Appunti di diversity management

Managing diversity introduction and conceptual framework

Effective diversity management should encompass these four principles:

• Like scholars, managers must adopt an ethical learned approach to diversity, always aiming to “do the right thing”.
• Like farmers, they must respect their employees’ unique characteristics.
• Like artisans, they must introduce creative solutions as they strive for excellence in diversity management.

The challenge of managing diversity in a global context

• A more diverse workforce
• Unbalanced fertility rates in different regions of the world
• Globalized economy
• Multinational companies (MNC)

Bartlett and Ghoshal describe:

• International corporations with headquarters in one country and operations in one or more other countries: Transferring & adapting parent company’s knowledge/expertise to foreign markets while retaining influence.
• MNCs, in which the central corporate office still has the dominant decision-making power but each national or regional operation has some autonomy in business decisions. The company’s culture is less unified and rigid.
• Global companies: headquarters may be located in a specific geographic region but with a team composed of managers across the globe jointly making major business decisions. These companies are driven by the need for global efficiency & typically treat the world market as an integrated whole. Culture isn’t dominated by any single culture.

Tensions posed by global workforce trends

• Working-age population of the more-developed countries will barely grow due to low fertility rates.
• More-developed countries can expect their share of the world’s working-age population to drop from 20% to 15%.
• Increasing immigration
• Women’s increased presence in the formal labor force has affected not only the workplace but also family and community life.
• Women increasingly migrate autonomously as workers, and women migrants equal or outnumber men in some parts of the world.
• The global economic trends that generate increased or decreased demands for workers in different areas at different times create tremendous opportunities as well as lacks for work organizations, individuals, and families. For example, the global economy’s downturn has displaced many immigrants from their jobs & placed them in limbo.
• Global legislative trends banning discrimination against women, immigrants, minorities, and other diverse groups in the labor force have required employers in most democratic and quite a few nondemocratic countries to institute policies that ensure fair treatment of all employees.

Disregarding these economic, demographic, and legislative trends can be devastating to companies, their employees, and the communities surrounding them. Companies unable or unwilling to change their policies and practices may suffer terrible consequences.

Diversity and exclusion: a critical workforce problem

Exclusion creates barriers to job opportunities.

The inclusive workplace model (Mor Barak)

The notion of organizational inclusion is utilized as a focal point for understanding and managing workforce diversity. The concept of the inclusive workplace refers to a work organization that is defined as one that:

• Values and utilizes individual and intergroup differences within its workforce
• Cooperates with, and contributes to, its surrounding community
• Alleviates the needs of disadvantaged groups in its wider environment
• Collaborates with individuals, groups, and organizations across national and cultural boundaries

There is accumulating research evidence that such corporate practices constitute good business. The benefits include:

• Cost savings due to lower turnover of employees, less absenteeism, and improved productivity
• Winning the competition for talent by being more attractive to women and members of minority groups
• Driving business growth by leveraging the many traits of diversity, such as marketing more effectively to minorities
• Improved corporate image with a positive impact on the company’s stock standing
• Reaping the benefits of an increasingly global marketplace by employing workers from different nationalities

Part 1 – Diversity legislation in a global perspective

The International Bill of Human Rights and employment rights

The United Nations is the organization that comes closest to representing all people around the world. The International Bill of Human Rights consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; & the two optional protocols.

The International Bill of Human Rights:

• Art. 1: right of liberty and equality
• Art 2: mental freedoms, non-discrimination: The right to social security; to work; to equal pay for equal work; to rest and leisure; to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being.

Importance and influence of the Declaration of Human Rights

The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which includes the employment-related non-discrimination articles, has been acceded to by 167 states, but few states do not reinforce these principles in their national constitutions.

Diversity-related employment legislation

Most democratic and many nondemocratic countries today ban job discrimination that is related to gender, race, and ethnicity. The most popular forms of antidiscrimination and equal rights legislation included protections based on gender or sex, equal remuneration, race, ethnicity or country of origin, religious beliefs, physical disability, and sexual orientation, respectively. Some other protections are: HIV status, Marital status, Pregnancy, Aboriginal status, family status.

Broad-based antidiscrimination legislation

The EU’s fight against discrimination is based on taking actions to

• Improve knowledge of discrimination by raising awareness among populations regarding their rights and obligations
• Support intermediary actors such as NGOs, social partners, and equality bodies to combat discrimination
• Support development of equality policies at the national level and encourage exchange of good practices among EU
• Achieve real change in the area of antidiscrimination through antidiscrimination training activities
• Push for business-oriented diversity management as part of a strategic response to a more diversified society

• Race—South Africa: South Africa’s antidiscrimination legislation is relatively new and broad. Only “unfair discrimination” is banned, implying that it is possible to “fairly discriminate” and paving the way for affirmative action.
• Gender—Japan: the “law respecting the improvement of the welfare of women workers” was so vague that employers were able to continue their discriminatory practices. Without legal repercussions, the law required only that employers “do their best” to rectify and curtail any gender-based discrimination.
• Equal Remuneration—United States: Equal remuneration legislation to pay women
• Sexual Orientation Legislation—International: over 20 countries offer such protections.
• Anti-Sexual Harassment Legislation – International: Sexual harassment often goes unreported for two reasons: First, many women are afraid of losing their jobs and hence their livelihood. Second, in many cultures, reporting sexual harassment victimizes the woman a second time. She is seen as having brought shame on herself and her family, leading to possible loss of a job.

Conclusion

Noncompliance with these laws may have severe consequences. Employees who are treated unfairly are more likely to be less productive and less loyal. Antidiscrimination diversity legislation has the potential to deter discriminatory employment practices because of its potentially costly consequences. Depending on each country’s cultural climate and court system, the success of such lawsuits, or even the likelihood that a victim of such action will press charges, greatly varies. Therefore, to avoid penalties and lawsuits and to reap the rewards of compliance, managers today must understand the legislative- and business-related social policies of the countries where they are doing business.

Discrimination, equality and fairness in employment

Social policies and affirmative/positive action programs

Banning discrimination laws are negative in that they prohibit discrimination in employment. A new category of protections has emerged—social policies that are positive in that they aim to change the rules and provide advantages to groups that have traditionally been discriminated against.

Discrimination and equality in employment

“Discrimination: (1) the act of discriminating; (2) the quality or power of finely distinguishing; (3) the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually”. The UN International Labour Organization (ILO) defines discrimination as “any distinction, exclusion or preference made on the basis of race, colour, sex, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin, which has the effect of nullifying or impairing equality of opportunity or treatment in employment or occupation”. Discrimination occurs when:

• Individuals, institutions, or governments treat people differently because of personal characteristics rather than job qualifications.
• These actions have a negative impact on access to jobs, promotions, or compensation.

Overt discrimination occurs as a result of an explicit policy or law that generates unequal treatment; Covert discrimination is the result of an implicit side effect of another policy or decision. Individual discrimination occurs when a single manager/co-worker in conjunction with his or her individual prejudice performs it. Institutional discrimination occurs when it is performed as part of the organization’s common practices or policies.

Theoretical perspectives of discrimination and affirmative action

Affirmative or positive action policies originated from the notion that discrimination against whole groups that has been persistent, institutionalized, and long term cannot be remedied simply by banning such actions. Affirmative or positive action policies have two goals:

• Righting past wrongs—compensating groups that were disadvantaged in the past with better opportunities in present times.
• Achieving social goals of increasing the representation of traditionally disadvantaged groups in more lucrative jobs as well as management and leadership positions.

If employers continue to discriminate against these groups, their productivity will be reduced, ultimately resulting in reduced income for employers. Nevertheless, neoclassical economists generally argue for deregulating the labor market and removing legal and policy restrictions to allow employers to use pure economic principles in their employment decisions. At the other end of the theoretical spectrum is the “equal opportunities” school that considers institutional and cultural factors as the cause of discrimination. Groups are discriminated against by three factors: stereotyping, exclusion, and lack of role models.

Social policies and affirmative/positive action programs

Employers must act directly and aggressively to remove all barriers that prevent women and members of minority groups from having equal access to education, employment, and political processes. Legal Arrangements for Affirmative and Positive Action Policies—17 countries currently have affirmative action policies.

Principles of affirmative action and positive action programs

Typically, affirmative/positive action programs:

• Are intervention measures
• Cut across, and attempt to influence, the operation of free-market mechanisms
• Aim to actively reverse past discrimination against specific groups
• Are intended as temporary actions, which will be withdrawn once the situation is rectified

Specific goals and target population

• To provide better opportunities to population groups that have been discriminated against in the past & help them advance.
• Each country’s specific historical and cultural background dictates the nature of its policies. (In India & South Africa, it concerns the majority of the population, not the minority)

Policies and activities

Policies and programs are designed to increase the number of qualified applicants from designated groups in the workforce. They usually employ two main strategies:

• Placing requirements on the composition of the public workforce to increase the representation of those “quotas”.
• Encouraging private businesses to actively recruit and promote employees from the designated groups through incentives.

Enforcement incentives and sanctions

Some countries institute an official body that is responsible for evaluating compliance and enforcing the policies through sanctions or incentives. Sanctions include primarily monetary fines for organizations that do not comply with the policy.

The public debate over affirmative and positive action policies

The public debate over positive/affirmative action policies focused on social justice & economic principles:

• Compensatory justice—past injustices need to be undone and compensation should be given to those who were disadvantaged as a result of discriminatory traditions or intentional policies.
• Distributive justice—the social goods and wealth of a country should be distributed equally.
• Social utility—everyone in a society has something important to contribute, and the common good is best served by everyone’s participation in the economic and social system.

Opponents of these policies present arguments that can also be classified into three groups:

• Reverse discrimination is another form of unfair practices that perpetuate discrimination, although it is now practiced on a different group.
• Preferential policies go against the principles of individualism and interfere with the forces of a free-market economy.
• Preferential practices may result in poor services and products because incompetent or unsuitable people may be appointed to jobs.

It is interesting to note that despite the diversity of countries and jurisdictions, courts have generally supported the concept as an acceptable tool in the struggle to eliminate discrimination in employment.

Conclusion

Although the legislation and public policies have been conceived with good intentions, they have generated some unintended consequences that are not always positive for individuals and for the well-being of the nations. For example, affirmative action practices in South Africa have caused many Afrikaners (Whites) to leave the country. With not enough well-trained Black people to replace them, this “White flight” has had a negative impact on the South African economy. Another unintended side effect of these programs is the rush for people to classify themselves as members of a disadvantaged group in order to reap the benefits of preferential treatment (e.g., groups in India who want to be classified as Backward). The backlash against these policies includes a call to dismantle the programs—a call that has been successful in some instances (e.g., California, see previous section).

Proponents of affirmative action programs are concerned that the recent trend to eliminate these programs may cause a sweeping reversal of the policies that will result in erosion of their achievements. They fear that without the sanctions and incentives of these programs, companies may no longer be proactive in recruiting and retaining women and minority workers, and the representation of these groups in the workforce will decrease. On the other hand, opponents believe that the combined effect of the legislation and public policies has already made enough of a difference and that there is no need to continue with those programs. Their main concern is that if the programs drag on long enough, they will become an entitlement rather than a measure to remedy past inequalities. Both sides agree, however, that some form of time limit needs to be set on these programs. In the long run, the hope is that the impact of these programs—along with the existence of strong antidiscrimination—will result in a more egalitarian workplace that accurately represents the general population of each nation.

Cultural intelligence

Cultural intelligence is the ability to behave appropriately in cross-cultural settings, an ability that encompasses cognitive (knowledge), emotional (motivational, mindfulness), and behavioural dimensions. It is defined as “a system of interacting knowledge and skills, linked by cultural metacognition that allows people to adapt to, select, and shape the cultural aspects of their environment.”

Globe: the universal leadership characteristic includes 6 primary dimensions:

• Visionary
• Inspirational
• Self-sacrifice
• Integrity
• Decisive
• Performance oriented

Global demographic trends impact on workforce diversity

• More-developed countries are undergoing an unprecedented demographic transition.
• Changes in working-age population: fewer children, people enter the workforce later & more time to retirement.
• The working-age population in the least developed countries is growing rapidly.