Managing ethnic diversity in British workplace - Essay Example

MANAGING ETHNIC DIVERSITY IN BRITISH WORK PLACE Traditionally, British workplace represents a homogeneous unity consisting of British employees. Thus, globalization and immigration processes create new problems for managers. Managing ethnic diversity is one of the main problems required effective solutions and strategies to be introduced. Ethnicity and race are often confused in the United States. For example, Hispanics from the Americas and Puerto Rico with African ancestors, even though they tend to identify with their native country, are frequently and erroneously labeled African Americans in the UK workplace. Thesis Some critics suppose that cultural diversity brings benefits and opportunities to the workplace, influences climate and morale of employees. Thus, other research studies prove that ethnical diversity has a negative influence on the organization and requires additional resources spent on training and management. Following Allison (1999): "The functionalist perspectives analyze workplace diversity from an organizational effectiveness framework. These approaches assume that positive and negative dimensions of workplace diversity can be identified, monitored, and controlled to benefit the organization" (p. 78). The demographic shift in favor of minorities over whites of European origin is already seen in the composition of public school students. By the year 2000, one of every three Americans and half of all school-age children will be a member of an ethnic minority group. This will result in a large number of workers in the twenty-first century for whom English will not be their primary language. Workplaces will be noticeably punctuated with Spanish, Vietnamese, Khymer, and other "foreign" language. (Konrad et al 2006). Thus cultural diversity will be seen in the living colors of the workers and heard in their speech. For the first time, the United States will reflect the diversity commonplace throughout most of the other nations of the world. Even so, our school curriculums and businesses will probably remain primarily Eurocentric. When the youngster goes to school, he or she usually finds it no avenue to adequate living, much less to fame or fortune (Barak, 2000). Equality of treatment and opportunity has been the official policy of some organizations for many years. In their standards of recruitment, training, and promotion, government agencies and human services organizations have been more effective as equal opportunity employers than the private business sector. But even in government and human services agencies there is room for improvement. Many equal opportunity employers are merely paper compilers; their behavior is anything but exemplary of equality in action. If the policy of equal employment opportunity (EEO) is to apply without regard to sex, race, creed, color, or national origin, an important first step is to ascertain whether influential members of an organization harbor prejudices. Following Allison (1999) "Unlike the instrumental focus on corporate culture and productivity that characterize the functionalist perspective, critical analyses provide reflection on different types of management issues including, "epistemological issues, notions of rationality and progress, technocracy and social engineering, autonomy and control, communicative action, power and ideology" (78). Numerous studies conclude that a large number of minority workers receive insufficient information about their present job conditions and future opportunities. Specifically, many minority workers quit or retire from organizations without ever having understood what their supervisors diagnosed as their needs, why certain procedures were followed and, if failure resulted, what their failures consisted of and the reasons for them. The minority workers' rights include the right to courteous, prompt, and the best supervision. They have the right to know what is wrong, why, and what can be done about skill deficiencies (Konrad et al 2006). The managers could build a case of minority workers' ignorance as being a byproduct of the managerial mystique. That is, administrators and supervisors are commonly perceived as being people whose training and predilections place them in a special ability category. To put it even more bluntly, there is a tendency for ethnic minority employees to be in awe of administrators (Barak, 2000). In the UK, minority workers who are the most confused about their employment situation and what their supervisors are or are not doing to help them succeed are less actively involved in discussions about their careers than minorities who are better informed. Too many supervisors are unable to accurately judge the level of their subordinates' job skills knowledge. Paraphrasing an old adage: When in doubt, they should ask their subordinates. There are several ways the more effective supervisors communicate with ethnic minority workers. Most of them verbally communicate relevant information; some use printed materials, including diagrams and leaflets. Still others refer subordinates to commercial audiovisual materials (Chow and Crawford 2004). Following Barak (2001) and Berak (2005) the challenge to managers and supervisors is to demonstrate that competence and empathy are not unique to members of a particular group. For example, a competent white administrator can be as "black" as any of the black employees in his or her organization. Blackness is more than a condition of the skin; it is thinking black, behaving black, and accepting black. Just as some black people admit that there are white people who have "soul," there are many white people who acknowledge that some black people have "culture." Skin color may be a help or a hindrance in establishing rappor. (Konrad et al 2006). The major determining factor is the quality of interaction among people. The first step in establishing rapport with minority workers is to help them relax. To do so, the administrator must be relaxed. If a supervisor is worried about being verbally or physically attacked or sued, it will show. Besides, minority employees may also be anxious about the encounter. They may wonder about the supervisor's hidden agenda. For some employees, regardless of their race or ethnicity, conferences with supervisors produce feelings of great discomfort. It is typical for people to bring their community-related anxieties with them to the workplace. As an example, fear of police brutality is not easily left in the community outside the workplace. The spread effect can cause some employees to fear all authority figures. During the initial encounter, organization problems or conversations about community problems exacerbate feelings (Chow and Crawford 2004). A few minutes of "small talk" can often reduce the stress. Effective administrators know when to slow the pace and talk about nonthreatening subjects. However, not even the most tactful administrators always succeed in establishing trust. A small number of minority (and majority workers) approach managers and supervisors in ways that are outright defensive--they use profanity and behave indiscreetly. Such defense mechanisms do not usually reflect faulty personalities (Konrad et al 2006). Rather, protection of the ego is normal; but a disproportionate use of defenses indicates a lack of security. Culturally different workers, particularly ethnic minorities, seek to maintain their psychological balance during times of stress in several ways, such as by rationalizations, reaction formation, overcompensation, or projection. People who believe they are members of an underclass or out-group often develop rigid, persistent, and chronic ego-protection devices (Chow and Crawford 2004).. Managers and supervisors who are most different from minority-group workers in terms of culture generally have more difficulty communicating empathy, congruence, respect, and acceptance than individuals who share or understand the workers' cultural perspectives. To be more specific, managers and supervisors who understand the psychological and sociological backgrounds of minority-group employees are better able to counsel them than their colleagues who lack this knowledge. A meaningful relationship with a supervisor can do much to reduce employees' negative feelings. In the end, the most successful managers and supervisors are linguistically compatible with their subordinates, empathic, and well trained (Konrad et al 2006). Because managers and supervisors are creatures of culture, they tend to react to culturally different people in the same manner as their significant others. Therefore, prejudices found in the community are acted out in the workplace. Succinctly, prejudice is a conclusion drawn without adequate knowledge or evidence. The bigot blames members of out-groups for various misfortunes: floods, high taxes, inflation, wars, and, interestingly, bigotry. Such prejudgments are easier to make than objective judgments, which require more energy, knowledge, integrity, and time. In their efforts to make expedient decisions, bigots react to concepts rather than people. It is behaviors, not attitudes, which create the major problems in managing diversity (Konrad et al 2006). There are many laws against discriminatory behaviors, but there are none against prejudicial attitudes. It is not what managers and supervisors think about diversity that hurts or helps employees but how they act out those thoughts. Some managers act out their prejudices by denying culturally different people equal employment opportunities. Contrary to popular writings, prejudices in the workplace are not limited to black-white conflicts and confrontations. There is prejudice against women, older workers, individuals with disabilities, foreign workers, and white workers--all the people who comprise the labor force (Chow and Crawford 2004). A diversity-related attitude is a degree of readiness. This is a vague statement. However, when cast in the perspective of a manager's ability to perceive certain employees, his or her quickness to respond to them, motivation to respond to them, and experience in responding to them, the degree of readiness can stand the test of further scrutiny. A diversity-related attitude is a degree of readiness to behave in a given manner. An attitude is not an overt response. It is a response, to be sure, but an implicit or mental one. Therefore, an attitude is a readiness to act, not an act itself. Diversity-related attitudes are learned mainly from people who have high or low prestige. In a typical experiment employees respond to questions pertaining to diversity in the workplace. Then they are told the answers given by 98 percent of the nation's leading CEOs, or the majority of their own reference group. Later they are retested. In most cases the retest scores move significantly in the direction of the CEOs or the reference group. There are, of course, exceptions. Some employees will not shift their attitudes to match those of an admired person if the attitudes attributed to the latter are diametrically opposed to theirs (Thomas and Ely 2001). The second part of the hypothesis is that people tend to adopt attitudes opposite of people whom they perceive as having low prestige or status. Such attitudes are likely to be held for one of two reasons: (1) certain people have low prestige because they are members of "inferior" groups or (2) certain people are members of the employee's in-group but they are considered "losers"--people not likely to rise in the hierarchy (Konrad et al 2006). When employees who hold antidiversity attitudes are confronted by supervisors with logic or with new information, they usually do not change their beliefs. Instead, they tend to hide their attitudes and pretend to have been converted, particularly if their supervisors are monitoring the training. Prodiversity information alone is seldom enough (Konrad et al 2006). Therefore, not simply what is said but also who said it is an important variable influencing whether an argument or information will change attitudes. There is also the general finding that prodiversity attitudes acquired by logical arguments are seldom acted out very logically. For example, male managers' attitudes toward female employees may be tolerant during diversity training but show very little carryover into the workforce. They give lip service to being equal opportunity employers but maintain dual standards for male and female subordinates-with the females having to be better qualified than their male peers to be appointed to certain positions (Thomas and Ely 2001). Antidiversity attitudes are not always changed when training and work environments are desegregated. Merely placing culturally diverse people together in training or job situations can sometimes be counterproductive (Berak, 2005). The participants may observe members of the out-group responding in stereotypical ways (e.g., women crying when frustrated; ethnic minorities behaving as inarticulate, ingratiating people; older workers falling asleep during lectures). Attitudes can be formed or changed by personal experience (1) if the attitudes are not in conflict with more powerful motives; (2) if the experiences are carefully selected to place the participants in peer, egalitarian relationships; and (3) if the attitudes to be changed involve perceptions that are so simple as to be obvious examples of empirical contradiction. That is, all participants are placed in a win-win situation in which there are no losers when the diversity initiative is completed (Berak, 2005). There are two main approaches to diversity-related attitude change. Both approaches center on communication. The formal attitude-change approach is based on learning theories and assumes that people are rational, information-processing beings who can be motivated to listen to a message, hear its content, and incorporate the learnings when it is advantageous to do so. The means of change is formal, structured communication, and the reason for change is either actual or expected reward for embracing diversity (Konrad et al 2006). The amount of attitude change depends on employees' initial position regarding diversity, their attention to the message and to the communicator, their understanding of the message, and their acceptance of the message. Depending on the motivational bases for employees' antidiversity attitudes, acceptance of diversity will be positively affected by diversity activities that provide tangible pay-offs. Some individuals may believe that an activity is not related to their needs. When this happens, the trainer should not become defensive. Instead, he or she should ask the withdrawing individuals to identify ways they might approach the task differently, that is, to act as observers and give the rest of the group feedback, or alter the task to accommodate their concerns. Lectures are best when they are short, less formal, and well organized and well delivered. Lecturers should remember that most trainee attention spans are short, and for this reason lectures should involve trainees through interest-catching illustrations, make provision for trainee involvement, and not attempt to present too much information in a short period of time. Several other factors affect the quality of the lecture, including room conditions, backgrounds of the employees, and the tone and voice of the speaker. When a lecture is meant to spark discussion, the lecturer should not cover the points he or she wishes the trainees to develop. Generally the lecture method of teaching is most effective for clarifying issues, expanding knowledge beyond the trainees' available resources, sharing personal experiences, and giving instructions. The lecture method has the advantages of allowing the trainer to bring specific ideas into immediate focus and to draw on his or her own experiences (Konrad et al 2006). In sum, ethnic diversity is not easy to manage. In spite of perception of ethnic diversity as a benefit and opportunities for the UK workforce, it creates a lot of problems including additional training and supervision costs. The white flight, triggered by the influx of minorities, has dramatically changed the demographics of cities and small towns. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Allison, M. T. 1999, Organizational Barriers to Diversity in the Workplace. Journal of Leisure Research, 31 (1), 78. 2. Barak, M. E. 2000, The Inclusive Workplace: An Ecosystems Approach to Diversity Management. Social Work, 45 (1), 335. 3. Chow, I. H., Crawford, R. H. 2004, Gender, Ethnic Diversity, and Career Advancement in the Workplace: The Social Identity Perspective. SAM Advanced Management Journal, 69 (1), 45. 4. Konrad, A. W., Prasad, P., Pringle, J. K. 2006, Handbook of Workplace Diversity. Sage Publications Ltd. 5. Mor Berak, M. H. 2005, Managing Diversity: Toward a Globally Inclusive Workplace. Sage Publications, Inc. 1. Thomas, D. A. Ely, R. J. 2001, Cultural Diversity at Work: The Effects of Diversity Perspectives on Work Group Processes and Outcomes. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46 (3), 229. 2. Read More