Title: Managing workplace diversity: performance of minority employees
Abstract: Organizations will not reap benefits from diversity management till there is a supportive environment which is inclusive in orientation towards the minority workforce. The present study was carried out in three organizations in India. The independent variable was a supportive work environment. The dependent variable was performance management score of diverse categories of employees. The term minority workforce refers to women employees, employees belonging to religions other than Hinduism and those preferring not to disclose their sexual orientation. A comparison between those having care taking responsibilities at home and those having no such responsibilities back home was undertaken. The results showed that supportive work environment led to high performance scores. Introduction Globalization is fast changing the demographic mix of workforce in organizations across countries. Therefore the concept of diversity and its management become imperative. Diversity management (DM) is planning and implementing organizational systems and practices to manage people so that the potential advantages of diversity are maximized while its potential disadvantages are minimized (Cox, 1993). The term originated in North America in the late 1980's and since then it has seeped into countries across the world (Hays-Thomas, 2004; Kaiser & Prange, 2004; Nyambegera, 2002; Ozbilgin & Tatli, 2008; Palmer, 2003; Pattnaik & Tripathy, 2014) DM started as an initiative to provide equal employment opportunities and today it has translated into an industry wide policy on diversity. It refers to a mixture of people with different group identities within the same social system (Fluery, 1999). Diversity includes factors such as race, gender, age, color, physical disability, and ethnicity (Kundu & Turan, 1999). Paradigms of Diversity Organizations look at diversity from different paradigms, which in turn shape their philosophy on diversity. The moral paradigm believes that discrimination is wrong, illegal and immoral (for example discrimination on grounds of race, caste and religion). The social need paradigm believes that our solutions to diversity for a country or region must be different and unique from the rest (for example the needs of 'differently-abled' in an organization or how to bring the economically and educationally backward population into the national main stream). The competitive advantage paradigm believes that there is a competitive rationale behind the belief in diversity and adopting inclusion as a policy (1). For example, Mckinsey (2014) reported that companies in the top quartile for gender or racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians. Companies in the bottom quartile in these dimensions are statistically less likely to achieve above-average returns. Diversity thus is a competitive differentiator. (2) Types of Organization & Diversity Policies Cox (1994; 2001) divides organizations in to three types: the monolithic organization, the plural organization, and the multicultural organization and presents a diversity management paradigm for each type. They are as follows: The monolithic organization is demographically and culturally homogeneous. For example, most Chinese companies are monolithic from a cultural and ethnic perspective. (Powell & Graves, 2003). A monolithic organization in North America or Europe will have a majority of white men and relatively few women and members of ethnic and racial minorities (Cox, 1994; 2001).Similarly in India almost all organizations will have primarily Indians as employees. Such organizations will have a culture that will perpetuate the homogeneity of its workforce through its hiring and promotion practices. The plural organization: has a heterogeneous workforce, relative to the monolithic organization, and typically makes efforts to conform to laws and public policies that demand and expect workplace equality. …
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 8
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