Abstract
The current essay tries to explore the concept of workforce diversity management, as approached and handled by the organizations, along with its importance in furthering their strategic goals and objectives. Diversity management, as a concept of HR deals with creation of a positive work environment that openly accepts all organizational members with their heterogeneity in terms of possessing differing physical and emotional attributes, values, interests, knowledge, and skill-sets, so as to provide them with a fair chance to maximize their full potential and optimally contribute towards organizational growth and success. The concept operates at two levels, namely; “intra-national diversity and cross-national diversity” (Mor Barak, 2011, p. 236), each of which need to be managed differently with customized efforts, owing to their long-lasting impact on key organizational performance metrics, with the most pivotal of them being human resources. Finally, it has been found that in assessing the impact or relationship of any aspect of workforce diversity, whether cultural or non-cultural on firm performance, a holistic approach of considering both the invisible diversity variables such as functional or job roles along with the clearly visible heterogeneity variables like racial and ethnic differences should also be considered.
Keywords: diversity management, intra-national diversity, cross-national diversity, work force diversity, cultural diversity.
Introduction
The factor lending uniqueness to any workplace, is its very nature of providing us the opportunity to interact with a diverse set of people belonging to different countries, cultures, and religions, each bringing varied attitudes, and thought processes that add to our own life experiences, and grow us in maturity and wisdom. In fact, these very dissimilarities play a crucial role in building a company’s corporate culture, which is “a blend of values, beliefs, values, taboos, rituals, and myths all companies develop over time” (Entrepreneur.com, 2013). Both the vision and mission statements are the building blocks of any organization’s corporate culture, frequently communicating those shared values and beliefs, which are core to it, and serve as its identity in the market. These are further validated by the various HR policies and ‘house rules’ formulated by the company, each of which espouse the same set of values underlying the vision and mission, so as to set an example for both old and new employees, and thus, do ‘walking the talk’, in order to strengthen their trust in the organization. However, simply creating a work culture is not enough to guarantee an organization’s success, since its sustenance in the form of active implementation by the very employees for whom it has been created is more important.
With the world slowly becoming a global village, as evident from advancements in technology that have collapsed both communication and physical barriers between Boston, Bangkok & Bangalore, by making companies in these countries make foray into international markets; both domestic and international employees now work together as colleagues or business partners. This, though, presents opportunities for them to positively collaborate in manner that facilitates cross-functional and cross-cultural learning, but, at the same time, also poses challenges such as constant friction or clash amongst them due their different backgrounds, which often manifests itself as maladjustment problems with each other. Given such a scenario, it is the responsibility of the management of the parent company for which both the categories of employees work, to teach them the core values of tolerance and inclusion of a diverse workforce, which is the basic and one of the most important tenets of a successfully created and implemented work culture by the concerned organization. To ensure this, it formulates and implements various policies and procedures, including recruiting the ‘right-fit’ for various job positions regardless of nationality age, sex and ethnicity and training them to mold their behavior in accordance with the organizational expectations, practicing various management and leadership styles to guide them in their professional journey, and also implementing various reward, penalty and grievance redressal systems, each of which not only do the job of motivating its human capital to deliver its best, but also keeping a check on it, by preventing its derailment from the established norms and rules (both spoken and unspoken) that signify violation of the corporate culture.
The current essay makes an attempt to closely observe most of these steps taken by the management to preserve the sanctity and diversity of its laboriously created corporate culture, and the degree to which they are effective in achieving their aimed objectives.
Discussion
Patrick & Kumar (2012, p. 1) define diversity management, “as a process intended to create and maintain a positive work environment where the similarities and differences of individuals are valued”. From an HR angle, it may be perceived as an active attempt to facilitate ‘open acceptance’ by the organizational members of the heterogeneity that exists amongst them with respect to their differing values, interests, strengths, weaknesses, as well as physical and emotional attributes, by considering them as completely normal, rather than getting intimidated or prejudiced about them, so that each gets an equal opportunity to thrive and develop to his/her maximum potential and contribute optimally towards the attainment of the organization’s strategic goals and objectives. Considering the level of global interconnectedness, both commercial and technological, that presently exists between different economies; this heterogeneity operates at two levels, namely; “intra-national diversity - diversity of workforce within a single national organizational context due it being composed of inhabitants from different regions and ethnic groups, and cross-national diversity - diversity of workforce characterized by heterogeneity due to origination from different countries” (Mor Barak, 2011, p. 236). Each of them need to be managed separately by designing and executing customized policies and programs, because of their deep-rooted relationship with the following “six facets of business performance; cost, attraction of human resources, marketing success, creativity and innovation, problem-solving quality, and organizational flexibility”(Cox & Blake, 1991).
Talking about the quality of human resources, given its increased indispensability for attainment of the remaining measures of organizational performance, “a Dutch behavioral researcher, Prof. Geert Hofstede has outlined the following key dimensions of culture in any societal set-up, be it nations or organizations, that act as a guidepost for the behavior of its members” (The Hofstede Centre, 2013):
- Power Distance (PDI): It denotes the degree of tolerance for unequal distribution of power amongst the societal members. Societal members high on such tolerance levels usually unquestionably accept power inequalities, often found as deep rich-poor divide or unequal distribution of rights between different members; without demanding any explanation for the same, in contrast to low power distance societies which don’t accept such unequally distributed power, want justification for the same, and even struggle to seek its equitable distribution. In an organizational context, it would denote a pyramidal structure full of formal chains of command, and authority lying vested mostly with the senior management.
- Individualism Vs. Collectivism (IDV): Here the higher side is denoted by individualism, that represents societies characterized by lack of strong social bonding among the members and instead a preference for taking care of only themselves and their immediate family members, while, the lower opposite side of collectivism denotes strong social ties among the members, manifested as actively taking care of each other.
- Masculinity Vs. Feminity (MAS): The psychological traits often associated with men such as ambitiousness, competitiveness, assertiveness, material reward for success etc., also form the hallmark of societies found to be highly inclined on the masculinity dimension, while, those scoring high on the feminity side often exhibit softer traits like preference for co-operation, modesty, caring for the weak etc.
- Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI): This dimension basically demarcates between strong and weak societies, in terms of their ability to take risk by functioning amidst uncertainty and ambiguity. The basic dilemma being faced pertains to the treatment of uncertainty and unpredictability surrounding the future by the society in question, i.e. does it get worried about it and try to control it as much as possible, an indication of its inherent weakness, or does it have the confidence in its abilities and strengths to deal effectively with the unknown future and takes it in its stride, without thinking much about it, a sure-shot sign of its inherent strength. Here, drawing an analogy to the management and leadership function, immediately reminds us that the true test of decision-making lies in operating amidst incomplete information, which, in fact is often the case in most of the real-life business conditions. In such a situation one is only expected to rely only on his/her practical experience till date, a clairvoyant and perceptible vision and gut-feeling, and take a calculated risk, after seeking the buy-in of his team members, and lead them.
- Long-term Vs. Short-term Orientation (LTO): It can be perceived as a society’s search for virtue in terms of its focus on the present or future, with regards to achievement of results or gains. Short-term societies focus exclusively on the present, and consider it as the only absolute truth, since out of all the three parts of time, i.e. past, present and future, only the present can be controlled and improved. Thus, they only believe in quick and tangible results that are obtainable and visible in the immediate present, rather than the unseen future. Whereas, long-term societies display more patience by delaying their achievement of results for the future based on a strong reliance on the current situation, context and time. They strongly believe that there is a right time for everything, and it need not always be the present, but also the future.
- Indulgence Vs. Restraint (IVR): Indulgent societies are guided by their biological instincts and drives and don’t find anything wrong in seeking their immediate gratification whenever the need arises, in contrast to conservative and traditional societies which practice restraint by both suppressing their desires, and also postponing their gratification to the future, in accordance with strict social norms.
A close look at each of the above mentioned cultural dimensions indicates that though on the exterior they represent the do’s and don’ts of particular societal set-ups, but at the core level they are nothing more than inbuilt needs and demands of its inhabitants, which are expressed in a socially acceptable fashion using the garb of adherence to the societal norms. For example, if we consider the case of indulgence vs. restraint we find that, though, it is true that in the Western world like US and UK, where liberal relationships between the opposite sexes exist both in and out of the workplace, in alignment with the egalitarianism present in those societies, organizations in conservative Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia strictly forbid such open relationships, but it is not always true that a male employee in US would greet a female employee by planting a kiss on her cheeks just to comply with the unspoken societal rules of his country and to avoid looking ‘the odd one out’, but it could also be due to his desperation to physically try to get close to her, which she won’t mind since both are indulging in culturally acceptable behaviors.
In fact, research also suggests, that all the needs exhibited by each of the cultural dimensions cannot be satisfied without incurring certain costs associated with it. Schneider & Northcraft (1999, p. 1445), “using the social identity theory attempted to study the relationship between the dilemmas of organizational participation, managerial participation and individual participation faced by companies trying to maintain workforce diversity, found that choosing each form of participation is a trade-off, which has certain benefits enjoyed at the cost of ignoring the other forms. For example, though creativity and innovation are some benefits enjoyed on account of managerial participation to attain functional and social diversity, but they do carry a price tag of irking some inner departmental higher-ups in the organization who might take it as an offence, because for them it might mean the company’s lack of trust or blatant doubts on their credibility or potential to churn out creative ideas”.
However, the irony is, that despite involving a paradox of not being able to fully satisfy the needs of each of these cultural dimensions, organizations still design all the variables governing employer-employee relationships, be it the job design, recruitment policies, compensation levels of their employees or even decisions to indulge in socially responsible behaviors, in alignment with these cultural dimensions, in order to solve the twin purpose of not only fulfilling their societal obligations but also to keep their human capital satisfied and motivated to the maximum possible extent. This has been proved empirically by a vast existing body of literature.
For example, in a recent study, “analyzing cross-cultural differences in the compensation levels and inequality across four occupations, namely; cleaners, secretaries, mid-level managers & senior managers, utilizing data from 44 countries, Greckhamer (2011, p. 85) found sufficiently high configured levels of cultural dimensions, development and welfare state corresponding to both compensation and inequality levels for each of the above occupations”.
Similarly, the active role of the individualistic and collectivistic cultural dimensions towards “promoting increased productivity of cellular manufacturing designs across incentive systems has been brought to light by Papamarcos, Latshaw, & Watson (2007, p. 253) which in accordance with the formulated hypothesis that higher levels of productivity would stem from an alignment between cell members’ collectivistic orientations, a co-operative task structure and equalitarian performance incentives, revealed attainment of optimal cell productivity depending on the sustained alignment of either task structure or equitable incentives; be it individual or group-based with the individualistic or collectivistic workers’ orientation, even though, any misalignment straightaway resulted in productivity decline of 7.6%”.
Not only this, but these differing cultural dimensions also seem to dictate an organization’s perception about both corporate social and economic responsibility actions. This was pointed by Usunier, Furrer, & Furrer-Perrinjacquet (2011, p. 279), “in a cross national study that explored the compatibility or incompatibility of the managers’ perception about corporate social and economic responsibility with differences in their cultural orientations, corporate governance systems of their countries and managerial education levels. Using their gender and work experience levels as the controlling variables, the study revealed lack of compatibility between the perception of social responsibility and economic responsibility for higher power nations characterized by lenient corporate governance systems and more integrated management education, while making the converse true for low power distant countries with stricter corporate governance laws and functional business education”.
Finally, despite the fact that the previously discussed research findings do clearly point towards the seemingly positive relationship between both cultural diversity and firm performance, but they should not be taken at face value, since they only deal with invisible heterogeneities amongst organizational members, by virtue of either their functional job roles and tenures or origination from particular countries or nations, which impose or nations, which impose certain norms and rules on them; adherence to which elicits certain pre-defined ways of behaving on their part. However, all of them actively ignore the more visible racial and ethnic differences in them that more legitimately explain their categorization as a heterogeneous lot. This aspect was highlighted by Richard, Barnett, Dwyer, & Chadwick (2004, pp. 255-266), who building upon previously theorized effects of “cultural diversity on organizational effectiveness, carried out a study that after integrating the value-in-diversity and social identity perspectives with Blau’s (1977) theory of heterogeneity, found a positive curvilinear relationship between penchant for innovation and racial and gender heterogeneity, while negatively and invertedly correlating patterns for both types of heterogeneity with entrepreneurial and risk-taking orientation ,thereby, more than anything else, offering a fresh perspective on the diversity-performance realtionship, which represents a clear departure from both diversity equals better performance and diversity equals poor peofrmance schools of thought, that have dominated the diversity management literature till date”.
Conclusion
The preceding discussion definitely highlights the increasingly important role of effective workforce diversity management in the life of contemporary business organizations to help them successful grow and develop, given their common tendencies to quickly venture out into global markets as soon as they are born, to satisfy their international business needs, and thus, willingly or unwillingly, compelling both domestic and international employees to work together.
Though, some discomfort, in the form of openly accepting a new team member and his new ways of thinking and behaving, definitely arises in completely attaining and respecting workforce diversity, but, it is nothing more than a change process, in a new avtar. Something, to which human behavior has always been averse to, as validated by history. But at the same time, we should not forget that this change, be it in the form of embracing workforce diversity warmly with open arms or something else, is the only permanent reality of life that has always held the key to the development of not only past but also present civilizations, while mercilessly crushing those, who failed to adhere to it. Thus, making us conclude that we must make proactive endeavours towards appreciating diversity in not only workforce but in all settings of life.
References
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