Individual Report Brief Summary of the core article:
Article “Managing Diversity” written by Keith Thomas (2019) emphasizes the challenges related to management and valuation of the diversity in the 21st century. From this article, it can be summarized that there is need for the organizations to manage the diversity issues.
For managing the diversity issues, it is necessary to integrate the every diversity initiative with the organizational mission and objectives to be successful. So, it is crucial to develop operating plans and strategies with the creation of the organizational environment that could be accepted and respected and valued by each and every person within the organization.
As per findings of Keith Thomas (2019), it can be summarized that it is needed to have diverse workforce to increase and facilitate the creativity and problem solving skills among the employees.
Apart from this, diversity in workforce enables the firms to enhance the flexibility to address the challenges and develop competitive advantage to achieve their goals and objectives.
In addition, it is also required to manage and value the diversity approaches to develop the workforce to handle the challenges in the 21st century that can be possible through a cultural transformation by incorporating leadership, empowerment, and institutionalization.
There is a need to develop organizational culture that could handle the challenge related to the high belief of people in their ethnic and culture traditions. So this challenge needs to be handled by the managers by restructuring their diversity initiatives to involve workers at all management levels.
Key questions:
- What is the significance of having diverse workforce?
- Why diversity management is required in organizations?
- What are the challenges that are faced by the firms while managing diversity in workplace?
- How the diversity can be managed in 21st century organizations?
- What is the significance of having diverse workforce?
In relation to the significance of having diverse workforce, Saxena (2014) depicted that workforce diversity considers the similarities and differences among the employees based on cultural aspects, physical abilities, disabilities, race, religion, gender, sec and age.
With the inclusion of the diversity, it is effective for the workforce to become heterogeneous. It is required for the firms to employ diversified workforce to earn more profit and enhance the productivity.
It brings innovation and productivity that develops effective work culture and creates the competitive advantage.
Apart from this, in this article, it is also identified that the diversity in the organizations is helpful to serve the diverse clients in the global market as it is better to understand the business environment effectively by considering legal, political, economic and cultural environment of different countries.
Further, Saxena (2014) found that the diversified organizations can solve the problems in better way due to having different insights from the diverse workforce.
At the same time, these firms are capable of having multiple perspective and interpretations in dealing the complex problems. Moreover, diversified workforce enables the firms to adopt the solutions to the problems related to services, sourcing and resource allocation.
It brings the individual talents and experiences that are crucial to suggest the flexible ideas to respond the changing needs and requirements of the customers. The inclusion of the diverse skills and experiences like languages and cultural understanding allows the firms to offer services to the customers globally.
So, overall, it can be stated that it is beneficial for the companies to have diverse workforce because it contributes to their productivity in different forms including better understanding of problems, skills and experiences to handle the problems, handling of diverse customers and their needs and requirements that brings the high revenues and profits.
- Why diversity management is required in organizations?
The study conducted by Anita and Swamy (2018) reveals the significance of the diversity management in the firms. It is helpful to set free the diverse potential of the complete workforce.
This study considers the diversity management strategies adoptd by the global companies viz., Google, Infosys, IBM, and Deloitte.
The adoption of diversity management practices enables these companies to statistically outperform their peers. If the firms appoint the women they have competitive advantage over the competitors.
Apart from this, it can be revealed from this study that ethnically-diverse companies also get competitive advantage over their peers and perform effectively.
This study also suggests that proper management of diversity brings the superior outcomes over the homogeneity because the growth and innovation depend on the insights obtained from the diverse groups working together.
Diverse teams bring more revenues and customer wins and higher market share due to having different skills and capabilities that enable them to handle the problems and challenges present in the dynamic business environment.
Overall, the diversity management is helpful for the companies to achieve greater productivity, be more innovative and come with the superior solutions for the customers. It is because diversified team work together efficiently and try to find the best solutions contributing to the success of the firms.
- What are the challenges that are faced by the firms while managing diversity at workplace?
According to Patrick and Kumar (2012), diversity management is a process for the creation and maintenance of the positive workplace to value the similarities and differences.
This study was based on the survey on IT employees to find out the potential barriers to workplace diversity. From the study, it is identified that the major barrier for diversity management is the discrimination that causes challenges for the management of diversity at workplace.
At the same time, prejudice is also a big challenge for the firms to managing the diversity. It is because there is prejudice about some employees from specific cultural backgrounds and regions and religions that causes difficulties for the firms to manage the diversity at workplace.
Prejudice creates an unfair and unreasonable view or feeling towards someone without any base or knowledge that causes unjustified negative attitude towards the person due to being related to the a specific group.
In addition, Ethnocentrism is also a big challenge for the firms in adoption of the diversity management it is because this causes diversity issues in relation to the group, culture and nation as superior to others.
Further, Patrick and Kumar (2012) found that there are other challenges such as blaming the victim, stereotypes and harassment in workplace that causes hindrances for the firms to manage the diversity effectively.
Stereotypes cause the idea about someone is like which may be wrong that may be applied universally to all members of that group. Blaming the victim is common challenge because it makes incorrect casual attributions which are related to the aggressions with assumed characteristics of the groups.
All these challenges create problems for the issues in adoption of the diversity because these ideas and perceptions exist among the workers that make it difficult for the organizations to adopt the diversity at workplace.
- How the diversity can be managed in 21st century organizations?
From the article written by Sharma (2016), it can be evaluated that there is a significant relationship between performance appraisals, sociocultural issues, affirmative action (AA), and organizational capabilities and diversity management and establishment of equality in workplace.
It is because performance appraisal is the key source of discrimination as it is required for the firms to make the performance appraisal more effective to manage the diversity. It is because the firms use multiple raters and multiple criteria to carry out the performance appraisals.
So, there is need to avoid stereotyping, low expectations and double standards while carrying out the performance appraisals to manage the diversity. At the same time, it is required for the firms to develop capabilities to encourage the diversity and quality in the workplace.
In addition, it is also necessary for the organizations to adopt the sociocultural approach for the management of equality and establishment of equality in the workplace.
The consideration of the paternalism, power distance, religion and gender cause cultural discrimination in workplace and creates diversity issues. So it is necessary for the firms to avoid these aspects to manage the diversity. Apart from this, Sharma (2016) also stated that affirmative action approach can be significant for the organizations to manage diversity and equality.
It is because this approach enables the companies to bring intense labor participation. There is need to consider the level of equality between men and women as the women’s labor force participation is must for the firms to bring diversity in the workplace.
Moreover, the capabilities approach to managing diversity and equality in the workplace is crucial for the firms have diversified workforce and manage it.
The communication is effective to determine the improvement in the basic capabilities of the employees through focus group discussions, surveys, interviews, and other cultural audits. In addition, training programs can be effective for the firms to ensure the capability development of women and minorities to ensure the proper management of the diversity in the workplace.
References
Anita, R. and Swamy, V.K., 2018. Diversity Management at Workplace: Aspects, Challenges, and Strategies. International Journal of Engineering Technology Science and Research, 5(1), pp. 306-312.
Patrick, H.A. and Kumar, V.R., 2012. Managing workplace diversity: Issues and challenges. Sage Open, 2(2), p.2158244012444615.
Saxena, A., 2014. Workforce diversity: A key to improve productivity. Procedia Economics and Finance, 11, pp.76-85.
Sharma, A., 2016. Managing diversity and equality in the workplace. Cogent Business & Management, 3(1), p.1212682.
