Diversity in Organizations

Diversity in Organizations

• Examines how individual qualities, including age, gender, race, ethnicity, and abilities, impact employee performance
• Focuses on how managers can improve awareness of these traits and manage a diverse workforce effectively

Chapter Objectives

• Describe the two main types of workforce diversity
• Give examples of how workplace discrimination reduces the effectiveness of diversity
• Identify key biographical characteristics and their relevance to organizational behavior(OB)
• Define intellectual ability and show its relevance to OB
• Compare intellectual and physical abilities
• Describe how organizations manage diversity effectively

Introduction

• Exploration of two major forms of workforce diversity
• Identification of key biological characteristics and their relevance to OB
• Definition of intellectual capability and relevance in OB
• Discussion on effective management of a diverse workforce will be explored

Diversity

• Demographic Characteristics of the U.S. Workforce: Changes in workforce composition toward more gender balance and multiethnicity
• Women are more fully employed, educated, and earning comparable wages compared to 1950
• Earnings gaps between Whites and other racial/ethnic groups have reduced, with differences between Whites and Asians disappearing or reversing
• Organizations need diversity management as a core component of policies and practices due to the shift toward a diverse workforce

Levels of Diversity

• Surface-level diversity refers to demographics that can lead to stereotypes
• Deep-level diversity includes personality and values, which can reduce concern over demographic differences as people get to know each other
• Individual differences (personality and culture) impact preferences, communication styles, reactions to leaders, and negotiation styles

Discrimination

• Effective diversity management means eliminating unfair discrimination, which involves noticing differences and can be necessary for decision-making
• Discrimination involves influenced by stereotypes about groups rather than individual traits
• Discrimination can occur in many ways, with varied effects depending on context and biases
• Some forms of discrimination, like exclusion, are difficult to observe and root out
• Discrimination can lead to negative outcomes, including reduced productivity and citizenship behavior, negative conflicts, and increased turnover
• Unfair discrimination leaves qualified candidates out of initial hiring and promotions
• Working to eliminate unfair discrimination is a strong business case regardless of lawsuits
• Discrimination is a primary barrier to diversity
• Recognizing diversity opportunities leads to better organizations

Biographical Characteristics

• Diversity refers to characteristics that make people different
• Biographical characteristics include age, gender, race, disability, and length of service
• The relationship between age and job performance is increasingly important due to workforce aging and laws outlawing mandatory retirement
• Employers have complicated attitudes toward older workers: experience and ethics, as well as lacking flexibility with less tech
• Older workers tend to quit jobs less often and have lower rates of avoidable absence and are more likely to engage in citizenship behavior
• Job satisfaction varies regarding age: constantly rising among professionals, falling during middle age for non-professionals, and rising again later

Sex

• Few differences between men and women impact job performance
• Once on the job, developmental experiences are similarly offered, but there is less challenging positions for females
• There are similar attitudes when succeeding in traditionally male domains: being unlikeable is perceived as hostile
• Unequal pay still exists between genders
• "Maternal wall bias" impacts working mothers, they're often not considered for new positions
• Research proves discrimination has detrimental effects on complex turnovers for intellectual positions

Race and Ethnicity

• Race: biological heritage
• Ethnicity: Cultural characteristics
• Race and ethnicity are studied for the relation towards employment, performance, pay, and discrimination
• Performance-wise, individuals tend to favor colleagues of their own race in performance evaluations, promotion decisions, and pay raises, but not consistantly Substantial differences exist in attitudes toward affirmative action with Whites v African Americans
• African Americans face worse outcomes in employment decisions
• Employers have major concerns about the negative impact with racial and ethnic groups
• Diversity interferes with group cohesion and decision-making in early group formation

Disability

• ADA in 1990 increased representation of those with disabilities
• The term "disability" is difficult to connect to inferences due to its breadth
• Controversial ADA aspects: people with psychiatric disabilities accommodate reasonably for them
• People with disabilities are reviewed and found to have these factors: workers with them tend to receive higher performance evalutations, despite this, they face lower performance ratings and are less likely to be hired
• General negative situations are prevalent for someone with a mental disability
• The recognition of talents and abilities has made a difference toward lessening workplace discrimination towards them

Other Biographical Characteristics

• Tenure (seniority) and job productivity have a positive relation
• Studies show seniority is negatively related to absenteeism
• Tenure explains employee turnover
• Today's big religious issue in the U.S. involves Islam
• There are about 2 million Muslims in the US, but they are discriminated against for their faith
• Faith is an issue when beliefs prohibit or encourage certain behaviors
• Different sexual orientations affect employee treatment
• Protected sexual orientations exist in state and municipalities but this is not law
• Implemented policies and procedures protect based on orientation
• People tend to establish a lasting cultural identity
• People pick their identifiers and adhere to them
• Cultural norms influence the workplaces and they need to adapt

Ability

• Ability means the capacity to perform various tasks in a job
• Consist of intellectual and physical factors
• Intellectual abilities provide the ability to perform mental functions

Intellectual and Physical Factors

• Intellectual abilities are abilities needed to perform mental activities such as thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving
• Societies place value on intelligence
• Smart people generally earn more money and education and are likely to become leaders of groups
• Dimensions: number aptitude, verbal comprehension, perceptual speed, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, spatial visualization, and memory
• The correlations aren't perfect, meaning performance relates individually to outcomes
• General recognition factor of intelligence
• Structures of intellectual abilities carry over across cultures
• There is some evidence IQ changes with culture, but the differences are smaller when we take the account education and economic differences
• Jobs vary with intellectual abilities demands
• The more complex a job in terms of information-processing demands, the more general intelligence and verbal abilities will be necessary to perform successfully

Physical Abilities

• Though the changing nature of work suggests intellectual abilities are increasingly important for many jobs, physical abilities have been and will remain valuable
• Hundreds of identified nine basic abilities can research in the performance of physical tasks
• Individuals differ a lot on the extent to what they have each of these abilities

Disability Roles

• Ability obviously can formulate problems in workplace when considering employees' abilities due to the status of disabilities
• The differing abilities can formulate problems in workplace when considering employees' abilities due to the status of disabilities
• It is discriminatory to make assumptions on this basis

Diversity Management Strategies

• Diversity management makes everyone more aware and sensitive to the needs and differences of others
• Diversity is much more likely to be successful when we see it as everyone's business than a singular employee
• Methods of enhancing workforce is to target recruiting to demographic groups underrepresented and placing the advertisements in places such as college boards

Diversity in Groups

• Diversity in traits can hurt team performance in some cases, or improve the setting, depending on the team composition/character
• Effectiveness depends on the interest of group member
• Diversity (in gender, race, and ethnicity) can have no effect on the team
• Those who have high intelligence can work better in those settings
• Diverse indidivuals are more effective in group settings if members share a common ground
• Transformation leaders are more efficient in managing diverse teams

Diversity Programs

• The comprehensive workforce encourage distinct components, teach managers, and foster skill and ability

Negative Reactions to Employment Discrimination

• Based on the idea of unfair discriminatory treatment
• Those in diversity-oriented programs, including affirmative action, have equal opportunity to prove themselves capable
• Diversity training are not consistently more able to have women or others in upper management that others do not
• Training is not effective if the strategies are not encouraged at that job
• Research shows adaptation leads to positive leading if undermined stereotypes, a perceiver is given more motivation, the perceiver is thoughtful, and past is repeating often
• Leaders need to look at workforce to determine who is underutilized
• Employees need transparent training for certain tasks and materials that improve past exposures