Chapter 12 : Organizational Diversity Processes

Summary from Textbook:

In this chapter, the diversity in organizations is discussed, and the role they play in it. In all organizations, there are minorities in them, whether they are due to gender or colour, and they face numerous obstacles. One such obstacle is the one known as the glass ceiling, preventing minorities from moving up the management hierarchy. Due to personal reasons, occasionally women have to take extended breaks from their jobs, but upon coming back, some find that they are not welcome anymore, being treated mostly as outsiders.

Negative stereotyping and discrimination is one of the leading causes. Prejudice refers to negative attitudes towards and organization member based on his/her culture group identity, and discrimination refers to observable behaviour based on the same reasons. These stereotyping is not always overt and simplistic, and most are irrational. These can often be dangerous as they are often wrong when applied to individuals.

As a result, evidence has shown that women and ethnic minorities experience limited access to or are being excluded from informal communication networks. Due to this, minority employee networks or affinity groups have been focused on, and as a result, minorities have seen an improvement in their job satisfaction and productivity.

Another solution would be the establishment of mentor-protégé relationships, where less experienced employees were provided with support and assistance from more experienced ones.

A third aspect is tokenism, where those few people in the organizations are expected to be treated as representing their minorities, and differences are often exaggerated, or mistakes emphasized.

There are three phases established to attempt to move past these discriminations:

• First generation affirmative action- organizations only interested in achieving the bare minimum


• Second generation affirmative action- more support given to minority employees


• Multicultural organization- decisions that benefit the organizations that utilize minorities

A multicultural organization is further differentiated into 6 dimensions: acculturation, structural integration, informal integration, cultural bias, organizational identification and intergroup conflict.

There are several opportunities and advantages that managing and celebrating diversity in organizations can bring about: cost argument, resource-acquisition argument, marketing argument, creativity argument, problem-solving argument, systems flexibility argument.

The following approaches view diversity differently:

• Classical- seen as limiting the homogeneity of the workforce and detrimental to morale


• Human relations- neither encouraging nor discouraging, emphasis placed on meeting their needs


• Human resources- encouraged due to new creativity and ideas introduced


• Systems- an important avenue to adapt effectively to environment


• Cultural- organizations would be seen as important places where organizational culture intersects with national, ethnic and gender based culture


• Critical- organizations seen as the arena in which minorities must deal with the dominant class

This chapter is perhaps one of the more difficult chapters to understand, as it deals in handling the cultural diversity in the workplace, and how to utilize it effectively, as different people from different cultures provide differing opinions and ideas, and this also reflects how diversity is important outside the organization as well.

Reference:

Miller, K 2009, Organizational Communication: Approaches and Processes, 6^th edition, Belmont, CA, Wadsworth Publishing Company.