Diverstity at Kaizen Motors

Diversity is a wonderful asset to an organization and brings with it many benefits. Employees bring in their own personal experiences and knowledge to the team (Burns & Kerby, 2012). Having diverse teams allows for the possibility to fix a problem or perfect a process by using different employee’s experiences and past knowledge to find solutions. A diverse workforce can drive economic growth and capture a greater share of the consumer market (Burns & Kerby, 2012). With diversity as a core value, the recruitment pool is widened to find the most qualified candidate and reduces employee turnover as a result. An organization can be highly competitive with a diversity initiative by adapting to a changing environment (Burns & Kerby, 2012).

This can leave workers feeling alienated from the workplace and from other employees. With employees being treated like they can be bought and sold, like a commodity, they are left feeling alienated from other coworkers (Peck, 1996, 25). To make the cost of production very low, employers look for workers that are ready to follow orders rather than those who have the most skill to complete a job (Peck, 1996, 33). In fear for one’s own job and fellow coworker’s workers have attempted soldiering to try to save themselves from the employer laying people off to maximize surplus. Soldiering, meaning workers purposely slow down at completing their task to avoid fellow workers getting fired (Taylor, 1911, 6). This creates a problem for employers as production costs rise and they have less control over the labour process and their workers (Taylor, 1911, 6). In a capitalist workplace, workers become alienated to the point where they are forced to soldier to try to save their jobs and fellow workers jobs as

The positive impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can contribute creativity to a high-performance team. Membership diversity offers a rich pool of information, talent, and varied perspectives that can help improve team problem solving and increase creativity (Hunt, J., Osborn, R., Schermerhorn, J., 2005). Cultural diversity contributes various group input and group dynamics to the team. These two factors are essential in the high performance of a team. Cultural diversity can develop a high-performance team by allowing the diverse potentials of a team to operate. The negative impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can develop numerous of conflicts between team members. Conflicting interaction can limit or decrease the effectiveness and efficiency of productivity. There should be an awareness of the diverse culture values in order to prevent these conflicts.

Under Karl Marx’s conflict theory, society has two classes of people: the owners and the workers. The theory suggests that owners basically exploit the workers, depriving them of the basic human necessities such as food and shelter. Meanwhile, the workers believe that they are taken care of adequately, and they rely on the owners for their well-being. But the owners do not have the workers’ best interests in mind because they want to produce wealth by any means. “Potent social forces [capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism, home ownership] do exist and being homeless is to lose a stake in several of them” (Neale, 2007,

To identify our strengths and weaknesses as a team and as individual members of the team and adopt corrective measures as we realize the challenges and benefits of teamwork.

The structure of society under the conflict theorists’ views defines distinctions between different classes. The power and authority taken by the upper class, by the rich and mighty, causes inevitably problems within the lower class of society. Deviance, crime, violence and poverty are what the lower class of society was becoming. Unemployment is a large issue within the lower class of society; this is due to the classes that have money; use it for education and to further their skills. The classes within society who are able to obtain better and further education to advance their skills are the ones that employees are seeking for their workplaces. The inequality between the classes is what creates the unemployed and the circle that they are currently sitting in.

Marx advocated social reform for the proletariat (workers).The focus of Marx’s conflict theory is that by eliminating privilege, the overall welfare of the society can be increased. This would then create a true equality

Most common people that were employed worked an extreme amount of hours, and barely recieved any pay in return. Businesses were very dangerous and unsanitary, workers received poor insurance if they even received any. If an employee was to get hurt or become ill, they’d still be expected to come into work. If they didn’t show they’d most likely be fired or laid off. An example of this is when George Pullman built homes for all his employees, but ended up lowering their wages, but not the cost of living. As a result of this, his employees went on strike and ended up being fired. Multiple letters had been written to him and they never got through. Only ⅓ of his workers been rehired ( Pullman Strike Letter). This supports my thesis because it helps explain how the workers were treated, and the conditions they worked in almost

Prejudice can be overcome through education, equal status intergroup contact, and working together to achieve a specific goal. For instance, education and learning about people who are different (the out-group) and noticing similarities instead of differences can combat prejudice. Also, equal status contact has been shown to reduce prejudice and discrimination. Equal status contact requires the different groups to all be in the same situation with neither group holding power over the other. In equal status contact, personal involvement with people from another group must be cooperative and occur when all groups are equal in terms of power or status to have a positive effect on reducing prejudice. Also, having people work together to solve a problem because each person has an important key to solving the problem, creating a mutual interdependence, helps reduce prejudice. This technique is called the jigsaw

The Contact Hypothesis states that interaction between different groups, or representatives of different groups, leads to reduced prejudice and promotes positive attitudes (Allport, 1954). This has lead to the development of Contact Theory, which elaborates on how contact can reduce intergroup anxiety. According to Allport (1954), for contact to have the desired effect, there are certain conditions to the interaction taking place between groups (or members of groups). Firstly, the people who come into contact have to be of equal status. Secondly, there has to be a common goal toward which the groups strive and intergroup

Indeed, it is challenging for organization to have that distinguished person or persons that would represent them, when the organization is in support of diversity and promotes it to the fullest. Even with the many challenges, organizations are still moving forward with the concept of diversifying their institution because of the many benefits.

In regards to the labour-capital relation within a traditional capitalist corporation Marx & Engels (2007) refer to the dialectic between the capitalists (or bourgeoisie) who own the property and the means of production and the laborers (or proletariat) who own no property and are obligated to sell their labour to the bourgeoisie to gain substance. For Marx & Engels, this labour market is inherently fraught with tension, since the interests of the capitalist and labourers are diametrically opposed, and the balance of power between capitalists and labourers tips further in the favour of the capitalists. Because workers have nothing to sell but their labour, the bourgeoisie are able to exploit them by paying them less than the true value created by their labour. Furthermore, because of the unequal positions of capitalist and labourer, labourers must work for someone else- they must do work imposed on them as a means of satisfying the needs of others. As a result, labourers inevitably experience alienation which Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844) summarizes as the separation of individuals from the objects they create, which in turn results in one’s separation from other people, from oneself, and ultimately from one’s human nature.

Diversity in culture and demographic characteristics can be a negative impact or be one of the team's greatest strengths, depending on how the team as a whole functions and applies these different “routes to success”. A group can become a high performing team by understanding how cultural and demographic differences influence group behavior. The groups must realize that they can benefit from their diversity to their advantage and into a high performance team.

The main purpose of this research paper is to define that the conflicts between employees and employers doesn’t have any solution. Therefore, Marxism is one of the theories that emphises on this conflicts. Firstly i need to define that in Marxism , employers and employees are considered as capitalist class and wage slave class. Therefore, conflicts between Employers and Employees are considered to be conflicts between owners and working class. From the past to now the employees were struggling in order to attain a higher form of human society. In Marxism, it is defined that goods and things are produced mainly for people’s needs.It is obvious that each society has to do this. However, not in each society employers accepting their workers as those who are working not only for the salary but also for the need of society. Marx describe the situation of conflicts between Employer and Employee in competitive capitalism in ways that are similar in fundamental analytic respects. (Rueschemeyer, 1987) From my viewpoint the conflicts between employees and employers occur firstly because employees are exploited under capitalism. This means that, employees are working for their employers,and employers has the power over their workers. This power is not always considerd in a right way.

Thirdly, our communication skills were better enhanced and we were able to build up on our synergy levels. In such an environment where communication is open and free-flowing, people were able to bring in new ideas, concepts and attitudes which benefitted the entire group. The problem with ineffective communication, especially where diverse groups are involved is that issues such as stereotyping are bound to crop up. This, in turn, caused team members to become increasingly self-conscious and often kept to themselves for fear of being judged. Much to it, the aspect of self-disclosure becomes almost elusive because no one is willing to step out of their comfort zone and steer a relevant discussion to the project at hand. In a scenario whereby team members are free to talk and express their ideas and feelings without being judged, the fear of revealing one’s true self is diminished tremendously (Peri et al., 2000). This is because such an environment fosters trust, values and ethics. Contrary to this, an environment that is characterized by prejudices and presumptions about others disintegrates this trust and often results to reduced productivity among the members. Cooperation and trust are two aspects that often determine the overall performance of a group. Where there is trust, team players become