Critical Thinking Management

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................... 2
ARGUMENTS FOR DIVERSITY........................................................................................................... 4
ARGUMENTS AGAINST DIVERSITY................................................................................................... 6
RECOMMENDATION............................................................................................................................ 8
CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................................... 9
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................... 10

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INTRODUCTION
As we enter the 21st century, workforce diversity has become an essential business concern.
In the so-called information age, the greatest assets of most companies are now on two feet.
Undeniably, there is a talent war raging. No company can afford to unnecessarily restrict its
ability to attract and retain the very best employees available.
Although we all share many traits and needs, human beings are different and unique. While
diversity has always existed, globalization, an increase in immigration, the sexual revolution
and the output of the open formerly taboo subjects - such as living with a disability and
gender preference - were placed in front -plan diversity of our concerns and the need to
accept it. In the workplace, diversity encompasses elements that are evident, among other
demographic differences such as gender, ethnicity and age, and more subtle differences, for
example, the way we think or solve problems, social class or education. Because of the
variety of backgrounds and approaches, it is not always easy for people to get along in the
workplace (Diversityworld.com, 2014). However, it could be quite different. By learning to
understand the challenges posed by differences and accept different points of view within
your workgroup, you can use the strengths that represent a diverse team, in addition to
expanding your horizons.

Workforce diversity refers to organizations that are becoming more heterogeneous with the
mix of people in terms of gender, age, race, and education background (Robbins, 2009). A
diverse workforce for instance, includes gender, age, ethnicity, and education background
According to Robbins (2009), workforce diversity has important implications toward
management practices and policies. Frequently, diversity is viewed in a limited fashion,
primarily addressing issues of race or gender differences, and linked to the laws providing
protected status to certain groups. We have used a very broad definition of diversity, to
encompass most characteristics that individuals possess that affect the way they think and do
things.

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Leaders and managers within organizations are primarily responsible for the success of
diversity policies because they must ensure that the policies are effective. Instead of treating
every employee alike to recognizing and responding to those differences, it is a way to ensure
employee retention and greater productivity. The most important issues of workforce
diversity are to address the problems of discrimination in terms of gender, age, and ethnicity
and education background. When diversity is not managed properly, there will be a potential
for higher turnover, difficult in communication and interpersonal conflicts. Overall, it will be
adversarial to organizations performance, profitability and reputation.

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ARGUMENTS FOR DIVERSITY

Since diversity exists on numerous distinctive levels, reasonably no organization can abstain
from getting to be heterogeneous in some viewpoint. Also, all organizations are under
expanding weight for staying aggressive, wherefore more firms push multicultural work
energy to upgrade their benefit, business thriving and outward notoriety. These employees
can help to recognize the needs and wishes of another, more extensive customers and
collectively create new promoting techniques and items (Small Business - Chron.com, 2014).
High level of Productivity: Increasing productivity at the workplace has been one of the
major challenges for managers and leaders to implement in the company. Due to the fact that
every organisation has its own unique company structure and objectives, different strategies
may be used to challenge or address the company in order to increase productivity. One of
those strategies involves implementing workplace diversity and managing it effectively.
When management takes the welfare of its workers at heart by means of offering them proper
compensation, health care and employee appraisal, it in turn enables workers to feels they
belong to the company irrespective of their cultural background. This fact allows the workers
to remain loyal and hardworking which helps to increase the companys productivity and
overall profit.
Exchange of varieties of ideas and Team work: In recent times teamwork is increasingly
advocated by businesses and organisations as a means of assuring better outcomes on tasks
and also for the delivery of goods and services via the process of brainstorming ideas. A
single person taking on multiple tasks cannot perform at the same pace as a team could.
Therefore each team member brings a certain advantage to the table of different ideas and
offers a unique perspective during problem solving to effectively arrive at the best solution at
the shortest possible time.
Learning and growth: Diversity at the workplace creates a conducive environment for an
employees personal growth. When workers are being exposed to new cultures, ideas and
perspectives, it can help each person to intellectually reach out and have a clearer insight of
their place in the global environment and hence their own surroundings. The more time spent
with culturally diverse co-workers can slowly break down the subconscious barriers of
xenophobia and ethnocentrism, thereby encouraging workers to be more experienced
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members of the society. This also allows for the worker to assimilate themselves better in any
society as they are used to a diversified culture.

Effective Communication: Workplace diversity can immensely strengthen a companys

relationship with a specific group of customers by making communication more effective.
The customer service department is one of the key areas where effective communication is
crucial in order run a business. A customer service personnel or representative can be paired
up with customers from their specific area or location, making the customer feel at home with
the representative and with the company thus allowing for a more effective approach towards
customer communication. For example, some companies in the south-western part of the
United States often prefer to hire customer service personnels who are bi-lingual in order to
deal with customers who speak Spanish in their native language.
Diverse Experience: Employees and their co-workers that come from a diverse background
bring a better overall experience to the table with some amount of unique perceptions during
teamwork or group tasks. Pooling the diverse skills and knowledge of culturally distinct
employees together can immensely benefit the company by strengthening the responsiveness
and productivity of the team to adapt to the changing conditions. Every diverse culture has its
own strengths and weaknesses, therefore in addition to their individuality, every diverse
employee possesses a unique strengths and weaknesses that is derived and special from their
culture. When each workers unique trait is managed properly and effectively in the
organization, it can leverage the strengths and complement its weaknesses to highly impact
the workforce in a positive way.

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ARGUMENTS AGAINST DIVERSITY

If we have a look at diversity management in general, the majority of scientists focuses on the
chances that plurality can bring into organizations. This is because arguments against
diversity are very often regarded as being racist and discriminating, which leads to a quite
marginal number of anti-diversity researchers (Cox 2001).. The majority solely focuses on
the positive effects and outcomes a heterogeneous workforce can have and argue that
negative impacts of diversity only occur because of ineffective management and wrong
approaches (Thomas et al. 2006).
High Cost of Diversity Management: To increase job satisfaction, workplace diversity
management could sometimes be very costly, when an organisation strives to effectively
manage the diverse workforce, it undergoes a mandatory diversity training during which
supervisors, employees, and managers receive lessons on the best way to interact with
employees and clients. This is a must so as to educate employees on diversity and not cause
tensions between different cultures and religions. In recent times, there are lots of Diversity
management program available where companies could choose from, taking into account the
size of the company and its employees. Some training programs require high travelling and
participation cost which in some cases do not benefit the company financially.
Discrimination: One significant disadvantages of working with a diverse workforce is
discrimination in the part of both managers and employees. It usually exist in a hidden aspect
of a poorly managed workplace, where subjective racism often takes place. When a worker is
being discriminated, it affects his ability to perform well and it also affects the perception of
equity and raises issues of litigation.
Communication issues: Workplace diversity can negatively impact communication in the
company. It can place an obstacle in the way of effective communication, which can cause a
decrease in productivity and dampen the cohesiveness among workers. Even though spending
time with employees by getting to know them helps reduce and in some instances eradicate
communication barriers during a long-term, co-workers orientation periods and an individual
s first impressions can be difficult to control when different cultures clash culture clash.
Communication issues often leads to herding, this situation arises when a group of people

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from the same culture only talk among themselves. This reduces the cohesiveness and
productivity of the workforce significantly.

Myriad Accommodation: Although the premise of workplace diversity is mutual respect,

making way to accommodate each diverse workers request can be burdensome of
employers, which makes it difficult to manage diversity. Some employees work constraints
such as race, religion, country of origin and gender can sometimes be overwhelming if the
diversity in the organisation tends to be so much to the extent that the company has to employ
a fulltime staff to keep track of accommodating the employees needs. For example, some
Muslim employees may decide not to work on Fridays, as it is a special day for prayers. In
such instances employers has to make provision for someone to take their shift when the need
arises.
Incorporation issues: Social incorporation at the workplace cannot be influenced to the
maximum degree. Forming exclusive social groups is often a natural process that cannot be
controlled sometimes. Therefore, companies tend to experience some degree of informal
divisions amongst their workers thereby creating conditions where diverse employees avoid
having contact with each other during leisure times and when work is over. Although this
scenario doesnt seem fundamentally wrong, it can reduce the effectiveness of knowledge
sharing amongst teams and hence decreasing productivity. (Ruth Mayhew
2013)
Resistance to change: There are always employees who will refuse to accept the fact that the
social and cultural makeup of their workplace is changing. The weve always done it this
way mentality silences new ideas and inhibits progress.
This creates a work area with a lot of tension as there are some people who welcome change
and some of them decline change. Therefore there will be a split in between the factions
which will cause communication breakdown and hence it will affect productivity.

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RECOMMENDATION
Managing diversity requires managers to recognise certain skills that are vital for creating an
effective and successful diverse workforce. Leaders and managers must understand that
discrimination and its consequences will always prevail in the organisation. Managers must
recognize their own cultural preferences. They must see diversity as the differences among
individuals and support the fact that each individual is unique in a special way in order to
increase the amount of teamwork that in present in the workforce. Moreover, managers must
be ready to change the organisational culture when the need to do so arises and learn how to
effectively manage the diverse workforce in order to be successful in the future. (Kelli A. G,
Mayra L, Allen W, and Karl K 2013). Unfortunately there is no single formula that a
company could apply to be successful, therefore it depends on the ability for the manager to
figure out what best suits the company based on teamwork and the dynamics of the
workplace. Roosevelt (2001) explains that diversity management involves a complete process
needed for creating a working environment that involves the participation of everyone. When
creating an effective and successful diverse workforce, managers in the first instance must
focus on personal awareness. Both employers and employees need to outline their personal
prejudices. A one day session of training is not enough to change peoples mind and
behaviours, therefore organizations need to constantly develop, implement, and maintain
ongoing training and awareness creation via the company moto, vision and mission.
Diversity management entails much more than providing same opportunity for employment.
Managers should realise that change occurs in a slow pace, but yet should continue to
encourage change. Dealing with diversity also requires providing a secure environment for
managers and workers to communicate, such environments includes social gatherings and
business meetings where every member feels comfortable to be and creates a friendly
atmosphere to speak freely as well as listen to others. Mentoring programs should be
implemented to guide employees on how to access information. Constructive feedbacks
should be given to the employees after they have learnt about their mistakes and when they
are successful in implementing the lessons learnt to achieve success. Leaders in the
organizations should learn diversity (differences of gender, age, sex and religion in their work
environment and also to communicate will between them) and how to manage it effectively.

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CONCLUSION
A diverse workforce is a reflection of a changing world these days. Diverse workforce in the
organization brings the high values to the organization. Giving respect to all the nationalities
working in the organization will benefit the workplace just by creating a competitive edge
and also the increase in productivity as well. By managing diversity at workplace benefits the
employees by creating a fair and safe environment for them. Everyone in the organization has
the access to opportunities and the challenges. Management tools in a diverse workforce
should be used for giving education to all the employees about diversity and its issues which
includes law and education. Around the world, most of the places are made up of diverse
cultures. As a conclusion, the effects of workforce diversity indeed are the important in the
organization after go through a few cases. Without a proper management of the effects
workforce diversity, it may be hardly to see good outcome from the company. So
organization should learn how to adapt to them.
Diversity in workforce is growing in all countries special USA, Canada and Europe. With
having more diverse work environment organization can produce better performance. It is
important for the companies to know diversity and how to handle the issues relating to it.
Also the need of the diverse workforce is getting more not only because there are different
people but also because they can produce better results with having different types of people
working.

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REFERENCES
Agars, M. D., & Kottke, J. L. (2006). Models and Practice of Diversity Management: A
Historical Review and Presentation of a New Integration Theory. In M. S. Stockdale &
F. J. Crosby (Eds.), The Psychology and Management of Workplace Diversity (2nd
ed., pp. 5577). Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
Cipd.co.uk, (2014). Diversity in the workplace: an overview - Factsheets - CIPD. [online]
Available at: http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/diversity-workplaceoverview.aspx [Accessed 1 Aug. 2014].
Cox, T. H. (2001). Creating the Multicultural Organization: A Strategy for Capturing the
Power of Diversity. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Diversityworld.com, (2014). Workforce Diversity. [online] Available at:
http://www.diversityworld.com/Diversity/workforce_diversity.htm [Accessed 2 Aug. 2014].
Hrcouncil.ca, (2014). Why a diverse workplace matters | Diversity at Work | HR Toolkit |
hrcouncil.ca. [online] Available at: http://hrcouncil.ca/hr-toolkit/diversity-workforcematters.cfm [Accessed 1 Aug. 2014].
Multiculturaladvantage.com, (2014). Diversity in the Workplace: Benefits, Challenges and
Solutions. [online] Available at:
http://www.multiculturaladvantage.com/recruit/diversity/Diversity-in-the-WorkplaceBenefits-Challenges-Solutions.asp [Accessed 4 Aug. 2014].
Robbins. (2009). The Equal Opportunities Handbook: How to Recognise.
Diversity, Encourage Fairness and Promote Anti-Discriminatory Practice.

R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr.(2001), Building on the promise of diversity, how we can move to
the next level in our workplaces, our communities and our society.

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Ruth Mayhew (2013), Disadvantages in increasing diversity in the workplace`, The Houston
Chronicle
Small Business - Chron.com, (2014). What Are the Advantages of a Diverse Workforce?.
[online] Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-diverse-workforce18780.html [Accessed 1 Aug. 2014].
Thomas, K. M., Mack, D. A., & Montagliani, A. (2006). Arguments Against Diversity: Are
They Valid? In M. S. Stockdale & F. J. Crosby (Eds.), The Psychology and Management of
Workplace Diversity (2nd ed., pp. 3154). Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.

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