Meeting the Challenge of Diversity
Smart managers value diversity & enforce the value in decisions
Diversity in the population, the workforce, and the marketplace is a fact of life no manager can afford to ignore
Managing diversity today – recruiting, training, valuing, maximizing potential of people
Gender
Disability
Sexual orientation
Race
Ethnicity
Education
Age
Religion
Economic level
Manager’s Challenge: Wal-Mart

3. Meeting the Challenge of Diversity
Topics Chapter 13
Topic of Diversity
Causes and Consequences
Challenges Minorities face
Ways Managers Deal with Workplace Diversity
Organizational Responses to Value Diversity
Other Diversity Issues in Today’s Workplace

4. Valuing Diversity Top managers value diversity
Give organization access to broader range of opinions and viewpoints
Reflect an increasingly diverse customer base
Obtain the best talent in a competitive environment
Demonstrate the company’s commitment to doing the right thing

5. Valuing Diversity Job seekers value diversity
90% of job seekers think diversity programs make a company a better place to work
Survey commissioned by The New York Times

6. Corporate Diversity in U.S.
Many managers are ill-prepared to handle diversity issues
Many Americans grew up in racially unmixed neighborhoods
Had little exposure to people substantially different from themselves

7. Workforce Diversity
Hiring people with different human qualities or who belong to various cultural groups

8. Dimensions of Diversity
Secondary Dimensions
Primary Dimensions Inborn difference - Have an impact throughout one’s life
Secondary Dimensions Acquired or changed throughout one’s lifetime Have less impact – still impact self definition
Marital Status
Education
Religious Beliefs
Primary Dimensions
Age
Gender
Ethnicity
Parental Status
Military Experience
Person
Sexual Orientation
Physical Ability
Race
Geographic Location
Work Background
Income

9. Monoculture & Diversity
A culture that accepts only one way to do things
There is only one set of values and beliefs
Experiential Exercise: How Tolerant Are You?

10. Attitudes Toward Diversity
Goal for organizations seeking cultural diversity is pluralism
Ethnocentrism = belief that one’s own group or subculture is inherently superior to other groups or cultures
Enthnorelativism = belief that groups and subcultures are inherently equal
Pluralism = an organization accommodates several subcultures

11. The Changing Workplace
Globalization Competition is intense
Changing Composition of Workforce
There are more women, people of color, and immigrants seeking opportunities
Dramatic Changes in the Customer Base

12. The Workplace & Bias Lack of choice assignments
How It Shows Up
Lack of choice assignments
Disregard by a subordinate of a minority manager’s direction
Ignoring of comments made by women & minorities at meetings
A need to become “Bicultural”

13. Means minorities use to deal with bias in the workplace
Biculturalism
Means minorities use to deal with bias in the workplace
Socio-cultural skills and attitudes used by racial minorities as they move back and forth between the dominant culture and their own ethnic or racial culture

14. Challenges For Management
Organization Culture
Valuing differences
Prevailing value system
Cultural inclusion
HR Management Systems (Bias Free?)
Recruitment
Training and development
Performance appraisal
Compensation and benefits
Promotion
Mind-Sets about Diversity
Problem or opportunity?
Level of majority-culture buy-in (resistance or support)
Challenge met or barely addressed?
CHALLENGES OF CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Promoting knowledge and acceptance
Education Programs
Educate management on valuing differences
Taking advantage of the opportunities that diversify provides
Higher Career Involvement of Women
Dual-career couples
Sexism and sexual harassment
Work-family conflict
Heterogeneity in Race/Ethnicity/Nationality
Effect on cohesiveness, communication, conflict, morale
Effects of group identity on interaction (e.g., stereotyping)
Prejudice (racism, ethnocentrism)
Source: Taylor H. Cox and Stacy Blake,”Managing Cultural Diversity: Implications For Organizational Competitiveness,” Academy of Management Executive 5, no 3 (1991), 45-56

15. Affirmative Action Current Debate
Affirmative action was developed in response to conditions 40 years ago.
Today more then half the U.S. workforce consists of women and minorities.
It is not the same as diversity
Research shows that full integration of women and racial minorities into organizations is still at least a decade away

16. Glass Ceiling
An invisible barrier separates women and minorities from top management positions
Fortune 500 Women Corporate Officers
2004 = 15.7%
2000 = 12.5%
1995 = 8.7%
Only eight Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs
Ethical Dilemma: A Man’s World

17. Inclusive Practices in the Workplace
Current Responses to Diversity
Building a corporate culture that values diversity
Changing structures, policies, and systems to support diversity
Recruitment
Career advancement
Providing diversity awareness training

18. Diversity Initiatives
Recruitment
Examine employee demographics
Examine composition of the labor pool in the area
Examine composition of the customer base
Career Advancement
Eliminate the glass ceiling
Accomplish mentoring relationships
Accommodating Special Needs
Child care
Non-English speaking training materials and information packets can be provided
Maternity or paternity leave
Flexible work schedules
Home-based employment
Long-term-care insurance, special health or life benefits

19. Stages of Diversity Awareness
Highest Level of Awareness
Integration
Multicultural attitude-enables one to integrate differences and adapt both cognitively and behaviorally
Stages of Diversity Awareness
Adaptation
Able to shift from one cultural perspective to another
Able to empathize with those of other cultures
Acceptance
Accepts behavioral differences and underlying differences in values
Recognizes validity of other ways of thinking and perceiving the world
Minimizing Differences
Hides or trivializes cultural differences
Focuses on similarities among all peoples
Defense
Perceives threat against one’s comfortable worldview
Uses negative stereotyping
Assumes own culture superior
Denial
Parochial view of the world
Source: Based on M. Bennett, “A developmental Approach to Training for Intercultural Sensitivity,” International journal of Intercultural relations 10 (1986),
No awareness of cultural differences
In extreme cases, may claim other cultures are subhuman
Lowest Level of Awareness

20. Organizational Relationships
Two Issues of Concern of Close Relationships in the Workplace
Emotional Intimacy
Sexual Harassment - various forms defined by one university:
Generalized
Inappropriate/offensive
Solicitation with promise of reward
Coercion with threat of punishment
Sexual crimes and misdemeanors

21. Global Diversity Programs
Expatriates = employees who live and work in a country other than their own
Global Diversity Program
Employee selection
Employee training
Understanding high vs. low-context communication context

22. Leveraging Diversity
Multicultural teams = made up from diverse national, racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds
Employee network groups = based on social identity, and organized by employees to focus on concerns of employees from that group

23. Managing Multicultural Teams
Advantages
Enhanced creativity, innovation, and value in today’s global marketplace
Generate more and better alternatives to problems
Produce more creative solutions than homogeneous teams
Disadvantage - increased potential for miscommunication and misunderstanding

24. Diversity in a Turbulent World
Diversity in the workplace reflects diversity in the larger environment

25. Diversity in a Turbulent World
Smart managers value diversity & enforce the value in decisions
Organizations that value diversity encourage and support network groups to enable minority organization members to
reduce their social isolation
be more effective in their jobs
have a greater impact on the organization
achieve greater opportunities for career advancement