Introduction
Diversity Management
Globalization has united different communities in the world to collaborate together, which brings out the importance of diversity management to provide workers from different background an environment in harmony to work efficiently.
In this presentation, we will first talk about the need to lead and manage diversified workers. As it is phenomenal that problems, such as, communication problem arise when workers have to work with people from different countries. Followed by examples of intercultural communication and video clips of a virtual organization, which demonstrated the implementation of diversity management., and solutions of the problems.
Lastly, we will talk how ethics can contribute to success/failure and show case the impact of ethics on real-life examples.
How to lead and manage diversified workers?
As our world nowadays is going globalized, it is a truism to say that the world is becoming more international. Not only have our technology, our travel, our economies and our communications broken the geographical boundaries, but also the business enterprises.
The growth of global enterprises leads to increased permeability in the traditional business boundaries, which in turn leads to high rates of economic change, a growing number and diversity of participants, rising complexity and uncertainty.
Under the influence of globalization, there is a global transfer of jobs, no matter in the new job opportunities or through the global sourcing of certain parts of an individual’s or unit’s work. In the first stage of globalization twenty years ago, low-level manufacturing work began to transfer to some low-cost countries, for instance, China or India. In the second stage, simple service work like credit card processing services also start to relocate in other areas. In the third stage, some of the white-collar work which required higher skills has also transferred to other countries. It is estimated that by 2015, 3.3 million US white-collar jobs and $136 billion of wages will shift to low-cost countries (Engardio, Bernstein and Kripalani, 2003)
Diversity managementrefers to initiatives that capitalize on the diversity in a firm’s workforce, including characteristics like race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, age and disability, as a ‘strategic approach to business that contributes to organizational goals such as profits and productivity.’Effective diversity management leads to improved individual and organizational performance. This is due to the powerful effects of diversity on problem-solving, decision-making, innovation and creativity.
Youtube Video:
Diversity: not whether, but how!
Moving out from Comfort Zone
Obviously, there is a norm of people to be more comfortable, easy and feel like everything under control when most of the employees within the company share similar backgrounds and experiences. Thinking, acting and looking alike with each other could surely increase the level of certainty and predictability of interactions.
Unavoidably, a workplace will become more complex, unpredictable and uncertain as the diversity increases. As a result, it may stimulate the feeling of anxiety to both managers and employees. It is common for people to prefer and appreciate others who are most like them. It is also easy for people to get along with routines, styles and their traditions of what they used to do. However, it is very dangerous to assume that everyone is going to respond to a manager’s particular leadership style in the same way. For those mangers who effectively manage diversity can find a way to overcome the difficulties mentioned above, and realizing the differences can help them to build up a better and more interesting workplace.
In the past, under the traditional management, there isn’t much room for the variation of needs and expectations derived from different culture, social background, race and gender. Many of the managers would simply develop their particular style of management which could be applicable to everyone. Though this may overlook the fact that not everyone could respond to this style, the managers could find it a more comfortable way to cope with. However, when the employees within the company start to be more diversified, the managers would start realizing that this practice cannot yield the best potential from each of their employees.
Facing this problem, it may be reasoned as the employees’ problems under the traditional management approach. Yet, under diversity management, it is suggested that the manager should bear the major part of the responsibility of not learning what work best for each employee and adapted accordingly.
Here’s an example which can illustrate this point. There is a manager who believes in the importance of having the brain-storming activity to increase employees’ involvement. However, he realized that there was always the same group of people who always throw ideas whereas the rest remain silence during the discussion. His solution was to train the silent ones to brainstorm. A consultant was thus invited to solve the problem. Yet, the consultant noticed that the manager’s team was formed by people with different thinking styles – those who relied on real-time verbalization to help them come up with and think through ideas, and those who needed reflection and time to deliberate in order to synthesize information and generate ideas. Brainstorming, however, worked for the former ones but not for the latter group, for which they find it difficult to contribute in the activity.
Eliminating brainstorming is a possible option but not a viable one since it could possibly reduce contributions from those who were comfortable with this activity as well. Therefore, the solution should be to find a way to accommodate both types of contributing methods. The manager and his team decided that they would continue using the brainstorming session, and then one of the team members would send out an email with the results. The team then had another 24 hours to think about it and generate additional idea, which can send shared by sending emails. Though expanding the process to accommodate different thinking styles, the manager was able to increase both quality and quantity of ideas from his team.
From this example, we can see that the core part of diversity management is actually to make response to individual differences. The greatest challenge of the managers remains as confronting and taking conscious actions to change one’s beliefs and behaviors related to differences.
Shifting management styles
Diversity management needs managers to be flexible in order to change their styles to ways that help their employees work best. This implies that a single management style could not fit all. In the past, managers were encouraged to apply their styles to the situation, such as through Situational Leadership and The Managerial Grid. However, diversity management encourages managers to adapt to the individuals they manage as well. To develop such adaptive style, managers have to know which behaviours work the best with them. Managers can do this by establishing a relationship and learning thing like:
· How employees like to get feedback;
· What types of questions to trigger correct types of responses;
· What kind of coaching work is most suitable for each employee
Controversial expectations
One of the obstacles most likely faced by managers is their heavy workload leads to insufficient of time. However, it is needed to spend time with employees, both individually and collectively, to develop strong relationships with them. This will laid the foundation for building trust and familiarity, for which helps employees adapting managers’ styles easier in the future. Spending time to understand each employee would also help to avoid assumptions, for instance, due to their genders, religions or races. Knowing and understanding the preference of employees, managers could base on them to amend their style of communicating and responding to motivation. For example, a greeting in the morning or validating remark and feel slighted when their manager does not acknowledge them in this way.
With a suitable environment created where the employees are motivated to do their best, manager can now focus on their primary managerial responsibility, which is to remove interference. Interference is any obstacle which might be holding employees back from peak performance. For example, lacking in support, resources, intimidation, or anything which block employees from performing well. After establishing a reliable relationship with employees, employees would be happy to tell you what these obstacles are.
As managers move out from their comfort zone towards effective diversity management, they pass through three phases of development:
Phase 1: Awareness/ Mindset shift
First, managers need to change their perceptions towards people as well as their role as managers. Second, they know that they are doing “all they know to do” instead of “all they can do”. Third, they realize that they need additional skills in order to do this work effectively.
Phase 2: Skill building
First, managers begin to experiment with different behaviours in order to discover which behaviour works with each employee. Second, they learn to use allies, which means other managers, to discover more ways to support each employee. Third, they begin to demonstrate greater flexibility and breadth in their behavioural actions.
Phase 3: Internalization
Managers increase their comfort levels by consciously adjusting their styles to get results. Then they begin to adjust their styles and seek ways to get results from each individual employee – without thinking about it. By the time managers reach Phase 3, the process of adapting is less of a strain and less complex.
How much can be yield from effective diversity management?
In a report published by Fortune magazine, the total returns for those 50 companies outpaced total returns for the S&P 500, which provides strong evidence that diversity provides a competitive advantage.Diversity yields more innovation, more effective and productive work teams, improved customer service and satisfaction, and a better understanding and responsiveness to cultural differences in a global economy.
Diversity Management, Organisational learning
“Most people assume that workplace diversity is about increasing racial, national, gender, or class representation - in other words, recruiting and retaining more people from traditionally underrepresented "identity groups." Thomas, & Ely (1996)
However, diversity management is a comprehensive managerial process for developing an environment that works for all employees. It encourages managers to enable, empower and influence employees to reach their full potential. It ensures that organizational systems, policies and practices do not benefit one group more than another. Richard Wynne (2009)
1) Fairness Discrimination in the 60s, blacks, women as the victims
In this stage, leaders are trying to promote equal treatment inside the organization, idealizing assimilation and color- and gender-blind conformism , claiming that everyone is equal and should be treated the same.
However, this approach put pressure on the people from diverse background to let go the cultural differences they have if they want to survive in the company.
A typical example of such is in the United States Army, when blacks and Hispanics were discriminated and prohibited to join the army, even though they served as loyal soldiers being as navy during the Revolution war.
This situation started to change when Kennedy's executive order declared that federal contractors should “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during their employment, without regard to race, creed, color or national origin”
Leading them to the Fairness-Discrimination paradigm, where Blacks and Hispanics soldiers were finally started to treat fairly, eligible to apply to jobs in white’s company and the navy, yet they still have to undergo the White’s culture in order to survive in the organization environment.
2)
Access legitimacy in the 80s , starting to gain access to the markets
The outbreak of the case (Agocs and Burr, 1993) highlights the phenomena that even though women, racial minorities are eligible to work in the same environment, the working environment is still hostile and is dedicated for white and men to work only. In Agocs and Burr’s case white have been deliberately ignoring constructive ideas from the latter group and only listens to their same group, whites who claim, “this is how we roll”. This clearly indentifies how serious the situation is.
With similar case such as (Robinson and Dechant 1997) and (Cox and Blake ,1991) arises, organizations are being sued for the injustice and lack of consideration for the minority groups and women. These cases caught the public’s attention, immediate measures where being taken to avoid reoccurring situations. Yet it wasn’t effective until organizations found out adopting sound diversity management will not only reduce the chances of them getting into law suits, but also helped in improving the organization’s performance and productivity, creativity and flexibility, accessibility to the local markets of the employees, the standard in problem solving and staffs’ morale by the significant reduction in their absenteeism. This phenomena matches with what Thomas, & Ely (1996) said, “a diverse workplace brings different knowledge and perspectives on how to actually do work – how to design processes, reach goals, frame tasks, create effective teams, communicate ideas, and lead.”
Knowing the significant benefits of diversity management, acts a catalyst speeding up organization to start implement it and brings them to the access legitimacy paradigm.
3) Effective learning in 2000s , a safe community is built for employees to effectively share knowledge between one another and collaborate to success.
“Like the fairness paradigm, it promotes equal opportunity for all individuals. And like the access paradigm, it acknowledges cultural differences among people and recognizes the value in those differences. Yet this new model for managing diversity lets the organization internalize differences among employees so that it learns and grows because of them.” Thomas, & Ely (1996) Not only, this paradigm also promotes the environment where everyone must have freedom to communicate with anyone and it must be safe for everyone to offer ideas” (Cat mull, 2008)
As globalization takes place and it is inevitable for companies to go globalize to increase its market share to raise profitability, lower its production cost by outsourcing non-competencies and sustain a high level of R&D by employing more experts to order to compete with others, is it undoubtedly that such measures must utilize an effective diversity management to sustain its business continuity and create synergy effect by bringing different talented people to contribute together.
The failure case of Wal-Mart expanding to South Korea 1998, but exited in 2006 was a signal on a Marco-perspective for companies to truly understand how to proper utilize diversity management to assist its operations and global expansion strategies which inspired other companies to the effective learning paradigm.
Wal-Mart, a global giant, sticked to its western marketing strategies when entering Korea as the director ignored the advises given by their employees from their targeting country, partially because they are not white and partially because he has an illusion of thinking everyone should be following the taste of America as they are the strongest country in the world, and even terminated employees who have been actively trying to stop the director from implementing the strategy, which also created a hostile and unsecure environment which seizes employees from further giving out their constructive insights of what to do to make it work.
“There is no doubt contradiction always exist between employers, employee since their roles play differently. But it is believable that mutual benefit can be achieved through mutual understanding and communication. Moreover, both employers and employees should set certain disciplines on looking at the incident in an objective angle to facilitate a better result.” (My own blog)
Wal-Mart then promoted a membership approach that is used in Western contexts and concentrated on dry good, when rivals, who understand the local market demands, focused on food and beverages. The consequences of ignoring the cultural difference, constructive ideas and relevant knowledge from employees of other races lead to a total failure for Wal-mart’s expansion. This resulted in a loss of $10.4 million in 2005 and Wal-Mart was forced to sell all 16 outlets in May 2006 to Shinsgae, a local retailer to cut down the cost.
This result reinforces the statement, “We need managerial processes that ensure that all our employees are treated equally and with respect and that some are not given unfair advantage over others” (David A. Thomas, associate professor at Harvard Business School) (David A. Thomas, associate professor at Harvard Business School)
Another example is Coca Cola underestimating the impact of cultural symbols that may evoke deep feelings. In a report by YOU SIGMA (2008). "Coca-Cola's Learning Experience in Advertising." Coca Cola used white marble columns of the Parthenon that crowns the Acropolis in Athens to decorate their coke cans. Which resulted in a huge adverse impact by provoking all the Greeks as it is their cultural symbol and by disrespecting it, it is equivalent to disrespecting all the Greeks.
These two cases highlights the serve conditions when improper or lack of diversity management is deployed and gave examples for organizations to learn from the mistakes and utilize it for further improvements or to capture more market shares; such as knowing the importance of adapting the local market and knowing the positively relating cultural symbols might be a good way to tackle into the market. An example of such might be Yahoo tackling the local market in Japan, it expanded rapidly as it is aware of the different cultural differences due to their diversified working team which contributed on ideas of the local culture, such as creating a webpage with pink flowers which resembles the national flower of Japan along with trendy topics about the local community to arouse its popularity.
In Micro-perspectives, Toyota and 3M are one of the leaders in successfully implementing diversity management inside their organizational culture and learning that leads to success.
Reported by Business Week, 3M created a unique environment by allowing their employees to have an hour, in working hours but doesn’t require them to work, throughout the day to think of something innovative, such as what might be potentially useful to the company, and what might be the products that customers are interested in. If an employee came up with a good plan and had successful passed the board and the manager’s requirement standards, they will be given an amount of money to develop on the product on their working hours along with some percentage of the profits as an incentive. This could facilitate the company’s learning by collaborating different people together, from different diversified backgrounds, and foster a community of helping each other and brainstorm with each other. This implication has not only boosted the sales of 3M after launching new innovative products like our daily use “yellow memo paper”, but also helps to create a enthusiastic, highly motivated and friendly environment where knowledge can be exchanged and utilized towards success.
Another good example of implementing diversity management is Toyota. It has an excellent knowledge management system which records down both explicit and tactic knowledge, by various Artificial Intelligence and workflow management tools. This helps to solve the diversity issues in the organization where, leaders are required to go on job rotation shifts or when there are employees who came from different countries to be apply to easily understand how to perform the work by seeking answers from the AI expert systems or by posting blogs or questions such as how to tackle the markets in China in the intranet where employees actively respond to. Employees who came from China will then post on their person experiences and understandings on the culture to help employees and leaders to work effectively and efficiently
In conclusion, doing business is an area which involves of a lot of task uncertainty, task interdependency and environmental uncertainties, especially when it is operated in a global scale. Therefore, diversity management is essential for companies to deploy in order to synergize its resources to attain competitive advantage to compete and to capture new opportunities in the global market.
Toyota’s KM case chart as an reference on how they motivates employees to contribute in order to increase efficiency .
Managing Diversity through Sensitivity Training
Diversity in the Workplace
Almost every organization looks differently in demographics both in the position of employees to the position of CEOs. Our values, the way we speak, behave, think, dress, religious beliefs, the music we like, our interactions, and the food we eat, all of these make everyone unique.
According to Loden and Rosener (1991), Diversity includes primary and secondary dimensions. The former are elements we have some power to change such as marital status, parental status, religious beliefs, education, etc. People are less sensitive to this dimension as people have the choice of whether to disclose this information or not; we can conceal these characteristics. However, secondary dimensions of diversity are aspects of ourselves that we cannot change. They are things people know about us before we even open our mouths, because they are physically visible, such as sexual orientation, race gender, physical qualities and age.
Failure to understand these diversities can result in prejudice (Generalized attitude towards members of a group), stereotype (Generalized belief about members of a group), and discrimination (Behaviors directed towards people on the basis of their group membership). In such an environment, lack of sensitivity and concern for the feelings and sentiments of people can seriously damage the work ethos and generate ill-feeling. It will create tension, poor performance and morale, and higher rates of turnover. Besides, perpetrators of such acts become a source of embarrassment and liability for the organization.
Therefore, an idea of sensitivity training program is recommended to implant in an organization to increase its managing diversity knowledge and awareness skills.
What is Sensitivity Training?
Sensitivity training is a form of orientation that makes people more conscious and aware of their prejudices and biases. Participants of the sensitivity training program will be placed at a learning center with a trainer who would try to encourage people to discuss the problems and learn about the ideas, apprehensions, and notions of all people. Moreover, the trainer would also use various methods such as role-playing, video case studies, simulated events which involve examining many kinds of diversity, such as ethnicity, race, language etc to analyze in detail the different kinds of behavior which may be considered as harassment. Through the training, it is believed that it can help people confront their own biases and prejudices and broaden their tolerance as mutual trust is developed; interpersonal communication increases, and eventually attitudes will be changed and be carried over into relations outside the group.
Video Sharing:
A scene extracted from a film called “The Office Season” showing how a sensitivity training holding in an office
International Application of Sensitivity Training
The origin of sensitivity training lies in research on human behavior that was conducted during World War II. These studies were concerned over whether the fundamental belief systems of enemy soldiers could be altered by the use of specific psychological techniques. The techniques thus developed were gradually introduced into the industrial sector and steadily perfected over the years.
Sensitivity Training in US
Over the years, sensitivity training has been used by psychologists working for the Federal Government to enforce changes in the curriculum of the K-12 education. This is achieved by convincing the people in charge of the system such as school teachers, administrators, etc. Besides, sensitivity training has been used in the corporate world in America to implement the goals and guidelines of Equal Opportunity stipulated by overseers of the Federal government.
Entire U.S. Army to receive gay sensitivity training by the end of the summer in 2011
As from a military spokesman on 26 February 2011, he announced that the entire U.S. Army will receive gay sensitivity training by the end of the summer in 2011 and no unit would be exempt from taking the programme that will teach gay rights. According to the statement, there would be ‘structured lesson plans’ on the gender and sexual orientation issues. And the training will be broken down into three sections. The first section is for specialists like chaplains, lawyers and investigators. The second is for commanders in the field. The third is for the rest of the force - 2.2million active and reserve troops. Through the sensitivity training, it is believed that it can help to enforce discipline and expected to get respect what everybody expects to receive and what everybody should give.
Intel Corporation's Intercultural Training
Intercultural awareness—managers and employees are introduced to information about how workers from different cultures perceive the business structure, processes, and procedures.
Multicultural integration—a series of workshops provide skill building and career development for foreign born professionals.
Culture specific training—when groups are to work with others from a specific culture, they receive training to understand better their own cultures and to learn about cultural nuances of the other group.
Training for international assignments—usually a training consultant who has lived and worked in the assigned country is brought in to orient the newly assigned person to the language, culture, and practices of the host country.
Intact team training—consultants are brought in to act as liaisons, translators or intervention providers to encourage positive ways for people from different cultures to work together.
Retrieved from: www.uk.sagepub.com/.../Training%20for%20Cultural%20Sensitivity.doc
Merits of Sensitivity Training
Sensitivity Training becomes more and more common and important for an organization under the stress of globalization. As a commitment to work place diversity training helps businesses create a satisfactory, safe and meaningful environment in which people thrive which can prevent harassment incidences, chares, and discrimination lawsuits against an organization. Through diversity workplace programs inclusive of human characteristics such as race, spirituality, gender, sexual orientation or status as a disabled person, companies demonstrate to their employees that they are seen, recognized and valued. Essentially, successful companies harness workplace diversity and allow their business to attract and retain quality staff. This translates into willingness by employees to expend greater effort and apply greater creativity in their jobs.
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
Intercultural communication is to understand how people from different countries and cultures behave, communicate and perceive the world around them.
There are many different definitions of 'intercultural communication'. For example Karlfried Knapp defines it as "'Intercultural communication,' can...be defined as the interpersonal interaction between members of different groups, which differ from each other in respect of the knowledge shared by their members and in respect of their linguistic forms of symbolic behaviour."
Thefollowing is about how the management practices changed over time in the way their handle intercultural communication barriers and intercultural conflicts.
Changes in men’s and women’s labor force participation rates
This information is from the Employment Projections program. Find out more in "A new look at long-term labor force projections to 2050," by MitraToossi, Monthly Labor Review, November 2006.
There are changes in the proportion of men and women in the workplace, though the extent of the differences has narrowed over time. Men and women have differed in their labor force participation throughout the history of U.S. labor markets. The labor force participation rate of men has been decreasing since the 1950s, having registered 86.4% in 1950, and 73.3 % in 2005. On the other hand, the labor force participation rate of women, increased significantly from a rate of 33.9 % in 1950, to 60% in2000.
Note that the proportion of women choosing to enter the workforce coincides with changing attitudes toward gender roles. These changes challenged stereotypes, altered the perceptions about what a woman could do and who she should be, granted women rights not previously enjoyed in the workplace, and ultimately allowed women the right to choose to work away from home.
In additional to having higher gender diversification in the workforce as time goes by, cultural diversification in the working environment has also increased.
Changes in cultural diversity of the workforce
A MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION (MNC) is a business with operations in more than one country. Such companies have offices in different countries and usually have a centralized head office where they co-ordinate global management. Examples of the major MNCs are Nike, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Toshiba, Honda and BMW. Multinational corporations have existed since the beginning of overseas trade. They have remained a part of the business scene throughout history, entering their modern form in the 17th and 18th centuries such as the British East India Company during the age of colonization. While globalization of economy takes place, more and more MNCs arise to compete for their share of the profit in both developed countries and countries under development. In the office of a MNC, the cultural diversity of the workforce has been on the rise as multiculturalism not only assembles in the creativities from different groups, but it also brings valuable information of the countries and cultures of which the MNC is trying to do business with. As a result, managements of MNC value the cultural diversity in the office and lay down company policies to protect and promote multi-cultural workforce.Human resources departments in MNC always look for good intercultural communication skills when it comes to hiring. With the workforce more culturally diversified than ever, more emphasis has been put on being able to communicate effectively with different cultural groups and the having the awareness of the broad ethnic diversity that exists within groups, especially when hiring for supervisors and managers.
As business becomes more and more international, many companies need to know how best to structure their companies manage staff and communicate with customers. Intercultural communication gives them an insight into the areas they need to address or understand.
Communicating with different cultural background is one of the keys to success in today’s Multi-National-Corporation. However there are many barriers that need to be overcome in order to make the communication effective. Below I will discuss the cultural, and language barriers that prevent effective intercultural communication and how they can be resolved.
Culture affects both the content and style of communication. Culture influences how people express themselves, to whom they talk, and how. Such differences can cause people from different cultures to misinterpret both what is said and the implied messages, leading to misunderstandings. The diversity in body language, religion, and common practices are often the causes of the misunderstandings. Body language varies significantly between cultures. For example, while handshake is a widely accepted form of greeting in many parts of the world, there are people from certain cultures that do not feel comfortable in handshaking. Also, while maintaining eye-contact during a conversation is considered polite in the America, the constant eye-contact could be considered as a sign of disrespect in some Latin or Asia countries. We should also be aware that religions from different cultures share different believes and practices. Some Muslim cultures are required to pray during certain times of the day during normal office hours and there are religious holidays when certain cultures are forbidden to work. If this kind of religion difference is not communicated to all parties in a workplace, it could be misinterpreted as work evasion and negatively impact the work relationship.
It is the responsibility of both the employer and employee to overcome these cultural barriers of communication. The employer should recognize the broad ethnic diversity that exists within groups and communicate cultural information of different groups to increase employees’ awareness and acceptance of other ethnic groups while the employees shall carry an open attitude to accepting new cultures and respect individual differences, abilities and personalities.
Philippine: cultural
Language is a powerful and unique tool that is commonly used. It is found in every country throughout the world. Language is used to achieve a variety of social purposes. For example, we can use it to entertain, to explain how something works, and to provide information. We can also use language to make sense of the world, to express ideas on a range of topics, and to interact with various audiences. Language plays a very important role in our daily life. It allows people to communicate and exchange meaning with others.
Italian: language barriers
Language barriers often happen with cultural differences, posing additional problems and misunderstandings in the workplace. Those people having to communicate in a language that is not their mother tongue, they may not feel confident or comfortable. For example, when a person speaks little English, he/she can be intimidated and frustrated trying to communicate with English-speaking supervisors or coworkers. Workers may act like they know what is being said, but in fact, may not know. Or another example, sometimes in the workplace, a higher proportion of people feel much more comfortable speaking in Chinese over English. Those who don't understand Chinese may sometimes find it offensive to be hearing others talking in languages that they don't understand, especially when others are joking and laughing in Chinese. They may think "are those people making fun of me"? This problem can be avoided if those who don't feel comfortable speaking in English decide to improve their English communication skills and take this opportunity to practice their English more often with each other. Rather than thinking that they are forced to regularly speak in a language that they're not proficient in, can they see things from another point of view and treat this as a great opportunity for them to improve their English skills and also meet new friends who don't understand Chinese?
All language barriers may not have such dire consequences, but they can contribute to a lack of productivity, mistakes being made or general lack of trust between the employer and workers, all of which could be avoided if communication were clearer. Even if workers can speak English fairly well, the lingo, slang or jargon that is commonly used by Americans or is specific to different industries can create difficulties for foreign workers. For example, someone not familiar with the expression could easily misinterpret the term “off the top of my head”. Another example, People will not understand the term “watgei” (Bend machine屈機), unless they are living in Hong Kong. That's a big difference to the true meaning. Not knowing these terms does not imply a person isn’t smart or capable, but that he/she simply may not have learned the words or jargon that are commonly used by others on the job or in everyday conversation.
In conclusion, when a work force is diversified, and with effective intercultural communication, the potential for success is much higher because with a diversified team, more ideas can come from different background. If a team mostly consist of people who are flexible, considerate and open minded, they will feel happy working in this type of environment. The team morale will improve, and productivity will increase. This may lead to improved individual and organizational performance and have powerful effects of diversity on problem-solving, decision-making, innovation and creativity.
A Business Ethics Approach:
Every company possesses their own assortment of business strategies and beliefs to gain competitive advantage. Undoubtedly, a firm’s employees are considered to be its most powerful and important asset. As globalization becomes a ubiquitous phenomenon, diversity management cannot be ignored and must be focused with great care. Globalization and diversity trends have forced businesses to become more flexible in order to manage the new complexities during these shifts, but being too flexible may force companies to face a moral quandary as they cross into unchartered territories of management. Throughout the revolutionary shifts of diversity management, questionable company practices forces attention to the realm of business ethics. Noticeably, cultural clashes and conflict of gender roles can cause dangerous rifts in employee relationships if not handled properly. In this analysis, we will observe the fascinating shifts in diversity management and how business ethics plays a major role in shaping strategies that either cause a company’s goals to fall short or enables it to gain sustainable competitive advantage. From companies that are big or small, domestic or international, having a diverse workplace can enable profitability and competitive advantage. As Thomas, & Ely (1996) noted, “a diverse workplace brings different knowledge and perspectives on how to actually do work – how to design processes, reach goals, frame tasks, create effective teams, communicate ideas, and lead.” We begin by observing the early shifts in the fairness and discrimination era or workplace diversity. The 1964 Equal Opportunity Employment Law prompted many companies to proudly embrace employing people of color and large firms such as TWA, IBM, and Xerox were the early adopters. Not surprisingly however, many companies large and small have failed to utilize the benefits of a diverse workplace. Regardless of what reasons the company uses for its defense, discriminating against race or gender does not really satisfy any of the four approaches to ethical decision making such as “utilitarian, moral rights, universalism, or cost benefit” (Yu, 2011).
In 2003, clothing company Abercrombie and Fitch, based in the United States faced a lawsuit on grounds of discriminating against blacks, Hispanics and Asians by “enforcing a nationwide corporate policy of preferring white employees for sales positions, desirable job assignments and favorable work schedules” (Abercrombie & fitch,” 2007). A&F were also forced to remove T-shirts from its stores which depicted two slant-eyed men in conical hats and the slogan "Wong Brothers Laundry Service, Two Wongs Can Make it White." Although A&F did hire a small number of minority groups, “the company would channel them to stock room and overnight shifts as well as reducing their hours” (Abercrombie & fitch,” 2007). This management practice was clearly unethical and violates the Equal Opportunity Employment Law. Indeed, A&F’s brand reputation was considered tarnished as many people started to regard A&F as a racist company, but taking a closer look at the company’s stock price and earnings reports, this incident did not significantly affect its earnings as one would expect.
Much to contribute seems to be A&F’s quick ability to recognize the seriousness of the situation and using “truly substantive credible responses in behavior” (Greyser, 2009) for its crises management policy. Over the years after the discrimination incident, A&F transformed itself to utilize a much more diverse workforce, and according to its website, approximately 40%-50% of its in-store workers, models and store managers are of color. The lawsuit served as sort of a wakeup call for A&F and the company took the necessary steps to communicate to the public of its morally correct values. A&F created the Stores Diversity Council which comprises of District Managers and Recruiters whose job is to manage diversity initiatives. This restructure illustrates A&F’s willingness to adapt to cross cultural awareness by “recognizing the role of culture and developing employees” (Gardenwartz, & Rowe, 2001). “Abercrombie had a back-of-the-bus mentality,” said Kimberley West-Faulcon of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. “Now instead of hiring them in the back of the store, they will have diversity recruiters. It sends a message to young people that we are moving past this kind of thing” (Abercrombie & fitch,” 2007). Noticeably, A&F entered into the Access Legitimacy Paradigm (Thomas, & Ely, 1996), and gained access to a broader global marketplace by utilizing its now diverse workplace. A&F now operates in Canada, Europe, Latin America, Japan and currently planning stores in China. In a statement on its website under the career section, A&F notes how it regards diversity as key to their organizational success and that they are determined to have a diverse culture throughout the organization that benefits from the perspectives of each individual.
In another real case analysis, as one of the early adopters of Equal Opportunity Employment program and initiative, IBM has a long history of progressive management in diversity. From the early 1950’s to present, IBM serves as an excellent example of transforming from the fairness / discrimination paradigm to access legitimacy and now effective learning. IBM had their own naming scheme for it; Diversity 1.0, 2.0 and now 3.0 respectively. During the 1990’s when Lou Gerstner took over as CEO, he felt that his “senior management team did not properly reflect the diversity of the market for talent or IBM’s customers and employees” (Thomas, 2004). In 1995, Gerstner launched a diversity taskforce initiative that “became the cornerstone of IBM’s HR strategy” (Thomas, 2004). IBM then shifted its strategy over to “access legitimacy paradigm” (Thomas, & Ely, 1996) by creating eight task forces with each focusing on different minority groups such as Asians, Hispanics, blacks, gays, lesbians, and women. The goals for these taskforces were to “uncover and understand differences among the groups and find ways to appeal to a broader set of employees and customers” (Thomas, 2004). At IBM today, the number of female executives worldwide increase by 370%, minority executives increased more than 233%, self identified gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender executives increased by 733% and the number of executives with disabilities more than tripled since 1995. Not only does IBM increase the diversity of its talent pool, Gerstner goes on to state how their objective is to deliberately seek ways to more effectively reach a broader range of customers.
IBM takes steps to ensure that it promotes and hires high-potential minorities by avoiding mistakes such as “focusing on current performance rather than management potential and failing to adopt a consistent and accurate process for identifying candidates” (Byham, 2009). The structures of each taskforce were virtually identical and Gerstner implemented procedures to ensure that the hiring and promotion decisions did not favor any particular group. When the taskforce initially launched, IBM made sure to set expectations and ensure that roles and responsibilities were consistent and unambiguous. Indeed, having these taskforces for each minority is critical for ensuring that minorities to have a voice in a safe environment much similar to Pixar’s operating principles; “where everyone must have freedom to communicate with anyone and it must be safe for everyone to offer ideas” (Catmull, 2008). In the early 2000’s IBM also wanted to include employees who were not at the executive level to be involved with the effort and thus the diversity councils and network groups were created. Through these “72 councils IBM seeks to ensure that its workforce represents an environment that visibly encourages and values the contribution and differences of employees from various backgrounds” (Thomas, 2004). These diversity councils and network groups contribute to the “26 key drivers of engagement that managers must take such as learning and development opportunities, having support management and being recognized, valued and respected” (Ketter, 2008). The diversity councils and network groups shifted IBM’s diversity management practice into the “effectiveness learning paradigm” (Thomas, & Ely, 1996). As explained by Thomas, when the fairness and discrimination paradigm is used, the company focuses on employees treating each other the same. When the access and legitimacy paradigm is used, the company focuses on differentiation, utilizing what each culture and demographic can bring to the market. However, in the current shift to effectiveness learning paradigm, IBM uses knowledge management via the assigned taskforces, diversity councils and network groups to realize the different perspectives and knowledge each group has to offer and internalizes it to learn and grow. Although, combining effective diversity management with knowledge management is a long and complex approach, if implemented and executed well, it can be a “major source of sustainable competitive advantage” (Kasper, & Haltmeyer, 2002).
IBM paints a rosy picture of its impressive diversity management principles and techniques, but not surprisingly, the company still struggles and faces ethical dilemmas. At home, IBM faces criticism for laying off thousands of US workers and expanding its staff and outsourcing most of the jobs overseas as noted in a March 26th 2009 CNN news article. In a report by Business Week (“IBM draws criticism,” 2009) , the company’s workforce went up from 386,558 in 2007 to 398,000 by the end of 2008 but US employment fell from 121,000 to 115,000. Although IBM may justify their policies under the Utilitarian approach, it will always be a controversial issue. As the world becomes more flat and globalization makes it easy to reach cheaper labor, it forces IBM to rethink its strategy while it faces a moral dilemma between outsourcing workers and keeping US jobs.
Away from home, IBM struggles with cultural relativism in South Korea and China, as they are being charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. IBM employees “allegedly paid cash bribes and provided a range of improper gifts to government officials” (Segall, 2011). Although this type of act is considered normal in their respective countries, the United States court system does not take these practices lightly. Without violating the three basic core values of “respect for human dignity, respect for basic rights, and good citizenship” (Donaldson, 2009), IBM took a stance of neither admitting nor denying the charges. On March 18, 2011, IBM agreed to pay $10 million dollars to help settle federal bribery charges.
In another incident however, IBM clearly made unethical choices by ignoring workers conditions from its suppliers. On January 28th, 2004, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) criticized IBM “for failing to include provisions that would stop suppliers from using forced labour or child labor, imposing excessive working hours, or using harsh or inhumane treatment. It had also failed to ensure that suppliers pay a living wage” (Weardon, 2004). IBM may justify its decisions by using one of the cost-benefit approach for its ethical decision, but the basic core values has been clearly violated. Although IBM noted in a statement that it took actions to remedy the problems that were uncovered, it should have taken preventive measures by implementing policies or avoiding doing business with them all together.
Businesses have come a long way since the inception of equal opportunity in the 1960’s. Strategies and techniques in diversity management shifted and evolved, and although every firm has their own naming conventions for it, the shifts are all very similar. Globalization has forced many firms to re-evaluate their business practices and ethical policies and at the same time embrace diversity from different culture backgrounds. There is never a simple answer on how to manage diversity, especially when ethical decisions are involved, but businesses will continue to learn from each other and their most important asset: their diverse set of employees.
Every company possesses their own assortment of business strategies and beliefs to gain competitive advantage. Undoubtedly, a firm’s employees are considered to be its most powerful and important asset. As globalization becomes a ubiquitous phenomenon, diversity management cannot be ignored and must be focused with great care. Globalization and diversity trends have forced businesses to become more flexible in order to manage the new complexities during these shifts, but being too flexible may force companies to face a moral quandary as they cross into unchartered territories of management. Throughout the revolutionary shifts of diversity management, questionable company practices forces attention to the realm of business ethics. Noticeably, cultural clashes and conflict of gender roles can cause dangerous rifts in employee relationships if not handled properly. In this analysis, we will observe the fascinating shifts in diversity management and how business ethics plays a major role in shaping strategies that either cause a company’s goals to fall short or enables it to gain sustainable competitive advantage. 
