Without Diversity Management no Collaboration?
Introduction
The
importance of diversity management in companies have been valued since the
beginning of the twentieth century, as it was asserted before that just
discrimination is wrong. Nowadays managers are aware that a more diverse
workforce is increasing the organizations effectiveness through bringing
greater access to new segments of the marketplace, enhancing productivity and
lifting the morale. (Thomas & Ely, 1996)
Diversity
management is: “Acquiring the necessary knowledge and dynamic skills to manage such differences
appropriately and effectively. It is also about developing a creative mind-set
to see things from different angles
without rigid prejudgment” (Ting-Toomy & Chung, 2005) Organizations benefit from diversity because
future events are predicted as it is assumed that beside the right motivation,
a large number of diverse participants are better in predicting future events
than the smartest individual does. (Tapscott,
Erickson, Gratton, Gross, & Capek, 2009) Nevertheless diversity can
also create problems. From Gratton and Erickson’s research shows the higher the
“higher the proportions of people who don’t know anyone else on the team and
the greater the diversity, the less likely the team members are to share
knowledge”. (Gratton & Erickson, 2007)
In order
to effectively handle and organize diversity management the shifts in history
have to be understood in order to know if you are residing at the present
shift. Diversity management exists in four different shifts:
1.Shift:Discrimination and
fairness paradigm, the “Easy Way” of Managing (fnh1988.blogspot.hk)
Managers
use this paradigm to draw their attention on equal opportunity, recruitment,
fair treatment and compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity requirements.
Usually ensure that all employees are treated equally and with respect and some
are not given unfair advantages over others.
(Thomas & Ely, 1996) (Reeves, 2013) This theory gives the management
the easiest way to deal with diversity by just ignoring all differences about
fairness. Primarily the progress of diversity is measured in terms of
recruitment and retention goals. (Reeves, 2013)
How employees can draw on their personal attention and perspectives in order to
fulfil their work effectively is not taken into consideration. Therefore the
staff gets diversified but not the work. Companies who have used this paradigm
successfully consist usually of a bureaucratic structure controlling processes.
(Thomas & Ely, 1996)
1.1 Global forces and international context
1.1.1. Laws
Employees
have the right to deserve a fair treatment. However this fair treatment is not
equally spread in the world. Since the title of VII of Civil Rights Act of
1964, employees, state and local governments, educating institutions,
employment agencies and labour organizations are protected under the Federal
law from discrimination on race, colour, religion, sex and national origin. (EEOC, 2009) Also other laws like European
Commission are protecting employees of discrimination.
1.1.2. Globalization
Through
the move of globalization companies are confronted to deal with cultural diversity because the world is
growing more and more together. Companies are embraced by the trend of
globalization to become more diverse and need to adapt to those changes, which
might be good but also negative as well. Small businesses figured out to adapt
to these new policies and guidelines in order to keep up with the changes such
as differences in work ethics and religious differences.
Furthermore
wages have changed for many workers
as companies have access to overseas organizations offering outsourcing e.g.
third world companies offer services with a lower cost than countries with
higher standards of living. Additionally employees
training arise from the cultural, religious and ethnic diversity in the
workplace because companies have to protect their employees from
discrimination. (Mc Farlin, 2014)
1.2 Case
ARPCO
This
Harvard Business review case is about the company ARPCO, manufacturer of small
electrical tools appliances, which covers race and gender discrimination topics. (Gentile, 1991) This company has a free position
for the London office and marketing directors recommend one of their product
managers for the position. For Ms. Wollen, the group marketing director in the U.S.,
it is clear to recommend Mr. Lewis, who has reported the last three years to
her, for this job position. But Mr. Abbott, the marketing director in London,
is favouring Mr. Billing. During a telephone call between the two marketing
directors, it becomes clear that Abbott has hughe doubts that Lewis will not
adapt to the working culture in the London office because of his race – he is
black. However company policies are very strickt about “promoting the most qualified
person, regardless of race, gender or ethnical background and capitalize on the
considerable investment ARPCO makes in its people by applying their skills in a
way that will maximize benefit to the company and the individual.”
The
final decision of who will be recommended and who actually got the job is not
written in the HBR case. Nevertheless the discrimination and fairness paradigm
will be analysed how it should help the decision. The discrimination problems
in the workplace of gender and race are discussed in further detail, with reflection
on why diversity can be good and bad in the workplace.
2. Shift: Access and legitimacy
paradigm
The
access and legitimacy paradigm reflects the idea that diversity should be
implemented in order to gain market share in diverse markets. Through hiring
diverse workers it gives you access to markets. The problem of getting access
to markets, which are difficult to conquer is solved by hiring the necessary
diverse workers. Trust is inherent when dealing with people that are similar to
you refers to the legitimacy portion. (Reeves,
2013) Sometimes the effect of this paradigm has led to substantial
increase in organizations diversity. (Thomas
& Ely, 1996) The shift to this paradigm
occurred, led to new professional and managerial opportunities for woman and
people of colour.
So
basically if companies use this paradigm in order to use diversity as a tool to
enter a market and then forget to learn from those people, are the worst.
2.1 Global forces and international contexts
2.1.1. Globalization
The forces of globalization
have influenced this shift as well. “Globalizing the local and localizing the
global are the twin forces blurring traditional national boundaries” (Tehranian, 1996) However globalizing local and
localizing global influences national trading positively and therefore
guarantees more access into the markets.
2.1.2. Political Influence
From a political point of view, boundaries of foreign policy are
regulating the degree on which market entry is possible. The World Trade
Organization (WTO), established on 1st of January 1995, supervises
and liberalizes international trends, by regulating deals with regulation of
trade between the participating countries (159 members). (WTO, 2014) Through this agreement, countries’
trade is supervised and therefore influence the access and legitimacy paradigm.
2.2 Case
P&G,
one of the largest commodity consumption companies in the world, entered
Chinese market by joint venture in 1988. At the beginning, the managers of the
departments are delegated by headquarters, but before long P&G have
encountered some difficulties. Firstly, the foreign merchants’ understanding
about Chinese market cannot keep up with the change of the market. Secondly,
the expatriates have problems to master Chinese complex cultural background,
Chinese customers’ psychology and behaviours in a short time because of
cultural barriers. More importantly, the personnel allotment prevented P&G
to acquire sustainable competitive advantages on commodity consumption market.
For the reasons above, the foreign side decided to take the
access-and-legitimacy model and localize the human resources within three to
five years to reduce the operational uncertainty and improve the economic
benefit.
From
the second year of entering China, P&G started to recruit local
undergraduates. Nowadays, 95% of the newly recruiting staffs are the graduates
from various domestic universities. According to the statistics from human
resources department of P&G in 2004, the company had hired 1500 graduates
within 15 years and over 98% of the employees are local workforces including
one chef inspector, 18 deputy director and 150 senior managers.
As
local staffs are lack of the latest technical knowledge and advanced managing
experiences, P&G place great importance on staffs’ training. Young managing
staffs with outstanding performance will be trained for the future high level
management, usually according to the working requirements, they will be selected
and sent to the branch institutions of P&G abroad to work and receive
trainings. Besides, P&G often invite senior managers and foreign experts to
give lectures to Chinese staffs in order to get employees understood the
advanced managing skills and information in time. (Bahaudin Ghulam Mujtaba, 2009)
The
access-and-legitimacy model has helped P&G reduce transaction costs,
acquiring the regional advantages, more importantly, making use of local human
resources make P&G get better accustomed to local market and cultural
background, thus decrease the operational uncertainty and enhance the economic
benefit.
3. Shift: Learning and Effectiveness
paradigm
This
paradigm starts emphasis on knowledge and value about employees. Companies
develop an outlook on diversity that enables them to integrated employee’s
opinions. This means companies did not treat everyone same, the employees could
not adjust to company’s ways and be like others in the company. And it also
doesn’t match the demographic characteristics of people to those of the
marketplace. From this paradigm, companies not only use some employee’s skills
but also learn and grow from their employees. They let employees do the actual
work. They not just capitalize differences; instead of appreciate difference
and emphasis on uniqueness.
Employees feel they are not pushed to work, their value had been valued.
3.1 Global forces and international
contexts
With
the development of social and economic, more and more company focuses on the
learning-and-effectiveness paradigm. Why this shift raised? Indeed, economical
important social issues and political are the main global forces to push
company make a shift when they faced with diversity problem.
3.1.1
Economic
a. New
economic
The new
economy is the result of the transition from a manufacturing-based economy to a
service-based economy. This particular use of the term was popular during the
dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. The high growth, low inflation and high
employment of this period led to overly optimistic predictions and many flawed
business plans. Because of new economic, company know they have to care their
customers, it focus on service. And who will provide service to their customer?
They are employees, so they have to care diversity employees also.
b. Knowledge
economic
"Knowledge
economy" is the "knowledge-based economy" (The Knowledge-based
Economy). Here is a knowledge-based, as opposed to the current
"material-based economy" is concerned. Traditional economic theory
holds that the factors of production, including labor, land, materials, energy
and capital, and knowledge of modern economic theory have included as an
important factor of production, because knowledge has increasingly high investment
returns. Due to knowledge economic, company pay more attention on knowledge,
that led to they respect knowledge of employees. We do better in knowledge, we gain more intangible
resources which can be a competive advantage for a company.
3.1.2
Social issue
With the accelerating of
technology progress, the extensive application of information means, the
centralization form of traditional organization are being challenged,
organizational decentralization has become a trend. This decentralized
management require organization pay more attention to democratic management,
self-management and emotional management. Employees not just worker, employers not just
mointor and need care employees emotion. The more care on knowledge, the more
comfortable employees may feel. And they have a sense of they can use knowledge
bring high performance to company, they will more collabration and hardworking.
So respect employees
skill and knowledge is the central of diversity management.
3.1.3
Political and legal
Intellectual
property (IP) is a legal concept which refers to creations of the mind for
which exclusive rights are recognized. Nowadays, we can see criticism of
intellectual property law concerns the expansion of intellectual property, both
in duration and in scope. Due to the important of protect intellectual, company
aware of the importance of employees knowledge. They know knowledge is the root
resources for a company, because
employees with good ideas can bring profit for company, knowledge is the base
of new ideas. So they must pay high attention on employees’
value, so the shift is raised.
3.1.4
Knowledge management
The rise
of knowledge management in the international text also leads this trend.
Knowledge management is defined as the process of creating, acquiring, sharing
and managing knowledge to augment individual and organizational
performance(Society for human resource management, 2008). Compared to past, knowledge management just focus
on information management, but now more and more company adapt to knowledge management enhance
our attention on the knowledge of diversity. The paradigm arise due to sharing knowledge and
value employees which emphasised by knowledge management.
3.2 Case Xerox:
“Xerox
has designed the company’s talent management strategy to differentiate and foster
rewarding careers for our employees and to develop the next generation of
leaders”. This sentence is published on the Xerox’s website and we think it is
reflect how Xerox deal with diversity employees in their company according to
the learning-and-effectiveness paradigm. This case will be analysed from a
conflict management, leadership and human resource perspective.
a. From
conflict management perspective
Conflict
management and resulation has become an increasingly important competency of
organizational managers(Gordon L.Lippitt, 1982). It related to communication in
a company. Xerox was one of the first organizations to use caucus groups
(discussion and advocate groups representing ethnicity, sexual orientation,
gender, and race) to advance the platforms of minority employees through direct
communication with top management (Jacqueline A. Gilbert, Bette Ann Stead, John
M, Ivancevich, 1999). Due to the shift of diversity management, company started
to care knowledge of employees, so the action they took is new way to
communicate with their diversity employees. When have conflict, communicate with top manager,
you can share your opinion with them and they will give you more helpful
advices also.
b.
From
leadership perspective
Use more
transformation leadership. CEOs at the above mentioned
organizations galvanized their work forces to take diversity seriously through
moral persuasion (Barry and Bateman, 1996), through personally surveying change
efforts, and through concerted efforts to change employees' awareness of key
issues. In addition to diversity and sensitivity training, J. C. Penney's
offers formal mentoring programs, seminars on networking skills, on-site child
care, career pathing, as well as internal and external programs designed to
promote gender equity (Duff-Bloom, 1996). All of these
focus on employees knowledge interact and learning from others, through
mentoring and give employees more encourage, employees feel they are not just
worker, they can develop themselves, do innovation things and gain what
they want to.
c. From
human resources management perspective
Diversity
training for managers, compensation equity, career development, and human
resource strategic planning are also emphasized. Because company not just want
to show their fairness, and they are not just use different employees to get
into unique market, they give employees training which make them better and
company can get benefit from interact knowledge.
4.
Future Shift:
4.1 Introduction
4.1.1 More respect is encouraged for diversity.
As
employee diversity is more and more common, every staff will be possible to
work with colleagues with different age, gender, disability, racial and
cultural background. However, some staffs still can not get accustomed to this
kind of working environment and accept the individual differences, this
phenomenon can seriously influence their collaboration and thus have a negative
impact on the companies’ productivity and performance. It is important for the
company to modify their attitude and opinions. Several practices can be taken
by the companies: first, some role models can be provided for other employees
through individual behavior that illustrate respect for diversity. Second, rules
and regulations should be set to stop the discrimination and inappropriate
behaviors. Third, more assist should be given to the employees to help them to
accept diversity and work with diverse colleagues and customers in a more
effective and efficient way. Forth, more open communication and discussion
among different colleagues and team members should be initiated to promote
their mutual understanding.
4.1.2
Diversity will be used as an asset in a more effective way.
Since
diversity management model has developed to a certain extent, companies not
only adapt their management practices to diversity in workplace, but also
identify the real worth of diversity and make use of it effectively. They
recognize different knowledge and skills of a diverse workforce and utilize
them rationally so that to enhance the organization performance to the largest
extent. They also will pay more attention to newly developing methods to
diversity and then combine them with current work practice. Since the diversity
situation is changing constantly and more types of diversity is emerging, a
diversity management practice suit to today’s situation may not meet the
demands of tomorrow, for this reason, approaches to getting diversity is also
enriching and developing. in the future they may not only limited to
recruiting, representatives or learning, better models may be innovated and
companies will always keep seeking information about them and put them into
practices. (Lee, Gardenswartz, 2003) Only in this way, companies can update their management model to avoid
falling behind and keep up with the times.
4.1.3 The
company will emphasize more on integration.
In
many companies, different employees will formulate different parties and these
parties are somewhat isolated, they only focus on their own circle and look
down on the others. (Gorbinder Gill, 2010) This is not a good common practice, companies should be
conscious of this kind of affairs and give more education about the necessity
and importance of solidarity to staffs to promote their awareness and stop this
tendency.
4.2 Global Forces
4.2.1 The laws and regulations that protect
diversity people are more and more completed.
As many
countries’ governments are placing importance on protecting the rights of
blacks, women, elders and disabilities, the related laws and regulations that require
the companies to treat every staff equally and respect their basic rights come
out in succession. It is necessary for the companies to follow the laws and
regulations and make their efforts to solve the problems generated by diversity
so that the company can operate normally without causing some legal troubles.
4.2.2 The companies around the world are
competing on the effectiveness of utilizing diversity
Since
many companies begin to diversify its employees, companies which can
effectively make use of its diverse staffs can acquire more competitive
advantages. (Carol Harvey, 2011) Thus, they need to recognize and identify different knowledge,
skills and experiences that are useful to the company and appoint them to the
appropriate positions that are better matches for their talents. Only in this
way can the companies surpass the others in human resources area.
4.2.3 Employees’ requirements for new
diversity management approaches
More and
more employees are aware of they are working in a complex environment and they
have to make contact with different people everyday, thus, they need companies
to create a harmonious and integrated environment for them so that they can
work in a more effective way and have a high performance. For this reason, the organization
must explore the new approached to manage diversity constantly.
Conclusion
Diversity management is the
strategic process to manage a diverse workforce in the manner to maximize the
benefits and minimize the barriers of different opinions, behaviours and
attitudes of human beings with a company. It can enhance
collaboration.
1. Highly Motivated Employees:
Companies that creates an environment where all employees can thrive in their
own cultural way can benefit from the competitive advantage of very satisfied
employees (Mareike Danullis, Simone Dehling, Suzana Pralica.2004). The
motivation of employees will increase.
2. Creativity and innovation: Creativity
involves a large number of people from different disciplines working
effectively together to solve a great many problems (Ed Catmull, 2008). That
means diversity management will create innovation and creativity. Especially
for the third shift, people can interact with others and share their knowledge,
it can be the sources of creativity and innovation, and also can enhance
collaboration between employees.
3. Cost reduction: When a company
deals with diversity problem, they should consider the cost of this process.
Actually, if the company has a decent way to manage diversity, the cost will be
reduced. Employees are staying at companies if more attention is drawn to
knowledge and individual needs, which results in that they stay at company, it
will reduce costs of absenteeism and costs of staff turnover.
4. Knowledge transfer: With the
development of the shift, diversity management focuses on knowledge of
employees. It will improve the process of knowledge communication. The more
knowledge we interact, the more collaboration we get.
5. Problem solving: Diversity
management now pay attention on individual rather than number, diversity group
have richer experience, which can help analysis kinds of problems. The process
of solving problem is also a process of collaboration.
6. Continuous improvement: We have
mentioned fluently knowledge transfer and the faster and more effective problem
solving process. When company deal with diversity, they can get continuous
improvement and enhance collaboration due to interact with others by using
their knowledge. (Mareike Danullis, Simone Dehling, Suzana Pralica. 2004).
à In each blog you
will find further detail about diversity, why it is necessary in our
organizations and what the challenges are. One shift will be explained in
detail including strengths and weaknesses as well as their global forces.
Further one case is worked out in detail to understand the paradigm. Finally
suggestions on how to enhance and deal with diversity will be provided.
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