Diversity In The Workplace

The United States is a diverse nation with citizens originating from every other nation on Earth. Despite this diversity, Americans have only recently begun to identify diversity as a integral part of the workplace; and put into practice programs to diversify, and therefore, maximize efficiency and production. However, simply diversifying the workplace, or any other place for that matter, will not automatically increase the efficiency of workers. It requires a diversity-conscious leader who has been trained and experienced in such matters to make diversity an asset in the workplace.

When organizations actively evaluate their handling of workplace diversity issues, develop and implement diversity plans, several benefits are reported. For example, increased adaptability, variety of viewpoints, and a diverse collection of skills and experiences that allows a company to provide service to customers on a global basis. For this reason, organizations need diversity to become more proactive and welcomed within an organization and its employees.

Diversity must be created and maintained with in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of diversity onto an organization in addition to explaining the legally mandated and stakeholder driven explanations for mandatory diversity.

Business Article Review In the book “Managers,” by scholars Robert Kreitner and Carlene Cassidy, they discuss how important is to manage diversity within an organization. The United States is changing, it’s growing more culturally and ethnically diverse every day. According to Krietner and Cassidy, “America is gradually becoming a country of minorities. By 2050 whites are projected to be 53 percent of the population, blacks 13.2 percent, Asians 8.9 percent, and Hispanics 24.3 percent” (72.)

The general line of reasoning is that if we learn to incorporate each other’s diverse traits and characteristics in the workplace, we can then use these differences to foster an innovative environment, which will give the company a competitive advantage over the competitors that do not accept workforce diversity. According to the Allied Academies International Conference, “Diversity is rapidly becoming a common practice among companies due to the increasing number of minorities entering the job market today. As these groups become more prevalent throughout companies, upper-level employees are facing numerous challenges when determining what changes must take place to create a positive working environment for everyone. Management is responsible for the development and implementation of effective policies directly relating to diversity to ensure the acceptance of minorities into the workplace and to aid in minorities’ success through equal opportunities and treatment.” (Marcia L. James, 2001, Academy for Studies in International Business Proceedings)

Organizations who make a commitment to diversity can see a significant impact on business in many ways. Diversity “requires a significant commitment for change to occur” (Delong, 2007, p.9). It is extremely important that leaders understand the commitment and embrace it in order for a positive impact to occur. Employers with diverse cultures and leaders can build positive and successful relationships with customers, suppliers and vendors. They can better attract and retain top talent. All of these equal more financial gain for the company.

In the article, “Making Difference Matter: A New Paradigm for Managing Diversity,” the authors David A. Thomas and Robin J. Ely state that the discrimination-and-fairness paradigm and the access-and-legitimacy paradigm are the ”perspectives that have guided most diversity initiatives to date.” (p. 80) Thomas and Ely took these two paradigms and came up with the learning-and-effectiveness paradigm, which combines the best of the discrimination-and-fairness paradigm and the access-and-legitimacy paradigm to create a paradigm that genuinely shows care to learn and understanding of diversity.

To say that diversity is not a benefit, especially in the United States, ignores the cultural diversity of a country that once prided itself on being a ‘melting pot.’ In a time when the United States is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, 43% of Millennials are not white, and the “religious landscape” of the U.S. is changing (Cohn), diversity should be valued rather than dismissed. These demographic changes bring a changing culture, a change that cannot be overlooked. This change will affect politics, education, religious institutions, and business. Already, It can be seen that companies with more diverse employees outperform other companies by 35% (Tulshyan). Ruchika Tulshyan, a writer for Forbes says that, “While correlation does not equal causation – greater diversity doesn’t automatically mean more profit – the link indicates that companies committed to diverse leadership are more successful.” Thomas Mason with the Huffington Post hypothesised that these diverse companies may be doing better, in part, because having a diverse group of people also brings a diverse skillset and cultural knowledge that would be neglected otherwise. A group of writers for the Harvard Business Review thought otherwise, and discussed their findings in an article entitled, “Diverse Teams Feel Less Comfortable - and That's Why They Perform Better.” The article suggests that

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." Taking this commonly held assumption as a starting point, we set out six years ago to investigate its link to organizational effectiveness. We soon found that thinking of diversity simply in terms of identity-group representation inhibited effectiveness. Organizations usually take one of two paths in managing diversity. In the name of equality and fairness, they encourage (and expect) women and people of color to blend in. Or they set them apart in jobs that relate specifically to their backgrounds, assigning them, for example, to areas that require them to interface with clients or customers of the same identity group. African American M.B.A. 's often find themselves marketing products to innercity communities; Hispanics frequently market to Hispanics or work for Latin American subsidiaries. In those kinds of cases, companies are operating on the assumption that the main virtue identity groups have to offer is a knowledge of their own people. This assumption is limited -- and limiting -- and detrimental to diversity efforts. What we suggest here is that diversity goes beyond increasing the number of different identity-group affiliations on the payroll to recognizing that such an effort is merely the first step in managing a diverse workforce for the

The success of the organization and its competitive advantage depend on upon its ability to increase the number of diverse employees, and to realize the benefits of it. Furthermore, the diverse workforce has become an increasingly important part of the American workforce. People with different backgrounds, knowledge, experience, and skills will bring new ideas which will benefit the entire team. A diverse workforce brings with it a lot of different benefits, as well as the potential disadvantages for corporate managers to manage. Organizations recognize the need and importance of diversity in the workforce. Diversity influences every area of the organization by potentially resulting in increased creativity, higher productivity, new attitudes, new language skills, global expanding, new processes, and new solutions to difficult problems. The businesses that do not see the importance of diversity might find themselves unable to attract and retain customers, employees, and business partners. Several advantages will be covered following by disadvantages in the diverse workforce.

In this paper we will uncover the disadvantages of introducing diversity in the workforce. I will also look at how diversity can cause a business to become less profitable. The reason I chose this topic is because I do not know the negative effects diversity could have on a business and it intrigues me. There has been much publicity in the media about the benefits of introducing diversity in the workforce. Yet, there has not been as much about the consequences of introducing diversity. I want to understand the potential causes and reasons diversity can have a harmful effect on a business. I do know there are many benefits in having a diverse workforce, and that no one should be overlooked for a job. I just believe it is important to

Diversity has a very important impact on organization behavior because it is the source of innovation and it creates a competitive advantage among employees. On the global level, it helps to enhance the acceptance of differences, decrease turnover and leads to less lawsuits. From the information and decision making theory side, diversity results in better task-relevant processes and decision making.

Diversity in workforce “include, but are not limited to: age, ethnicity, ancestry, gender, physical abilities/qualities, race, sexual orientation, educational background, geographic location, income, marital status, military experience, religious beliefs, parental status, and work experience”(Thomas 1992). Diversity in the workforce is initially perceived as a response toward the increasing diversity of the consumers in the market (Agocs & Burr, 1996). From there, it has been observed that capitalizing on existing differences among the employees provide benefits to the organization. Diversity in workforce fosters and encourages

A.G. Lafley, P&G’s Chairman of the Board, once said "A diverse organization will out-think and out-perform a homogeneous organization every single time". (Allen, Munn, & Neck, n.d.) However, the concept of diversity management is a relatively new idea in corporate America. The scope of the work, as well as the measure of results are not quite a hard and fast set of rules and predictable outcomes as other aspects of business management can be. While new research is emerging that will give a clearer picture of what aspects to focus on to produce the desired outcomes, there are currently a few initiatives that are believed to be most effective.

The impact of diversity in the workplace is dependent upon several factors. Across companies diversified workforces are becoming ever more common. To successfully