Sun Microsystems Diversity

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).

The purpose of this paper is designed to introduce, educate, and promote diversity within your company. Your company will be shown the merits of diversity and how diversity within your organization can be a benefit. This paper will be broken down into three main areas: Benefits of Diversity, Challenges of Diversity, and Recommendations for an effective diversity within your organization..

As we enter the new millenium, diversity in the workforce is rapidly increasing. Businesses and organizations are living up to the great melting pot image the United States has always been popular for. Employees now reflect a diversity of cultural perspectives, ethnic backgrounds, ages, genders, physical abilities, and levels of education. This wave of multiculturalism is here to stay and cannot be ignored. It is in need of attention in order to uphold the well-being and success of businesses and organizations all over the country.

With the data from the Leading With Intent survey it is difficult to refute the diversity gap, but why does it matter? There is a positive correlation between diverse workplaces and employee engagement; increased productivity, company morale, and higher retention rates. When employees are engaged they are more likely to feel personally invested in the success of the organization. There is also evidence that diverse groups arrive at more creative solutions than

The first few chapters outline the main problems with diversity that business deal with. While the rest of the book goes deeper in to the issues and ways to overcome or avoid the problems to create a truly diverse institute. The author gives background into the Noah’s Ark theory as well as the “grandma” effect. She also talks about the dynamics of dominate and non-dominate groups in the work place as she relates them to the Elephant and Mouse theory.

“Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without” _William Sloane Coffin Jr_ Over the last decade there has been massive rise in level of workplace diversity within all the organizations. As a result of it majority companies achieved higher performance and according to all the researchers, it shows heterogeneous groups are more inventive than homogenous groups. It is not only about those heterogeneous people bring various type of figures their different type of thinking benefit organizations to bring out their best outcomes throughout the process

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

Diversity is an important component of team structure and forming. Planned or unplanned, diversity is likely an attribute in the overall team composition. Team diversity presents its challenges as teams are commonly assembled with members with different experiences, skills, talents and expertise (Smith, 2014). Organizational diversity has become an increasingly noticeable concern recently due to the modernization of the business culture. Virtualization, decentralization, globalization and a business requirement to create and innovate has forced organizations to explore more diverse teams to produce results. The variability will prove to be challenging and may trigger conflict that must be overcome internally by the team to move forward. This paper examines the importance of properly structuring and forming diverse teams to achieve high performance and success.

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)

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:

The work done in any organization and in any field is a combined effort of different people from diverse locations, towards our goal. Every individual is a key to the success of the organization of projects. The person working in a program is responsible for the processing and procurement. The behavior, their willingness to work and attitude towards the other team members is important. Every individual who comes from a different ethnic group needs to adjust and work for the success of the project and for the success of the overall company.

With the changing demographics of the U.S. workforce (Ng & Burke, 2005) and the need for organizations to continually innovate their products and services to remain competitive, embracing diversity and the benefits its brings is going to be key to driving a successful organization

The business landscape has been dramatically changed and overhauled by the globalization process in today’s world. Adoption of diversity by many firms is in the aim to gain competitive advantage from others. There have been different findings on the influence of Top Management Team diversity on performance and corporate strategies in the organizations. Some findings show that there is a significant relationship between Top Management Team and performance while others reveal there is no relationship. The study seeks to investigate the impact of TMT diversity on corporate strategies and the organization’s performance. The study will contribute to the knowledge about how workplace TMT diversity relates to the decision-making process and the effect on company’s growth. The lack of diversity at the work place is a major arising issue in many organizations globally. The purpose of the mixed research study will be to investigate TMT’s diversity with the aim of identifying how it affects decision making inform of corporate strategies and organizational performance. The research method will be mixed where it will employ the use of both the qualitative

Organizations have been becoming increasingly diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. This diversity brings substantial potential benefits such as better decision making, greater creativity and innovation, and more successful marketing to different types of customers. But, increasing cultural differences within a workforce also bring potential costs in higher turnovers, interpersonal conflicts, and communicational breakdowns. The utilities of diversity training and the essential managerial skills required for effectively managing diversity will also be discussed.

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