Managing Cultural Diversity in the Workplace Essay

Nicole Barde, a network manager for Intel Corporation, says, “We view diversity as one of our major competitive advantage, It allows us to understand global markets and the need of our customers.” (Shaw & Barry, 2013, pg. 557). Today, four-fifths of those entering the workforce are either a minority or immigrants. Affirmative action allows corporations to benefit from a diverse pool of talent that they can recruit from. With the number of minorities in this country increasing, with the globalization of our corporate environment, it stands to reason that the future of Corporate America will be a diverse one.

During the last part of this century, businesses and organizations have heavily relied on affirmative actions laws to ensure equal employment opportunities. The failure of this dependence upon legislation is that is doesn't address the full spectrum of diversity in the workplace (6). Affirmative actions laws have limitations, discriminating against people holding protected-class status such as women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans,

Slowly, society is changing its views about diversity. Beginning with strong legislation regarding anti-discrimination in the workplace, laws have been established, in the United States, from the Civil Rights Act and Title VII of 1964 (which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, and natural origin), Age Discrimination Act of 1967, Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, just to name a few. These, and a multitude of other laws, have been created as a need to comply with equal opportunity employment objectives as well as a personal feeling of wanting to “do the right thing.” Now, many decades later, it’s not just doing the right thing but rather doing the “smart thing”. With a global economy, a technological revolution, and both customers and suppliers coming from diverse backgrounds, it makes

Business environments today display diversity, a numerical composition that reflects different kinds of people, such as men and women of different ethnic origins, educational experiences, and professional backgrounds (Beamish, Morrison, Inkpen, & Rosenzweig, 2003). A vast amount of organizations are emulating a diverse workforce. Fair treatment of employees is the responsibility of the human resource management team within a firm. Footsteps of past generations are the facilitating mechanism allowing today’s generation to participate in a safe and fair workplace. Specific rules and regulations assist in equal employment opportunities for every employee. The Equal Employment

As diversity and inclusion gain more attention in the society, more research has been done on their impact to organizations. Not too long ago, organizations implemented diversity management initiatives, such as affirmative action and equal employment legislations, just to fulfill their legal requirements (Jayne and Dipboye, 2004). However, diversity and inclusion have since then become a business imperative.

This paper is the first part of a training manual that will help employees to have a better understanding of diversity in the work place and how to act towards different diversity issues that may arise in the workplace. It will also give current statistics and recent trends of the demographics in the United States as well as the forecasted trends. Also included will be a rough outline of the entire contents of the manual and the table of contents for the manual.

In Canada today we see a new future of demographics at work: soon there will be five generations in the workplace at once. The mutigenerational diversity in the workplace has many advantages and disadvantages, it offers a broader range of talent, but it can often mean conflicting ideas and stereotyping. “Canada is becoming a nation of the aging and the very young.”

Diversity in the workplace is a subject that has gained increased attention in the workplace over the past few years. After all, the impact of affirmative action and equal employment opportunity programs on the nation's work force is undeniable. Women and minorities were the first to dramatically alter the face of the economic mainstream, while gays, persons with disabilities and senior citizens followed not far behind. The result is a diverse American labor force representing a microcosm of our society - yet one that continues to struggle with its identity. Diversity as a social condition is not new to America. We were founded as a nation of Diversity. “America has always been a merger of cultures and, as such, has undergone periods of

Many organizations are beginning to view diversity as an organizational change. This could possibly mean changes in the power dynamics and organizational structure, the way decisions are made, and the way an

The United States is one of the most diverse nations on the earth, originally conceived so, and often described as a great melting pot, as “all nations are melted into a new race of man, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world” (St. John de Crèvecoeur, 1782). Yet, despite the country’s diverse population, the workplace remains a place of inequality as women and minorities continue to earn less than their white male counterparts (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011; U.S. Census Bureau, 2009) and advance less in managerial and professional positions (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2008). The question of workplace diversity is a polarizing debate with proponents of diversity measures arguing the business benefit of

The general line of reasoning is that if we learn to incorporate each other’s diverse traits and characteristics in the workplace, we can then use these differences to foster an innovative environment, which will give the company a competitive advantage over the competitors that do not accept workforce diversity. According to the Allied Academies International Conference, “Diversity is rapidly becoming a common practice among companies due to the increasing number of minorities entering the job market today. As these groups become more prevalent throughout companies, upper-level employees are facing numerous challenges when determining what changes must take place to create a positive working environment for everyone. Management is responsible for the development and implementation of effective policies directly relating to diversity to ensure the acceptance of minorities into the workplace and to aid in minorities’ success through equal opportunities and treatment.” (Marcia L. James, 2001, Academy for Studies in International Business Proceedings)

Most people assume that workplace diversity is about increasing racial, national, gender, or class representation -- in other words, recruiting and retaining more people from traditionally underrepresented "identity groups." Taking this commonly held assumption as a starting point, we set out six years ago to investigate its link to organizational effectiveness. We soon found that thinking of diversity simply in terms of identity-group representation inhibited effectiveness. Organizations usually take one of two paths in managing diversity. In the name of equality and fairness, they encourage (and expect) women and people of color to blend in. Or they set them apart in jobs that relate specifically to their backgrounds, assigning them, for example, to areas that require them to interface with clients or customers of the same identity group. African American M.B.A. 's often find themselves marketing products to innercity communities; Hispanics frequently market to Hispanics or work for Latin American subsidiaries. In those kinds of cases, companies are operating on the assumption that the main virtue identity groups have to offer is a knowledge of their own people. This assumption is limited -- and limiting -- and detrimental to diversity efforts. What we suggest here is that diversity goes beyond increasing the number of different identity-group affiliations on the payroll to recognizing that such an effort is merely the first step in managing a diverse workforce for the

From our research, we identified three different perspectives on workforce diversity that people embrace, each with different implications for a work group’s ability to realize the benefits of its cultural diversity. We use these observations here to examine critically some of the themes and basic assumptions of previous research and to propose new directions for both researchers and practitioners interested in diversity (Ely &Thomas, 2001). When organizations have a diverse economy, it makes the company strong. Once our nation has embrace the changes from the demographics that reap the economic benefits of a diverse and inclusive workforce. Burns et al. (2012) stated in their investigation that:

There are two major cultural divisions, Hispanic and Caucasian, to further complicate the work environment the ratio of Male to female workers is 20 to 1. No effort from either group of being sensitive to the others existence is apparent. (DuBrin, 2004, p. 67). Management’s main concern is for “ethnic diversity” to the point of not having issues with the equal employment opportunity act.

Diversity in workforce “include, but are not limited to: age, ethnicity, ancestry, gender, physical abilities/qualities, race, sexual orientation, educational background, geographic location, income, marital status, military experience, religious beliefs, parental status, and work experience”(Thomas 1992). Diversity in the workforce is initially perceived as a response toward the increasing diversity of the consumers in the market (Agocs & Burr, 1996). From there, it has been observed that capitalizing on existing differences among the employees provide benefits to the organization. Diversity in workforce fosters and encourages