Running head: ON DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS

Diversity in the workplace is the phenomenon by which we have today, individuals in the

workplace hailing from different countries of origin, of different cultural practices, religious

beliefs, different languages, different communication styles, etc. in addition to the usual

differences of race, age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical abilities or disabilities,

physical appearance, color of skin, etc. between different individuals, all working towards the

same goal under the guidance of the same individual or team. Diversity in workplaces has the

potential to enhance productivity, increase and speeded up responsivity to changes in business

conditions and improve the bottom line of the organization by improving profitability. ( Marquis,

Lim, Scott, Harrell and Kavanagh, 2007, p.14, para 1-3)

Diversity implementation is today becoming very popular and corporates are increasingly

drafting, freezing and implementing their own diversity policies. However while doing so,

managers at all levels are facing myriads of challenges, a few of which are highlighted below in

brief. (Vats, V & Bhatia, A, 2015, 21st September). ( Singh D, 2014)

1. Language and Communication.

Communication is the skill through which one receives information from someone,

process it to whatever extent that it is required and return it or/and forwards the processed

information for the next step. Precision is essential for business communication. The business

communicator should be capable of saying or hearing exactly what he or she wants to say or

hear. In the diverse work-place, all the members may not be equal exponents of the language

used to communicate in the group, say English, and therefore tend to communicate erroneously

with others.

Subconscious Bias
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ON DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
Very often, people tend to nurture a bias against a foreign culture, albeit subconsciously.

The sub-conscious bias is formed inside people through the many years of social interaction

which people are exposed to during their youth and teenage. Once a person with a sub-conscious

bias is made aware of it, than he or she can become free from its effects, by consciously fighting

to overcome it.

Stereotyping

This has been found to be a common malaise in the workplace which works against

diversity. Here, people often classify all people sharing a common ethnic background as to be

alike in other ways too. For example, many people think after 9/11, that all American Muslims

are sympathetic to terrorism which is not true.

Work Culture & Ethnocentric Prejudices.

Different cultural backgrounds foster different attitudes to work speed and working

system. Some cultures start off fast and others are slow to start off but having done so, maintains

consistency. These differenced can foster misunderstandings between different work members,

especially if small portions of ethnocentric prejudice are pre-existent between the two people.

Community Bonding

In a diverse workplace, it is often found that bonding is faster and more frequent with

people from the same background. This is especially true for newcomers to the workplace. While

the goal of diversity is to make people feel at home, here the bonding goes against the meaning

of what is being attempted i.e. diversity. Bonding should with people of other backgrounds too.

Also, bonded pairs of same background should open up to others and not keep to themselves.
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ON DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
The Diversity Audit.

As per the Iowa College of business, diversity audits are evaluations of the state of

diversity within the organization, based on qualitative and quantitative information collected

from the organization. Diversity Audits entail a procedure by which information can be

processed to arrive at a value which is the prevalent value of diversity within an organization.

First of all, by maximizing the pro-diversity variables, the ideal value of diversity is first

calculated by using this procedure. Next, the prevailing diversity and the difference among the

prevailing and ideal diversity values are calculated as above. This shows how far the

organization has been successful in implementing diversity and what distance still remains for

the organization to achieve its goal of goal diversity implementation.

Diversity Audits being an evaluative process indicate whether the diversity prevalent in

the business organization is nearer to the goal set by the organization or is far away. The higher

the difference between the aimed and the actual organizational diversity value, the more it is

important to correct the organizational strategy so that the diversity gap between the actual and

the ideal is made as lower as possible. This is how positive strategy changes are brought about by

diversity audits in a business organization. On the other hand, if despite the diversity audit result,

the organization does not take any steps to correct the discrepancies between the targeted ideal

diversity and the actual prevalent diversity, (or even takes steps which increases the discrepancy

level instead of lowering it), then this may be referred to as negative shaping of the

organizations strategy.
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ON DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
Diversity Policy

The organization I used to work in earlier had a detailed diversity policy which I feel was

more or less adequate in fulfilling its purpose. It started off by defining diversity and stated why

diversity police adoption is so important to both staff member wellbeing and organizational

productivity and bottom line too. It defined where the companys definition of diversity may

intersect with that of an individual, and in such a case, what can the individual expect from the

companys diversity enforcement department? It made its point that the company respected each

staff member as an individual and separate entity and the employees to should give the same

courtesy to their colleagues. It then details the companys recruitment process and how the

company recruits keeping the diversity goal in mind. Finally, the policy is summed up and how

diversity leads to a workplace filled with empathy, co-operative atmosphere and a helping

overtone is emphasized.

In hindsight, I now feel that there are three important points which were not mentioned

due to oversight. These are

1. The Policy Scope was not defined which is such a vital part of any policy, be it diversity, quality

assurance, whatsoever. It defines the boundaries of working place diversity.

2. A name and a number with email id of the management representative whom any concerned

employee may approach in case of any clarifications sought.

3. Sexual Orientation or LGBT facilities if any were not mentioned perhaps due to oversight.

Traditional and Current or Non-Traditional organizational structures

Traditional and non-traditional organizational structures can me classified into a number

of different types and diversity does play a role in each. A short list of the same follows.

(Scribd.com, 2017)
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ON DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
Traditional systems were earlier thought to be static as they remained indifferent from the

external atmosphere. It was with the advent of management gurus like Peter Drucker, Michael

Porter etc. that we now know that the closed system is actually not true. However, it works in

many cases because the dynamic exchange is very small. But in reality it is only a simplification.

Classification 1 : Flexible and Inflexible organizations. diversity enables the organization to have

a fast response time to changes in the market status-quo.

Classification 2: Individual and Team Oriented: Here, diversity enables the company to act as

teams all of which are experts at different aspects of the job. Thereby unitedly, the team

approach can give a better job result than the individual.

Classification 3: Permanent Jobs to Temporary Jobs. The diversity point here is that the diversity

point member can gain a better all-round exposure to the likely employment market in the near

future.

Classification 4: Rule Oriented to Customer Oriented: Here the diversity point is providing

exceptional customer service and thereby increasing profitability.

Classification 5: Command involvement to Involvement oriented: Here the diversity point is to

find out new and innovative solutions to problems by feelings brought about by gut feelings due

to continuous involvement.

These are a few of the more important classifications with the feature of diversity of each clearly

marked out.

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References
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ON DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
Harvey, C.P. (2005) Evaluating diversity and in the Real World: Conducting a Diversity Audit.

Accessed from http://www.bus.iastate.edu/emullen/mgmt472/Diversity%20audit

%20handout.pdf

Marquis, J. P., Lim, N., & Scott, L. M., Harrell, M.C. and Kavanagh, J. (2007). Managing

Diversity in Corporate America: An Exploratory Analysis. Santa Monica, US: RAND

Corporation. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com

Scribd.com ( 2017) comparison between traditional and new organization. Retrieved from

https://www.scribd.com/doc/.../comparison-between-traditional-and-new-organization

Vats, V and Bhatia A. ( September 21, 2005) Workplace Diversity In Modern Organizations

Benefits and Challenges InsideIIM.com. Retrieved from

https://insideiim.com/workplace-diversity-in-modern-organizations-benefits-and-

challenges/