Management and Diversity
Globalization and diversity
 The new World is flat!
 Flexible and mobile labour
 Multicultural democracies
Defining diversity
 Diversity refers to characteristics of individuals that
shape their identities and the experiences they have in
society
 The purpose of exploring diversity issues in a
management course is to suggest how managers might
include diverse employees equally, accepting their
differences and utilizing their talents.
 Why should we be concerned with diversity???
ADVANTAGES OF DIVERSITY IN
ORGANIZATIONS
 Ann Morrison carried out a comprehensive study of 16
private and public organizations in the United States.
 In the resulting book, The New Leaders: Guidelines on
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Leadership Diversity in America, she outlines the some
advantages of diversity:
Gaining and Keeping Market Share
Cost Savings
Increased Productivity and Innovation
Better-Quality Management
Gaining and Keeping Market Share
 Today managers must understand increasingly diverse
markets.
 Some people argue that one of the best ways to ensure
that the organization is able to penetrate diverse
markets is to include diverse managers among the
organization’s decision makers.
 Employing a manager who is of the same gender or
ethnic background as customers may imply to those
customers that their day-to-day experiences will be
understood.
Cost Savings
 Businesses that fail to foster inclusive workplaces see
higher turnover rates than businesses that value a
diverse workforce because they foster a hostile work
environment that forces employees to leave.
 The failure to retain qualified employees results in
avoidable turnover-related costs at the expense of a
company’s profits.
 Having a diverse and discrimination-free work
environment helps businesses avoid these costs.
Increased Productivity and
Innovation
 Many executives quoted in Morrison’s study believe
productivity is higher in organizations that focus on
diversity.
 These managers find that employees who feel valued,
competent, and at ease in their work setting enjoy coming
to work and perform at a high level.
 Bringing together workers with different qualifications,
backgrounds, and experiences are all key to effective
problem-solving on the job.
Increased Productivity and
Innovation
 The managers in Morrison’s study also saw innovation
as a strength of a diverse workforce.
 In essence, diversity becomes the spark that ignites
innovation.
 Of 321 large global enterprises—companies with at
least $500 million in annual revenue—surveyed in a
Forbes study in 2011, 85 percent agreed or strongly
agreed that diversity is crucial to fostering innovation
in the workplace.
Better-Quality Management
 Morrison also found that including nontraditional
employees in fair competition for advancement usually
improves the quality of management by providing a wider
pool of talent.
 By broadening its reach, a company looking to hire new
talent stands a better chance of finding top-quality
employees when it recruits from a more diverse set of
candidates.
 A company staffed with workers from various cultural
backgrounds is better able to communicate with companies
and clients from different countries and areas.
STRATEGIES FOR PROMOTING DIVERSITY
IN ORGANIZATIONS
 Maintain the dynamism of an aging workforce
 Reconcile the conflicting needs of women, work,
and families
 Fully integrate minority groups into the economy
Promoting Diversity Through
Pluralism
 Pluralism refers to an environment in which differences
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are acknowledged, accepted, and seen as significant
contributors to the entirety.
A diverse workforce is most effective when managers are
capable of guiding the organization toward achieving
pluralism.
Approaches to management and diversity:
1. “Golden Rule” approach
2. Assimilation approach
3. “Righting-the-wrongs” approach
4. Culture-specific approach
5. Multicultural approach
Golden Rule
 The “Golden Rule” approach to diversity relies on the
biblical dictate, “Do unto others as you would have
them do unto you.”
 The major strength of this approach is that it
emphasizes individual morality.
 Its major flaw is that individuals apply the Golden Rule
from their own particular frame of reference without
knowing the cultural expectations, traditions, and
preferences of the other person.
Assimilation Approach
 The assimilation approach advocates shaping
organization members to fit the existing culture of the
organization.
 This approach pressures employees who do not belong
to the dominant culture to conform—at the expense of
renouncing their own cultures and worldviews.
 The end result is the creation of a homogeneous
culture that suppresses the creativity and diversity of
views that could benefit the organization.
“Righting-the-Wrongs” Approach
 “Righting-the-wrongs” is an approach that addresses past
injustices experienced by a particular group.
 When a group’s history places its members at a
disadvantage for achieving career success and mobility,
policies are developed to create a more equitable set of
conditions.
 For example, the original migration of African Americans
to the United States was forced on them as slaves. Rightingthe-wrongs approaches are designed to compensate for the
damages African Americans have suffered because of
historical inequalities.
Culture-Specific Approach
 The culture-specific approach teaches employees the
norms and practices of another culture to prepare
them to interact with people from that culture
effectively.
 This approach is often used to help employees prepare
for international assignments.
 The problem is this approach usually fails to give
employees a genuine appreciation for the culture they
are about to encounter.
Multicultural Approach
 The multicultural approach gives employees the opportunity to
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develop an appreciation for both differences of culture and variations
in personal characteristics.
This approach focuses on how interpersonal skills and attitudinal
changes relate to organizational performance.
One of its strengths is that it assumes the organization itself—as well
as individuals
working within it—will be required to change to accommodate the
diversity of the organization’s workforce.
The multicultural approach is probably the most effective approach to
pluralism because it advocates change on the part of management,
employees, and organization systems and structures.
It has the added advantage of stressing the idea that equity demands
making some efforts to “right the wrongs” so that underrepresented
groups will be fairly included throughout the organization.