Group-Value Approach - Essay Example

TITLE: “Valuing Diversity: A Group-Value Approach to Understanding the Importance of Organizational Efforts to Support Diversity”

APA Citation

Triana, M.D.C., & Garcia, M.F.; “Valuing Diversity: A Group-Value Approach to Understanding the Importance of Organizational Efforts to Support Diversity.” JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, 2009, Vol. 30, 941-962.

Synopsis

The author has focused on the importance of an organization’s efforts in encouraging diversity, especially when employees have to work with minorities. It is very important for organizations to devise strategies that foster diversity among employees. How perceived discrimination against minorities affects overall organizational behavior, and how supporting diversity negates the negative effects of this discrimination, is the research problem the author has brought forward.

Hypothesis

 Workplace racial discrimination leads employees to link the organization with procedural injustice.

Independent Variable

Racial discrimination in the workplace

Dependent Variable

 Employees’ perception of procedural injustice in the organization

Methodology and Data Collection

 The author, with the help of past research works, has worked on a grounded theory that explains the link between racial discrimination and the overall organizational environment. The target population was employed persons from Master of Business Administration (MBA) classes and an upper-division undergraduate business course at a large public university in the southern United States. The purposive sample consisted of 181 participants, which contained Hispanics, Caucasians, Asians, African-Americans, Native Americans, and bi-racial minorities. Data was collected through a two-phase study.

Result

 The findings suggest that when employees perceive that they are being discriminated on the basis of race, color, then they link this discrimination to procedural injustice.

Critique

It is an immensely detailed, well-written, and well-systematized research project. The reading is valuable in understanding human behavior in the social environment because it helps us understand the importance of diversity in workplaces. However, the sample used was small; the population was predominantly Hispanic; and, the study focused mainly on racial discrimination and not other forms of discrimination.

School of Theory

The article belongs to industrial and organizational psychology.