MANAGING DIVERSITY WITH THE INTENTION OF CREATING A CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR APPLICATION

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POSITIVE EFFECTS OF MANAGING DIVERSITY

A properly managed diversity program in an organisation could have the following positive outcomes:

Costs

Companies that manage a diverse workforce save money in defending grievances, complaints and lawsuits regarding discrimination and sexual harassment cases. Cost implications in managing diversity also occur in benefits and work schedules. A study showed that in a company that initiated an in-house child care facility, worker attitudes improved on six measures including organisational commitment and job satisfaction. In addition, turnover declined by sixty-three percent (Youngblood and Chambers-Cook, 1984).
Greater use of flexitime work scheduling is another type of organisational accommodation to diversity. A recent study field experiment assessing the impact of flexitime use on absenteeism and worker performance found that both short- and long-term absence declined significantly. Three out of four worker efficiency measures also increase significantly (Kim & Campagna, 1981).
Cost savings of organisational changes should be judged against the investment, however, as shown above, data strongly suggests that managing diversity efforts have reduced absenteeism and turnover costs.
Research evidence relevant to cost implications of managing diversity on some dimensions other than benefit and work-schedule changes comes from a UCLA study of the productivity of culturally heterogeneous and culturally homogenous work teams. Among the heterogeneous teams some were more and some were less productive than the homogenous teams (Adler, 1986). The research suggests that if work teams “manage” the diversity well, they can make diversity an asset to performance. For example, all members should have ample opportunity to contribute and potential communications, group cohesiveness, and interpersonal conflict issues need to be successfully addressed. Alternatively, if diversity is ignored or mishandled, it may detract from performance (Cox & Blake, 1991).

Recruiting and retention of key staff

Attracting and retaining key employees from different demographic groups is the second “inevitability” –related competitiveness issue. As women and racioethnic minorities’ increase in proportional representation in the labor pool, organisations must compete to hire and retain workers from these groups. Cox (2001) states that “those organisations that are effective at attracting, retaining and using people from only one or two social-cultural groups will be at a disadvantage compared to those that are equally effective with people from a variety of backgrounds.” Carr-Ruffino (1999) states that “in order to retain qualified employees, they want their individual and groups needs recognised and met.
They want control over their own destiny, to have a say in decisions that affect them, and more flexibility in terms of employment and rewards.” People are less likely to stay with employers who don’t meet their needs.
Sustaining competitive advantage depends on optimizing valuable human resources. Companies that are better able to recruit, develop, retain and promote diverse employees have an edge. Talented people will be attracted to corporations that value their capabilities and will be more willing to invest themselves in productive activity if they believe they are treated fairly and that career opportunities are available.

Creativity and Innovation

Kanter’s (1983) study of innovation in organisations revealed that the most innovative companies deliberately establish heterogeneous teams to “create a marketplace of ideas, recognising that a multiplicity of points of view need to be brought to bear on a problem.” Kanter also specifically noted that companies high on innovation had done a better job than most on eradicating racism, sexism and classism and, tended to employ more women and racioethnic minorities than less innovative companies.
In diverse groups creativity increases, as the people in the groups have a broader range of ideas to choose from. This enhances organisational activities, such as process improvement, advertising, product design and quality improvements (Carr-Ruffino, 1999; Cox, 2001; Vernon, Bergman, Bowler, Engel, Zelno, Rentsch & Woehr, 2003).
Attitudes, cognitive functioning, and beliefs are not randomly distributed in the population, but tend to vary systematically with demographic variables such as age, race and gender. Therefore, an expected consequence of increased cultural diversity in organisations is the presence of different perspectives for the performance of creative tasks. In addition, employees who feel valued and supported by their organisations tend to be more innovative (Jackson, May & Whitney, 1995).
An experiment compared the creativity of teams that were homogenous on a series of attitude measures against teams with heterogeneous attitudes. Problem solution creativity was judged on originality and practicality. Results indicated that as long as the team members had similar ability levels, the heterogeneous teams were more creative than the homogenous ones’ (Nemeth, 1986; Triandis, Hall & Ewen, 1965). If people from different gender, nationality, and racioethnic groups hold different attitudes and perspectives on issues, then cultural diversity should increase team creativity and innovation.

READ VIRAL CONTAMINATIONS OF WASTEWATERS AND FRESHWATER BODIES; VIRUS FLOWS

CHAPTER ONE ORIENTATION
1.1 INTRODUCTION
1.2 PURPOSE OF STUDY
1.3 PROBLEM STATEMENT
1.4 DELIMITATIONS OF THIS STUDY
1.5 IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY
1.6 ASSUMPTIONS FOR THIS STUDY
1.7 OUTLINE OF RESEARCH REPORT
CHAPTER TWO DIVERSITY: CONCEPTUALISATION
2.1 LINKING THE CONCEPTS “AFFIRMATIVE ACTION” AND “EMPLOYMENT EQUITY” AND “DIVERSITY”
2.2 UNDERSTANDING AND DEFINING “DIVERSITY”
2.2.1 SOCIAL DIFFERENCE LENS
2.2.2 CULTURAL DIFFERENCE LENS
2.2.2.1 Culture Defined
2.2.2.2 National Culture and Organisational Culture
2.2.2.3 Cross Cultural Comparisons
2.2.2.4 Working with cultural differences
2.2.3 COGNITIVE-FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENCE LENS
2.2.3.1 Linking Diversity with organisational functions and areas of specialisation
2.2.3.2 Cognitive Types
2.3 DIVERSITY “TYPES”
2.3.1 RACE DIMENSION
2.3.2 GENDER DIMENSION
CHAPTER THREE MANAGING DIVERSITY WITH THE INTENTION OF CREATING A CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR APPLICATION
3.1 DEFINITION
3.2 THOUGHT PROCESS BEHIND “MANAGING DIVERSITY”
3.3 WHY SHOULD WE MANAGE DIVERSITY?
3.4 HOW SHOULD DIVERSITY BE MANAGED?
3.4.1 APPROACH BY THOMAS AND ELY
3.4.2 SVEHLA’S APPROACH
3.4.3 INTEGRATED APPROACH
3.4.4 CARR-RUFFINO’S APPROACH
3.4.5 SUMMATION OF APPROACHES
3.4.5.1 Organisational Development Approach
3.4.5.2 Action Research and Collaborative Approaches
3.5 IMPACT OF DIVERSITY ON ORGANISATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
3.5.1 POSITIVE EFFECTS OF MANAGING DIVERSITY
3.5.1.1 Costs
3.5.1.2 Recruiting and retention of key staff
3.5.1.3 Marketing
3.5.1.4 Creativity and Innovation
3.5.1.5 Flexibility of Organisation
3.5.2 NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF MANAGING DIVERSITY
3.5.2.1 Employment Costs
3.5.2.2 Older Workers
3.5.2.3 Lack of commitment from women
3.5.2.4 Employees feel devalued
3.5.3. INDICATORS OF PROGRESS IN ORGANISATIONS MANAGING DIVERSITY
3.6 DIVERSITY INTERVENTIONS
3.6.1 STRUCTURAL, CULTURAL AND BEHAVIOURAL INTERVENTIONS
3.6.2 BEST PRACTICE
3.6.3 PROPOSED “MODELS” FOR MANAGING DIVERSITY
3.6.3.1 A Change Model for Diversity
3.6.3.2 Diversity management using an integrated model
3.6.3.3 A proactive approach to managing diversity
3.6.3.4 Model for cultural diversity
3.6.4 A PROPOSED CONCEPTUAL MODEL
3.6.4.1 Phase 1 – Cultural Audit
3.6.4.2 Phase 2 – Leadership and Human Resources
3.6.4.3 Phase 3 – Education and Awareness
3.6.4.4 Phase 4 – Monitoring and Evaluation
3.6.4.5 Outcome 1 – Individual/Team/Organisational Level
3.6.4.6 Outcome 2 – Organisational Benefits
3.6.4.7 Outcome 3 – Performance
CHAPTER FOUR RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
4.1 RESEARCH DESIGN
4.1.1 SAMPLE AND DATA COLLECTION PROCESS AND METHODS
4.1.1.1 Developing an interview schedule
4.1.1.2 Focus Group
4.1.1.3 A General Questionnaire
4.1.1.4 Other data sources – Secondary Data
4.1.2 TRIANGULATION
4.2 RESEARCH METHOD AND UNDERLYING CHARACTERISTICS
4.2.1 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
4.2.2 CASE STUDY METHOD
4.2.3 CASE SITE
4.3 SPECIFIC QUALITATIVE/STATISTICL METHODS TO BE USED IN DATA ANALYSIS
4.3.1 DATA ANALYSIS
4.4 VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY
CHAPTER FIVE COMPANY ANALYSIS
CHAPTER SIX RESULTS AND DATA ANALYSIS
CHAPTER SEVEN INTEGRATION AND INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS
CHAPTER EIGHT CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
REFERENCES