Diversity management study guide

Diversity management

Diversity is a host of individual differences that make people different from and similar to each other. It represents the multitude of individual differences and similarities that exist among people. There are two types of diversity:

• Surface level: It's generally immutable, almost immediately observable, and measured in a simple and valid way (e.g. skin colour).
• Deep level: It's subject to more construal and is generally mutable (e.g. values).

Benefits of diversity

The first benefit of diversity is that it’s useful to avoid lawsuits and to increase reputation. Coca-Cola made racial discrimination in pay, promotions, and performance evaluations; Coca-Cola agreed to a $192 million settlement in 2000. Instead, Gap is an admirable example: it pays women and men equally for the same jobs and 70% of Gap’s workforce is female.

Diversity improves company performance because an increased market competition leads to access the diverse markets. It also causes increased creativity and innovation, sales and revenues, better brainstorming and decision, broader network. Nike is an example; in fact, it has had a woman as VP since 2004.

Companies should strive to maintain high diversity because of moral reasons, to help you feel good about yourself. As a matter of fairness, we need to work toward restructuring the makeup of our organization to let it more closely reflect that of society. A good example is Gap.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are knowledge structures that associate members of social categories with specific attributes, which form stereotype content. They do not necessarily reflect personal beliefs (personal stereotypes reflect personal belief, while cultural stereotypes are widely recognized beliefs) and are extremely resistant to change.

Categorisation happens because it allows people to make assumptions about what others are like; gender is the very first thing that people notice. Positive traits associated with women reflect women's communion and warmth, positive traits associated with men reflect men's agency and competence. To be accurate, people need to correctly estimate average differences between men and women on different traits and specify how much variation exists with each sex. Although not very accurate, stereotypes gain accuracy because people are pressured and trained to behave in stereotype-consistent ways.

When a person encounters an exception, subcategories are created. People are driven to form subtypes by the E model of subtyping:

• Elaboration: Need for more specific and socially useful categories.
• Encapsulation: Need to categorize people who deviate from expectations.
• Evaluation: Need to evaluate how people feel about these subtypes.

Implicit stereotypes

Implicit stereotypes are routinized associations between concepts, such as social categories. Two factors cause stereotypes to become automatic: being part of a cultural heritage and being learned early in life, before having the chance to reject them. The IAT is a test for implicit associations between social categories. Implicit stereotypes are not truer than explicitly held beliefs, people may actively work to reject them, but the attitudes may still leak out when people fail to deliberately inhibit them. Studies on implicit gender stereotypes show that:

• Men show very weak own in-group bias.
• Women show very strong own in-group bias.
• Men associate men with power.
• Women associate men and women with power equally.

Implicit stereotypes predict behaviour better than explicit stereotypes.

Descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes

Descriptive stereotypes are beliefs about what category members are typically like, they serve a cognitive simplification function, violations of these stereotypes elicit surprise. All stereotypes are descriptive.

Prescriptive stereotypes are beliefs about what category members ought to be like, they serve a system justification function (e.g. Just World Belief), their violations elicit anger and social punishment. Stereotypes become prescriptive when they are role-based because people want the world "to continue functioning smoothly" and because of interdependence between men and women. When prescription is violated or proscription is enacted, negative reactions are elicited.

Just World Belief is the belief that the society is fair; without this belief, people are disturbed that society is arbitrary.

Gender stereotypes

Gender stereotypes are generally positive because women and men interact on a daily basis, harmoniously, they need each other to reproduce; as such, each gender is tolerant when the other gender is in close proximity. Stereotypes of non-gender groups are different because they usually don't interact on a daily basis and don't need each other to reproduce. Members of in-group are not tolerant of members of out-groups, they are less trusted and less liked.

Realist group conflict theory

Realist group conflict theory states that intergroup hostility arises as a result of competition between groups over valuable/scarce resources. When groups compete for limited resources, they experience conflict, prejudice, and discrimination. Limited resources are territory, jobs, and power.

Social identity theory

Social identity theory states that a person's self-esteem and self-concept are derived from personal identity and in-group status/accomplishments. People are motivated to view their in-groups favourably and out-groups unfavourably because this enhances self-concept and self-esteem. The minimal group paradigm asserts that participants assigned to groups on the basis of an irrelevant criterion or chance will support the members of their in-group more than members of the out-groups. Basking in reflected glory means that when taking pride in the accomplishments of those we feel associated with in some way because when in groups succeed, we have higher self-esteem. This can work the other way: self-esteem can also be enhanced by negative evaluations of out-group. People are motivated for in-group success relative to the out-group.