The Holistic Approach to Diversity Management: HR

Implications
Author(s): Anita Ollapally and Jyotsna Bhatnagar

Importance of diverse workforce:

According to author diverse workforce helps in reducing “unconscious bias and
prejudices”. Benefits of a diverse workforce include access to wide range of
information, better decisions, greater innovation along with increase in the brand
image of the company.
Diversity management:
“workforce made… distinct by precense of many religions, cultures, sexes, sexual
orientations and different backgrounds”. Douglas (2008) states diversity stands
for inclusion and a business strategy that allows for every voice in the
organization to be heard. Diversity management is the approach to deal with
increasing diversity in a workplace. It involves providing equal opportunities to
everyone involved.

Scope of diversity:
Organizations in different countries focus on different aspects of diversity.
India(gender and disability), US(ethnicity and sexual orientation)

Organizational consequences:
Minorities feel cutoff when diversity is not recognized. This leads to absenteeism
and turnover. Example : When the African Americans felt that there was no
importance given to the concept of diversity in the organization, absenteeism was
higher and it was especially so when the superior was of the same race(Avery et
al 2007). Employees then tend to show lower commitment and higher intentions
to leave. In group division leads to lack of communication resulting in lower
creativity and productivity. Stress felt by employees to try and fit in. People hide
their ethnicity to try and fit in to the stereotypical white model. Transgenders
have trust issues and fear as the are ostracized the most. Discrimination while
recruiting leads to loss in talent.

Competitive advantage:
Managing diversities gives organizations the edge over others. Large and diverse
customer base satisfied if workforce is also diverse. Multiple perspectives due to
diversity, meaning better decisions and more innovative ideas. Top management
diversity is related competitive strategy and financial effectiveness. Turnover
reduced if diversity values of organization and person match. So financially
beneficial as well since costs reduce due to fewer turnover and lawsuits.
Barriers:
Stereotypes and prejudices in minds of people. Tendency to prefer men’s work.
Organizational culture prevents realization of HR policies. Actions of orgs don’t
match what they say.
Initiatives:
Improve (EI). Mentoring programs and training to develop intelligence related to
these issues. Flex time for women(day care centers etc.). Including people with
disabilities. Convincing top management of the importance of diverse workforce.
More women and ethnic minority applied to orgs that are perceived as diverse.
Create culture of inclusion and commit resources to diversity management.
Advertising employment messages promoting diversity. Intercultural events at
workplace.

Role of HR:
Should be sensitive to different needs of employees and devise policies
accordingly. Firms that have institutional diversity structures fare worse than
distinct firms with a few or no diversity initiatives. HR needs to present the case
for diversity projecting the advantages it brings to the org.
Leadership Competencies for Managing Diversity
Jan Visagie Herman Linde Werner Havenga

Leadership competencies:
Diverse orgs have different goals, managements styles and systems that makes
communication difficult. 5 key leadership competencies for managers who
manage diverse workforce:
Cultural empathy, adaptability, communication competence, generic managerial
skills and emotional stability.
Lockwood(2005) competencies for diversity management:
Non-judgmental listening,willingness to change concept about diversity,
collaboration skills, experience with conflict resolution,sensitivity towards terms
labeling groups, ability to identify diverse issues, intercultural team building,
openness to learning and ability to provide appropriate responses.

Leadership styles theory(6 styles we studied in guest lecture)

David Burnham and interactive leadership:
Motives for leadership have changed. Power used to be biggest motivator. Now
power derived from others(team members). Leadership now is to be done with
others whereas It used to be something to do to others. Interactive leadership
relies on communication skills.

Mintzbergs’s leadership competency model:

Heroic manager-> contemporary leadership training leads to managers who are
too smart, too confident and too self-serving.
Engaging managers-> should replace heroic managers.

Mintzbergs typology of leadership styles:

Heroic-> high personalized power

Heroic tendencies-> tends to pull towards heroic( social power greater than
heroic style, goes towards heroic in stress, causing team members to feel
disempowered)
Engaging-> high socialized power, lower personalized power and low affiliation.
Get the job done. Assertive, respected for commitment, provide honest feedback.

Affiliative tendencies->Put relationships before output/performance

Affiliative-> Stress relationships at the expense of output/performance.
Fight/flight-> highly personalized, high affiliation and low socialization.

Study related to leadership style and diversity management done:

Study done for 2669 people from 11 different workplaces, leadership styles
obtained from 440 leaders int the 11 workplaces.
Questionnaire designed to measure the degree to which employees experience
diversity management. Results-> Mostly neutral with tendency towards negative.
Managing Diversity in U.S. Federal Agencies: Effects of
Diversity and Diversity Management on Employee
Perceptions of Organizational Performance Author(s):
Sungjoo Choi and Hal G. Rainey

Diversity enhances social justice, employee satisfaction and also affects turnover.

Literature on diversity:
Studies conclude that heterogeneous groups produce higher quality solutions.
Some say they lead to dissatisfaction and greater turnover. It may lead to high
costs of coordination and conflict resolution.

Direct effects of diversity:

Low consensus among peers due to broad range of ideas. Problems in
coordination, motivation, and conflict management. Diverse work groups may be
excluded from important decision making. People prefer similarity so feel less
comfortable in diverse work environment.

Effects of diversity management:

When properly managed diversity enhances output of an org. HR polices can do
this. Diversity provides source of growth only when it is properly managed.
Effective leadership connects diversity to work effectiveness. It encourages
diverse workforce to appreciate different perspectives.
Organizational tenure:
It means to spend enough time in an org to overcome naivete, learn and adapt to
diverse environment. Longer org tenure increases org performance. Moderates
the impact of diversity on org performance-> increased org performance.

Effect of team processes:

Differences may lead to conflict which leads to decreased satisfaction.Team
processes enhance performance and interactions among team members. Orgs
with better team processes, diversity will lead to better org performance.

Effect of Org culture:

Result oriented org leads to high competition meaning lower efficiency when
working together. And that org may lose benefit in cooperative circumstances . so
diversity in result oriented orgs lead to decreased performance.

Diversity measure:
Methods for measuring diversity:
1.Coefficient of variation-> age and tenure.
2.Blau index of heterogeneity and entropy index-> ethnicity/race, gender and
educational background.

Control variables-> org culture, team processes, avg tenure, gender, minority etc.
These control variables are used for the methods that measure diversity.

Results from tests:

Effects of diversity-> only racial diversity led to negative org performance. Gender
diversity leads to +ve performance. Effect of age not significant.
Effects of diversity management-> positive relation with org performance.
Org tenure-> in case of gender diversity relationship is positive. However in terms
of racial diversity the relationship with org performance is negative.
Team processes-> positive relation with performance.