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Diversity in a Global Business World
Diversity in Organizations
Management Textbooks Boundless Management Diversity in a Global Business World Diversity in Organizations
Management Textbooks Boundless Management Diversity in a Global Business World
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Management
Concept Version 7
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Trends in Organizational Diversity

To capitalize on ethical and economic benefits, businesses are promoting increased diversity in the workplace.

Learning Objective

  • Analyze the social and legislative trends that define the trajectory towards higher levels of diversity and equality in the workplace


Key Points

    • Diversity in the workplace creates both ethical and economic value, resulting in trends towards a more equal-opportunity workplace.
    • In the 1960s, the United States implemented affirmative-action policies to enforce equal opportunity in the workplace.
    • Following the implementation of various affirmative-action policies, social justice developed as an ethical norm (as opposed to a legal stipulation). This development resulted in more inclusive measures for a larger variety of groups.
    • Empirical evidence of the trend toward diversity is well illustrated by gender wage gaps between males and females, which have been consistently narrowing since the early 1970s.
    • In addition to its ethical bases, diversity in an increasingly global marketplace is substantially more effective and productive, allowing for higher levels of synergy.

Terms

  • affirmative action

    Advantages for traditionally discriminated against minority groups, with the aim of creating a more equal society through preferential access to education, employment, health care, social welfare.

  • Homogeneous

    Having a uniform make up, or the same composition throughout.

  • Diversity

    The state of being different; achieving variability.


Full Text

Diversity within the workplace is a broad topic, incorporating both the need for social justice and the high potential value of employing a workforce diverse enough to compete in an increasingly global economic environment.

As a result, the workplace has undergone a number of trends that promote diversity and minimize group biases, as the ethical and economic importance of diversity is well-established. Analyzing trends in equality and value in diversity is useful for managers seeking to incorporate both.

Equality of Opportunity

Affirmative Action

The early stages of pursuing equality in the workplace arose in the 1960s, most notably with the concept of affirmative action. Affirmative action essentially establishes legal quotas—set by the U.S. government—for the number or percentage of representation by minority populations in a company's hiring practices.

Minority populations are generally defined according to race, ethnicity, or gender. One difficulty with affirmative action is that it can encourage employers to fill quotas rather than avoid bias, potentially motivating some employers to hire specifically by race, ethnicity, or gender; hiring based upon any of these characteristics is illegal.

Social Justice

As a result of this criticism, the equal-opportunity movement evolved towards a model based more on social justice. This perspective still promotes the active seeking out of diversity in the workplace, but does so primarily based on the intrinsic value of employees with different backgrounds and skill sets.

The social-justice trend also meant a shift from a more limited viewpoint of what constituted a "minority" towards a more comprehensive one that places age, physical ability, and sexual orientation alongside traditional categories of race and gender. The social justice model of diversity is distinct from the older affirmative action in that it focuses less on employing minorities and more on the value of a diverse workforce.

Gender differences offer a strong statistical example of this trend, as male and female wage equality has been consistently trending towards equilibrium. Wage equality shows distinct improvement as a result of equal-opportunity ethics, a trend that supporters of equality hope continues toward equilibrium.

Gender wage trend

This chart illustrates that while gender wage inequality is diminishing, further efforts are necessary to promote parity.

Value of Diversity

The ethics of diversity in the workplace are rightly emphasized. The natural value achieved through varying perspectives in the workplace complements social justice well. Organizations that lack a culture inclusive of any and all potential groups generally have lower productivity and higher turnover. Promoting an environment conducive to a global and internationalized economy through diverse hiring and management practices potentially results in increased productivity.

A homogeneous workforce has a much lower capacity to achieve synergy. Upper management, recognizing the strategic value of diversity, continues to pursue the knowledge and skills necessary for a truly inclusive workplace.

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