Diversity in Dell Organization - Case Study Example

Diversity in Organizations Word Count = Diversity in Organizations The purpose of this assignment is to provide an understanding of ‘cognitive diversity’ more specifically the ‘age diversity’, as well as the issues inherent in them and applying the academic concepts in real life situations. There are three main sections presented for addressing the issue, self-reflection, literature review, and application exercises. 1.1 Self-Reflection In the workplace, there are many places where your opinion conflicts with others, but it becomes more difficult when the reason behind this conflict is cognitive diversity. I have faced a situation during my job, which makes me realize the importance of managing the diversity in the workplace. The company, where I have been working, was conducting a performance check of all over the organization after installing a new technology in the company. Every supervisor or in-charge has to give feedback on his subordinate’s performance. I try to give feedback on my subordinates’ performances as fair as possible. But I was a little reluctant to give negative remarks about one of my subordinate who was at the age of 50’s. There were some important points that I wanted to highlight regarding his technical skills and a wrong way of using new technology. Thus, after a long time spent on thinking, I decided to be fair in giving remarks. After a week, when the performance results were announced then that person came to me and felt so insulted upon my negative feedback about his job. He took it as a discouraging behavior from my side, and reported my judgment as unfair by saying that “…I have been working in this company for more than 10 years, and no one ever complained about my technical skills, it is simply discrimination on the grounds of age, where he has favored subordinates to his age group…” The conflict was then raised on the managerial level, where the issue was resolved by assigning me on providing a training to the aged person, who was not even willing to use the new technology. During the training period, I faced so many difficulties in interacting with him due to our diverging viewpoints. After all this, I have identified one of the diversity dimensions to be very important in the workplace nowadays that is age diversity. As both of us were from different generations and there were a lot of differences in beliefs and opinions on the basis of our age groups. Bringing the age diversity and the organizational situation together, it can be argued here that the old aged people are reluctant to change and are more difficult to make them accept their mistakes, especially if the supervisor is of young age, as my subordinate was unable to use the new technology and was not even accepting that. I further argued that the communication way matters to these people, as now I realize that may be, it would be better to discuss the issue with him personally before reporting in performance sheet. The outcome of this situation was affected due to a multi-aged interaction, which highlighted the significance of managing age diversity. 1.2 Literature Review This section presents the review of existing literature on and evaluation of current approaches in managing the workplace inclusion with regard to the age diversity. Before entering into challenges and frameworks for age diversity, it is important to understand the diversity, managing diversity and its dimensions from an academic viewpoint. In general terms, diversity means to admit, realize, accommodate, respect, and praise the dissimilarities between people regarding their age, gender, race, ethnicity, spiritual practice, bodily and intellectual capabilities, class, sexual orientation, and community support standing as explained by [Est95]. Though diversity has been considered to be a research agenda from 1980’s, however the increase in globalization of overall economy has ignited the issue. The patterns of the workforce have been changing radically due to colonization, employee relocation, and race & ethnic as well as gender dissimilarities that further thwarted the matter of diversity [Bar05]. Thus, managing the diversity is an important concern in the workplace nowadays, where Olsen and Martins, (2012) has defined the management of diversity as employ HRM practices to enhance and sustain the modification in the workforce based on some dimensions, certifying that these modifications support and enable the attainment of organizational goals. In simple words, managing diversity is to comprehend its impacts and employing strategies, behaviors, work practices which resolve the effects of diversity in an effective manner[You09]. In addition, there are a number of dimensions of diversity identified in literature, which comprises over three main categories, primary, secondary and tertiary[Rij05] (as shown in Appendix A). Among these, the age diversity that belongs to the primary category of differences, is creating new challenges and issues in the workplace and is important to comprehend and find the ways to meet its challenges. According to Kuron (2012), the age diversity is quite a complicated phenomenon that has its impacts on a number of workplace factors, such as the legal framework of organization, training, career progression, retention, and knowledge transfer. As it is evidenced in the literature that it is not only the case that age-diverse workforce have different people with diverse values and beliefs, however, the age diversity does impact on the organizational performance, social integration, as well as group throughput[Bog02]. Therefore, Collins, et al., (2009) have argued that such age diversity is a rising issue due to which organisations face several challenges. Importantly, the age diversity challenges the organizational performance due to their diverse values and perceptions, as DiRomualdo (2006) concludes that undeniably, there are factual dissimilarities, misinterpretations, and strains between the age-diverse workforce. While these differences also affect the communication between age-diverse employees, as it is argued by Legas & Sims (2011) that when there are people from different ages exist together in an organization, then there occurs ‘inter-age communication misinterpretations’, which in turn influence on workers’ performance, self-esteem, and retention. According to a survey conducted by Heffes (2005), many organisations have been unable to apprehend important workforce information for new workers, where it can be argued that age-diverse workforce when working together in an industry, misinterpret others and it affect the organisational performance. Hanna (2009) reasoned here by stating “…not all generations communicate the same or relate in the same way because, ―They not only learn differently but also interact differently…” (p. 1). Thus, one of the major challenges of the age diversity that can hinder the productivity and morale of employees, which is miscommunication due to age difference. Another important findings regarding the age diversity issues in the workplace are discussed by Stone & Tetrick, (2013), where they have reviewed a special issue on age diversity. Based on this review, the main findings are; age favoritism within a team do impact on the young and elder employees’ perceptions, inadvertent bias affects overwhelmingly on the cynicism and self-type casting of older employees than on the newer employees, there is a negative correlation between the age diversity and remedial/anti-productive conference attitude, and the age diversity improves information interchange and recognition in groups[Dia13]. These findings also suggested some positive effects of age diversity than only challenges. But in contrary to the last finding, it is evidenced that the age diversity hinders the information interchange and group identification, rather than improve it[Ell13]. Many other studies further highlighted the challenges posed by age diversity, in line with these findings, as it is argued that dissimilarities among old-age and young employees are noticeable that provides the threats of in-group favoritism and social groupings, hindering the mutual relationship, and also the stereotypes related to age are well-known and often somewhat negatively influenced[Van04]. However, it is argued in the literature that the possible strong points of the older employees are usually ignored because of misbeliefs and prejudices associated with the age, otherwise it is seen that age diversity is the driver of innovation, learning and enhanced productivity at the workplace, if properly managed[Ria09]. In order to overcome these challenges and issues posed by age diversity, the literature evidences and suggests a number of practices for managing the age diversity. The most common and prevalent strategy for managing the age diversity is to provide diversity training to the employees, as according to Legas & Sims (2011), “…organizations introduced diversity training to help eliminate intergroup biases and stereotypes as well as understand differences in perceptions and beliefs…” (p. 3). Diversity training can manage the challenges, when the understanding of diversity among the age-diverse workforce is developed as a resource and a shared consciousness for the diverse strengths and weaknesses of age groups is made[Hom07]. Furthermore, Mahon & Millar, (2014) have noticed that it is important for the employees to develop skills and expertise in diversity management as most of the managers (59%) were pessimistic about the young employees’ ability to work with older employees, whereas it is also evident that 89% of employees felt the requirement of a diversity training. Contrarily, it is also argued that there is little evidence found in the change in behaviors and beliefs of employees after training, which is due to absence of assessment of diversity training[Com07]. In addition, Karpinska, et al., (2013) recommended that awareness and consideration of age norms in the workplace can be an effective strategy to manage the age diversity, as the customs or norms can be considered adequately based on the needs of every age group. Similarly, Hertel, et al., (2013) argued for the rational balancing of requirements and expectations of both the young and elder employees for managing the age diversity appropriately. While Mahon and Millar (2014) noticed that there are some successful age diversity management program based on flexible working approaches, which are considered as the best practice. These approaches are beneficial for the organization as creating an age-diverse workforce as well as benefitting both age groups by allowing them to work as they want. As Tishman, et al., (2012) evidenced that the British Telecom is an organization who implemented the flexible working approaches, like hiring a senior employee for part-time job, permitting the employees to lower their job obligations to deliver and coach their skills and knowledge to newer employees. It is considered as a clever approach for the ‘brain drain’ of the older employees before their retirement[Nan07]. Moreover, it is also argued for flexible working arrangements to be the most favorable approach to manage the age diversity[Emm14]. It can be argued here that the flexible working approaches in conjunction with the diversity training provided to enhance the skills are well suited for overcoming the above discussed challenges, as it could improve the knowledge sharing, balancing the requirements of young and older employees, and effective communication between different age groups. 1.3 Application Exercise This section has recognized and discussed barriers to the application of best practice in the age diversity management that is flexible working approaches, and then suggestions of steps to attain and validate a positive implementation are made. The chosen organization for this purpose is the Dell Company based in the US, which has been focusing on managing its diverse workforce. As the US has seen a shift in demographics and there is seen an upsurge in the age diversity in the workplace[Rou11]. Though, the company has been involved in diversity management since 2000 when it hired its first chief diversity manager. However, there is still a need to develop an inclusion or management strategy for the age diversity challenges now and in future, as Roundtree (2011) stated about Dell that “….although Dell is viewing diversity with a generational lens, the company has not developed a comprehensive age diversity strategy…” (p. 21). In addition, the company has also made a number of mergers and especially acquisitions, which result in new employees of different age being integrated into the organization. Thus, there is need to develop an age diversity management strategy for the Dell Company, where there is working a highly age-diverse workforce. As the literature argued that the best practice so far is the flexible working approaches, which can be better able to manage the age diverse workforce[Nan07], but these must be combined with the training programs. However, in implementing these approaches, there are a number of barriers that can come in a way and hurt the implementation, which must be addressed by proper steps. In the implementation of a flexible working approaches, the most important barrier is the manager’s skills and behaviors for implementation, as the literature suggests that managers’ expertise and competencies are make or break elements in implementation because they have to manage the workers performing flexibly[Her10]. While from the operational perspective, the implementation of flexible working arrangements is obstructed by pressures from business operations, where it is argued that it can hurt the organization performance and cannot guarantee an unceasing productivity[Pur03]. While Richard, et al., (2003) have further argued that upper management support and approval are of high importance in implementing the flexible working arrangement[And02], and it is seen quite a prevalent barrier in implementation. The employee’s absence of interest and opposition to create a change in working arrangements can also be a hurdle[Lus01], however, it is argued that the main threat in flexible working approaches is that young workers may be unethically troubled by late-night or strict schedules, while the older workers can be benefitted due to their age[Mat01]. Furthermore, managing the flexibility in working arrangements can be more demanding in terms of time and expertise, as it is tough to manage rotas due to the complexity involved in the approach, as argued by McCuiston, et al., (2004). For a successful implementation of the flexible working arrangements in Dell company in order to manage the age diversity, some recommendations can be made; (1) there must be mandatory training programs to make employees aware of and communicate the implementation of flexible working arrangement[Shi13], (2) there must be fair basis of developing schedules in a way that no worker is burdened at the expense of others[Ann08], (3) the firms’ supervisor must show a supportive gesture to make this arrangement work[Lir04], (4) and most importantly, the policies for the implementation of flexible working arrangements must be negotiated, well-balanced between the requirements of all age groups, well-communicated, and developed before implementation[Ann08]. It is also recommended that firms must identify the biasness or discrimination issues beforehand, which requires flexibility in work. References Est95: , (Esty, et al., 1995), Bar05: , (Barak, 2005; Babalola & Marques, 2013), You09: , (Kamal & Ferdousi, 2009; Ball, 2008), Rij05: , (Rijamampianina & Carmichael, 2005), Bog02: , (Bogdanowicz & Bailey, 2002; McGuire, et al., 2007), Dia13: , (Stone & Tetrick, 2013), Ell13: , (Ellwart, et al., 2013), Van04: , (Van Knippenberg, et al., 2004; Posthuma & Campion, 2009; Rauschenbach, et al., 2012; Hertel, et al., 2013), Ria09: , (Riach, 2009; Legas & Sims, 2011; Bell & Marvin, 2007), Hom07: , (Homan, et al., 2007; Ellwart, et al., 2013), Com07: , (Combs & Luthans, 2007; Anderson, 2009; Hall & Parker, 1993), Nan07: , (Bell & Marvin, 2007; Tishman, et al., 2012), Emm14: , (Parry & Tyson, 2014, p. 113), Rou11: , (Roundtree, 2011), Nan07: , (Bell & Marvin, 2007), Her10: , (Heron, 2010), Pur03: , (Purcell, et al., 2003; Manfredi, 2008), And02: , (Anderson, et al., 2002), Lus01: , (Lussier & Achua, 2001), Mat01: , (Mateo & Smith, 2001), Shi13: , (Shin & Park, 2013), Ann08: , (Ryan & Kossek, 2008), Lir04: , (Lirio, et al., 2004), You09: , (Kamal & Ferdousi, 2009), Appendix A Figure 1. Dimensions of Diversity. Source: [You09] Read More