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The increase in diversity among working environments have introduced some challenges in the way of solace and consolation amongst employees, clients, and suppliers from different cultures, societies, and ethnic backgrounds. This type of consoling, supporting, encouraging and comfortable environment can only be developed if the business organizations can effectively deal with the numerous issues of differing attributes of the individuals. Certain factors and aspects should be considered by business organizations to accomplish an effective and prosperous working environment. Developing solace among diverse workforce has become significant for every organization in order to ensure the smooth running of the business operation. This is specifically imperative if the while functioning across the border so as to avoid multicultural differences and issues that could potentially stem from them.
Aspects of diversity and inclusion have been progressively given attention considering the fact that employees have a similar or comparable nature to cooperate will turn out to be more comfortable and along these lines end up being more engaged and productive. On a contrary, employees with contrasting attributes on the ground of religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, lifestyle, age and physical abilities may become a victim of dominant cultural groups in the workplace. This tends to certainly influence the existing levels of productivity, efficiency, self-confidence, and intrinsic motivational factors of employees. This shows that the workplace applications of diversity have become essential for organizations in order to attract and retain the best and to serve a diverse market. Crafting an inclusive diversity strategy requires insignificant role of diversity application in enhancing the productivity of the employee and organization, goodwill of the stakeholder, and decision-making power of the employees. Therefore, its significance must to be ignored (Zhou 17).
The management of diversity and inclusion is fundamental to manage multicultural differences at every organizational level. Ford Motor Company is not an exception. Therefore, this paper focuses on discussing the diversity strategy that is imperative for the Ford Motors Company while operating in China. The strategy is founded on the four major dimension of diversity. While comprehending the way of diversity aspects, one should at first comprehend aptitudes that are required to manage cultural diversity. Diversity and inclusion are majorly characterized by four dimensions/layers i.e. Personality, Internal Dimensions, External Dimensions (unchanging external dimensions and evolving external dimensions), and Organizational Dimensions (Zhou 23). The four layers of diversity that are required to be incorporated by the Ford Motor Company in order to avoid diversity issues in China are provided below;
Level 1 - Personality Dimensions
Aspects of Diversity
At this level, the major aspect of diversity that is required to be considered by the Ford Motor company is the Personality or Psychological Profile of the individuals. This is one of the most prominent factors that business organizations like Ford needs to take into consideration while hiring, organizing, managing, and evaluating employees. Psychological profile or personality factors help organizations to understand the innate values, beliefs, orientations, and interests of the individuals. This is important because these are the unchangeable factors. In other words, psychological profile and personality factors are shaped in early years of life and are resultant to various personal, social, and environmental influences and experiences that took place in an individual’s life. Since they are unchangeable, they tend to considerably affect other diversity layers and organizational activities at large.
Moreover, comprehending psychological profile is crucial in a way that it can help managers to understand the behaviors and attitudes of the individuals, professional practices and skills, and level of engagement with organizational policies and values. Therefore, Ford Motor Company should incorporate the personality factors and psychological profile of Chinese individual and other expatriates in order to efficiently get its arms around this constant and complex aspect of diversity. Avoiding this major aspect could lead to several difficulties in crafting strategies and approaches related to employee well-being, recruitment and selection, performance evaluation, motivational drivers, and training programs (Wahl 19).
Barriers/Benefit to Address
Since employees are the most vital asset and resource of an organization; therefore, avoiding the factors that are linked to them could be detrimental for the organizations. As discussed in the previous caption, consideration of psychological profile is crucial for organizations as the factors are constant. This has come out to be the biggest barrier for organizations to find out the right individuals whose psychological profiles precisely align with the organizational requirements. It seems to be impossible to find hundreds of employees with similar personalities. Therefore, in order to overcome these issues, Ford can employ the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). This tool can help Ford defining the personality type that is required by the business while undertaking the factors of mutual cooperation, conflict resolution, and management style into consideration (Zhou 18).
On the other hand, considering the potential benefits that Ford can expect for addressing these issues may include a specific and an adequate tool of psychologically suitable individuals, enhanced level of psychological contracting between employees and organization, higher levels of satisfaction, employee engagement and job involvement, and eventually higher productivity and better organizational performance. Additionally, this also tends to reduce workplace stress and chances of conflict within the organizational premises and improved communication while enhancing the solace and understanding amongst employees enabling the organization to synchronize their diverse features (Wahl 13).
Level 2- Internal Dimensions
Aspects of Diversity
At this level, the major aspect of diversity that is required to be considered by the Ford Motor company is the unchangeable internal profile of the individuals. This is another most prominent factors that Ford need to look after as it tends to shape the entire diversity program of an organization. This involves diverse aspects of individuals such as age, gender, physical ability, ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation.
These factors are considered to be majorly responsible for the diversity in the population. These factors help organizations understanding the instinctive factors that are uncontrollable and are subject to vary with the passage of time. For instance, age cannot be controlled by individuals and therefore, their physical ability, performance level, efficiency, and productivity also tends to vary. Likewise, physical ability can also change because of a certain illness, accident, or just due to age. This layer is extremely important to be taken into account because these factors form the core of the diversity efforts (Cole 151).
Like personality factors, internal factors are also infused in individuals of life since birth and are resultant to his/her social, physical, and mental orientation. These factors are also constant and unchangeable. Moreover, knowing internal factors is significant in a way that it can help managers to understand and fabricate the diversity management strategies including hiring, retention, compensation, evaluation, training, intercultural communication, conflict resolution, training, and mentoring. These factors can provide a foundation to Ford Company understanding the difference that may potentially exist between the individual from their home country and the Chinese workforce (Lee 119).
Barriers/Benefit to Address
Like psychological factors, the internal dimension is also constant and unchangeable. Moreover, these factors comprised of the core layer of diversity; therefore, failing to address them may lead to several issues within the organizations. Internal dimensions usually come out to be the principal diversity barrier for organizations and the entire diversity strategy is majorly crafted around this layer. Major benefits of successfully managing internal dimension include workplace peace and harmony, improved productivity, creativity, and innovation. The biggest benefit enjoyed by the multinational corporation is their capability of addressing a diverse market with the help of their diverse workforce. In the case of Ford, understanding the internal dimensions of Chinese populace would help them to understand the Chinese market, their behavior, and their expectations, which can help the organization offering what is actually expected by the market (Cole 158).
On the other hand, considering the potential barriers, Ford can expect dissatisfaction among employees, uncertain reputation of the business within the community, legislative accusation of being a discriminatory employer, lack of employee job engagement, workplace bullying between employees, workplace grouping, intercultural communication failure and much more. Therefore, addressing these issues may bring a prosperous communal reputation and improved organizational performance. Contrarily, failing to successfully incorporate these dimensions tends to reduce negative affect the workplace environment while amplifying the chances of conflict, prejudice, chauvinism, and discrimination among employees on the basis of their diverse attributes (Harvey 122).
Level 3 - External Dimensions
Aspect of Diversity
External layers of diversity tend to be of two types i.e. unchanging and evolving dimension. External dimension tends to vary from individual to individual. In this level, Ford needs to consider the factor according to the society, culture, geography, and religion of the Chinese people. Some of the major prominent aspects lies within the external dimension include geographic location, income level, social status, religion, educational backgrounds, work experiences, appearance, personal habits, parental status, recreational activities, and marital status. The dimension is partially controllable and is highly variable within the workforce. External dimension is significant for any organization for crafting its HR strategies. For example, Ford can define a distinct percentage of hiring married individuals, individual with children etc. Likewise, this dimension can help identifying the demographics statistics in the population and therefore, it can enable organization allocating required resource to fulfill the objective. For Ford, it is highly significant to understand the external dimension as they tend to shape the lives of people they are currently working or planning to work with. External dimension are moderately subjected to change over a considerable span of time and usually affect the decision making related to work style. For instance, a female employee may look for a job that offers better perk with a flexibility to work from home. Likewise, a man would like to take the next step in his career when planning to start his family (Lee 117).
Barriers/Benefit to Address
This external dimension is also variable and partially controllable as well. Controlling here does not mean that the organization can control the personal lives of its employees rather it means that the organization is free enough to choose the individual that satisfy its predefined criteria such as qualification, education, income level etc. (Harvey 121). These factors comprised of the core layer of the workforce demographics while allowing the organization to craft strategies related to management and succession planning. Like internal dimension and psychological factors, the principal diversity barrier is to manage the variability of this aspect. These decisions are often personal and usually tend to affect the performance level of employees. Like for instance, married women employees are found to be less enthusiastic in taking excessive job assignment due their increased responsibilities after marriage. Similarly, the young individuals tend to post a higher turnover to the organization as they prefer to take quick career moves. On the other hand, considering the potential barriers that Ford can anticipate considering the external dimension include dissatisfaction among employees, reduced level of performance, and lack of employee job engagement. For instance, if Ford fails to offer flexibility to married female workers, this would influence their work-life balance and therefore, their productivity will be affected. On the other hand, managing these aspects efficiently can bring prosperity, peace, and productivity to the business (Cole 160).
Level 4 - Organizational Dimensions
Aspect of Diversity
At this level, the major aspect of diversity that is required to be considered by the Ford include field, work content, seniority, groups, department, unit, union affiliation, workplace environment, and management status. These are basically the factors that shape the workplace culture. This is an imperative factor that Ford needs to consider as it tends to shape the internal culture, code of ethics, management conduct, and values of the organization. These factors are actually considered to be majorly responsible for the diversity management. These factors help organizations understanding the managerial and organizational factors that are controllable and are subject to vary with the changing business environment, by the infusion of different organizational aspects and procedures. Organization factors comprise the outermost layer, which shows that it incorporates all the aspects of personality, internal, and external dimension. These aspects address the diversity issue at a larger extent providing the overall image and structure of an organization’s diversity management program (Zhou 21).
Barriers/Benefit to Address
This organizational dimension is also changeable and controllable yet it is not easy to alter them often. Since this layer is inclusive of all the factors of the three core diversity layer; therefore, making changes in them mean changing the rest of the three layers too as the effect will obviously sweep down to the core. This tends to come out to be the biggest barrier for Ford as it has its certain organizational structure that it follows globally and therefore, infusing that with the Chinese culture, people, as well as, their internal and external dimension is not a piece of cake. This requires a thorough strategic management process that can potentially synchronize all the factors without hurting the business image and productivity. Additionally, failing to address them may lead to serious management issues (Lee 113).
Organizational dimensions turned out to be the chief assorted qualities boundary for associations and the whole differences technique is significantly created around this layer. Real advantages of effectively overseeing organizational measurement incorporate working environment peace and concordance, enhanced efficiency, innovativeness, and development. If there should arise an occurrence of Ford, comprehension of the organizational measurements of Chinese people would offer them some assistance with understanding the Chinese business environment, their conduct and their desires, which can offer the organization some assistance with offering that is really expected by the business sector (Harvey 121).
Works Cited
Cole, Brooklyn M., and Manjula S. Salimath. “Diversity identity management: An organizational perspective.” Journal of business ethics. pp. 151-161. 2013. Web.
Harvey, Carol P., and M. Allard. Understanding and managing diversity. Pearson, pp. 121-122. 2015. Web.
Lee, Yin, and Amit Kramer. “The role of purposeful diversity and inclusion strategy (PDIS) and cultural tightness/looseness in the relationship between national culture and organizational culture.” Human Resource Management Review. pp. 113-120. 2016. Web.
Wahl, Anna, et al. “Future challenges for practices of diversity management in organizations.” pp. 13-19. 2015. Web.
Zhou, Pin, and Daniel Dongjin Park. “Which Organizations are Best in Class in Managing Diversity and Inclusion, and What Does their Path of Success Look Like?.” pp. 17-23. 2013. Web.
