The draw of diversity

The Draw of Diversity

Introduction

Managing diversity ' is rapidly becoming the corporate slogan of the twenty first century - not because companies are becoming kinder and gentler toward culturally diverse minorities but because they want to survive in today 's complex environment (De Meuse , Claire , and O 'Neill 38 . And so that it is possible to survive a growing number of companies will have to employ , train , and promote culturally diverse groups Basically , this is nothing more than developing additional human resources (Sudhoff and Griffin 36 . This human resource approach concentrates

on the personal relations between people and the company and accepts a fact that diversity in the workplace includes every employee . This approach starts with the claim that all employees are the most important resource in a company . A company is only effective when diversity is effectively utilized and managed . Today , many companies look healthy to untrained eyes , but in reality they experience difficulties and are decaying inside . Healthy ' atmosphere frequently hides a series of disruptive diversity problems

Main Body

According to Mor Barak (2000 , a major stimulus for diversity in the workplace lies in the moral code upon which the United States was founded : the belief that all people have equal rights . One of the hidden rules in American society is that a person does not comment on differences because it is considered that differences mean deficiency (Edwards , 1991 ,

. 51 . The refusal to accept difference in the workplace is illustrated in the following case : An unknown American of African descent walked into a room full of white managers and they disregarded him . Yet each of them persistently tried to find out Why is this Afro-American here ' At the same time , two unknown white males also walked into the room . They were met with expressions of welcome and quickly accepted into the group

The difficulty of getting women and minorities into senior-level management positions is another diversity-related issue . While the proportion of women and minorities in the workforce has increased considerably during the last decades , few of them became executives (Mor Barak 41 . According to the author , women and minorities constitute more than 50 percent of the American workforce but they have less than 5 percent of executive positions . There is indeed a considerable barrier that prevents an unequal number of women and minorities from occupying executive positions . Therefore , diversity must be valued , trained , and efficaciously managed

Along with diversity in the workplace came additional competition Edwards (1997 ) notes that some white male employees must now engage in a contest with people they did not consider rivals before - for the most part women , blacks , Hispanics , and Asians (66 . Even though white male employees still control most of the top corporative positions , many of them sense an impending loss of job opportunities . The transition from a workplace dominated chiefly by white males to one in which managerial and supervisory jobs are shared with people representing other diverse minorities caused emotional strain and conflict between employees . The diversity issue is further...