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Overview
Managing Diversity in Organizations focuses on a key issue that organizations are facing—diversity. It is here, and it is growing. The only question now is how well we deal with diversity, especially in organizational contexts.
Golembiewski identifies the many forces and factors propelling us into the age of diversity in organizations—ethical, political, philosophic, demographic, and so on—and details the historical and contemporary approaches. Most practice has focused on a "level playing field" or equal opportunity and "tilting the playing field" or equal outcomes. This volume focuses on diversity as a strategic device rather than as a nicety rooted in behavioral and organizational research. Managing diversity successfully in organizations requires a thorough understanding of management infrastructure that is consistent with diversity--especially structures of work, policies, and procedures that institutionalize and build diversity.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817391287 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 08/30/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Robert T. Golembiewski is Research Professor of Public Administration and Management at The University of Georgia.
Read an Excerpt
Managing Diversity in Organizations
By Robert T. Golembiewski
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 1995 The University of Alabama PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-9128-7
CHAPTER 1
CIRCUMSCRIBING DIVERSITY: ORIENTATIONS AT THE ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL OF ANALYSIS
Rather than circumscribing diversity, let alone defining it, many academic observers prefer to waffle or even to avoid the matter altogether. No doubt about it, diversity issues constitute a whole panoply of today's tar babies. Hence the academic literature is both sparse and underwhelming.
These 1993 Coleman B. Ransone Lectures do not have that option; they need to be deliberate and deliberative about their specific orientation. Here, two themes attempt to provide sufficient specificity for present purposes. Attention first turns to the several orientations of these lectures, and then discussion details the several attractions of an organizational level of analysis.
This approach clearly satisfices. Granted, specificity for all purposes is beyond the present scope, but that fact tethers rather than deters. Granted, also, different assumptions at other levels of analysis would lead these 1993 Ransone Lectures elsewhere, but substantial specificity about the present somewhere will have to do.
Much of this analysis applies to all organizations, everywhere. But the basic focus is on the public sector, especially at the federal level.
Some Orientations and Assumptions
Although intensive analysis might yield a larger inventory, nine features serve to orient these lectures. These orientations and assumptions set limits as well as open doors. Now, up-front and stage-center, is the best time to detail them.
1. "Diversity" will (and should) be interpreted in very broad terms. It should not be otherwise, here or anywhere; but it has been otherwise, in many sources. Thus, "diversity" now clearly encompasses race, if only after centuries of escalating consciousness; and some would prefer to restrict diversity to race. Recent decades also have seen advances by advocates of gender. "Cultural diversity" is perhaps less acknowledged. Conceptually, many propose that today's multiple ferments are more properly "cultural" than (for example) "racial." Practically, the relative neglect cannot last long even in the outermost redoubts. Certainly, local beachheads have been established for diversity-as-culture — for example, not only in those U.S. cities where Spanish is an acknowledged official language, and perhaps even the language, but also clearly in those numerous and growing enclaves of people from Asia, Central and South America, Africa, Korea, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Given the recent trends in immigration (e.g., Atlanta Constitution, 1993), there will be much more of the same in our future.
"Diversity" here has a far broader sense, sometimes neglected but more often wished away. For example, despite advances such as those related to barrier-free design and the recent passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, even less conceptual room in the term "diversity" often is accorded the differentially abled or the variously handicapped, to deliberately rely on the old word. The signs of neglect are everywhere. Thus a recent text in public personnel administration — subtitled, no less, Current Concerns, Future Challenges — contains no appropriate index entries (Ban and Riccucci, 1991).
And, of course, the media in recent months are full of stories dealing with policy and public opinion concerning differences in sexual preferences, especially in connection with homosexuals in military service. "Don't ask; don't tell; don't pursue" seem hardly the last words on that controversial subject. In municipal government, many cities — beginning with Houston and San Francisco, and most recently Atlanta — have been pressured to provide spousal benefits to same-sex partners. Many business and some public organizations have joined in such extensions of coverage. Problems have been experienced, as with deciding on who qualifies as "relevant other" and with angering stakeholders such as customers of a business. But the extensions roll on, buoyed by experiences of increased morale as well as low costs. The latter surprise and seem due to several facts: that few eligibles enroll, apparently still fearing disclosure; that tax implications of such declarations can be daunting; and that — at least for gays, and despite fears related to AIDS — health care costs "are often less than those of heterosexuals" (Jefferson, 1994, p. A–1).
These lectures will not join in fighting rear-guard actions. Managing Diversity in Organizations accepts the catalog above and also enlarges "diversity" to include age and economic condition, as well as differences in opinions and loyalties. Practical considerations in various organizations determine which aspects of diversity can be accommodated, as well as when and to what degree. But real organizational acceptance of diversity could hardly be exclusionist in principle.
Various factors — applicable laws, the needs of specific organizations because of their markets or clientele, and so on — will influence how fast and how far approaches to diversity will go in each organization. Those situational features cannot be anticipated here, let alone be settled. Indeed, only back-and-forth accommodations may ever be achieved.
Nonetheless, these 1993 Ransone Lectures should be held accountable to detailing an approach that will be diversity-friendly across a broad and growing range. For example, Avon Products, Inc., defined as "diverse enough" the inventory of persons in the following categories (Thomas, 1991, p. 129): women; minorities, including religious identifications and handicapped status; gay males; and employees over age forty. All persons in this collection, and perhaps more, were seen as having problems of "fit" at work and as requiring "flexibility in benefits programs."
2. Diversity will pose major challenges over the coming decades. The ante is being raised steadily — and at times even spectacularly — as to what constitutes caring and competent public service, and much of the related dynamics can be attributed to the long-blunted desire for recognition of various diversities. The old psychological rules of thumb put it this way: a satisfied need is an ineffective motivator of behavior; a frustrated need builds tensions that often require great forces to repress, which, in turn, may fitfully reveal the building tensions in surprising outbursts; and a need too long frustrated may become unsatisfiable, forever constituting grim unfinished business that defies resolution.
This metaphor about forces helps explain the whoosh of energy when once suppressed diversities begin to find their voices. This is true of individuals such as blacks, women, "gray commandos," and so on and also seems to be true of many macro-systems such as Quebec, Ireland, the old Yugoslavia, the fragmented and fragmenting USSR, and so on through a formidable list.
Such whooshes of energy are ubiquitous nowadays, which is another way of saying that in the past we have poorly attended to giving timely voice to diversity. Matters great and small provide plentiful evidence. Thus Stanford University recently had seven graduation ceremonies — one general session and another half dozen in response to various diversities. On a broader canvas, the same picture gets painted throughout the world. There, whooshes of energy lead to claims for autonomy or sovereignty, as entities once assumed to be sufficiently homogeneous are shown to be veritable patchworks.
The associated dynamics typically are misinterpreted, as in what Harlan Cleveland calls (1993, p. 24) the "breakup of the great ice floes of the Cold War." He seeks to set this record straight (1993, p. 25, emphasis added): "What is most striking about that stunning series of events is not, after all, the cascade of conversions to democracy. It is the outbreak of cultural diversity, the boiling over of resentments in the name of almost forgotten or newly discovered cultural traditions."
No one knows — at least no one to whom I have access — why some ages seem integrative and others incline toward the pervasively distributive. In any case, the tenor of our times — which some see as their terror and in whose potential others make bold to rejoice — clearly implies an imperative toward less-inclusive and more-exclusive identifications. Simply put, we are today uncommonly busy making smaller entities out of once bigger ones. This situation contrasts markedly with just earlier times, which had strong integrative features, as can be seen in the early civil rights movement, in enthusiasms for "one world" or for a "melting pot," and so on.
Elementally, such experiences leave us with more familiar rationales for integration than for big-time diversity, with its associated fragmentation as well as potential for conflict; and this constitutes a critical shortfall. Adding fuel to this superheated situation, many propose that supportive responses to diversity are sanctioned by humanist or transcendental values, or are even required by them. Such a normative orientation clearly motivates our public foreign policy: for example, the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims have a right to express their preferences, to be self-determinative about in-ness and outness. Our generic problem is, of course, that the reach of my self-determination may involve someone else's nose.
This diversity shift implies major empirical and normative concerns, if not problems and dangers.
3. The tension as well as promise of diversity both seem great. Upwellings of arts, crafts, and commerce often seem associated with cultural diversity, if tolerance dominates. Many social and anthropological observers have come to such a conclusion, whether their focus is on sites such as ancient Baghdad or on the America of the early twentieth century (e.g., Cleveland, 1993, esp. pp. 16–30). Hence Cleveland concludes (1993, p. 26): "The idea of a multiracial, multicultural society with both a national gist and a global perspective, pioneered in fits and starts by the United States, Canada, and Brazil, may prove to be one of the great social innovations of the twentieth century."
This excerpt seems to refer to that innovativeness associated with "successful diversity" — that whoosh of positive energy as differences get released and are associated with sufficient acceptance or forbearance to permit constructive release. In much the same terms, many observers (e.g., Fernandez and Barr, 1993) see a secret weapon for American business in our diversity, rightly managed, while our international competitors not only started late on dealing with diversity but also suffer from diversity-unfriendly laws, employment and immigration policies, as well as cultural norms.
On the other hand, merry hell might well break loose as diversities threaten or even overwhelm. Or our future could contain a bit of both trouble and more pleasant discoveries.
Two quotations set the boundaries within which observers of the United States see the dynamics of diversity being played out in the convenient frame of a pro/con format that estimates the probability of America successfully coping with diversity.
Pro (Fernandez and Barr, 1993, p. 2, emphasis added): "Despite the problems with diversity experienced by the United States, it is uniquely positioned among the three economic powerhouses of the 1990s (the others being Japan and the emerging [European Community]) to grasp the competitive advantage."
The con view is represented directly by Yuji Aida, professor emeritus at the University of Kyoto, who minces no words about what will happen when "U.S. minority groups espouse self-determination in some form." Professor Aida predicts that the "country may become ungovernable" when — not if, but when — that happens. Aida argues (quoted in Fernandez and Barr, 1993, pp. 2–3): "Within one hundred years, and probably sooner, most Americans will be people of color. For the first time [in the United States], Caucasians will be a minority. Illiteracy may become widespread. ... Blacks and Hispanics will not be able to run a complex industrial society like the United States unless they dramatically raise their sights and standards in the next forty years."
The present point, however, is substantially more subtle than that diversity will (or won't) merely lead to us "doing things right" at historically acceptable levels of efficiency. That misses the heart of the tension, in fact. Witness the experience and expectations of the U.S. Forest Service, which has over the past decades sought to change as monolithic an organization as anyone is likely to see and one that was eminently successful in a limited niche — protect the forests, period (e.g., Kaufman, 1960). Massive expansions in agency image, missions, and culture are under way. The range of professions and skills has been enormously expanded; and an all-but-unanimously white and male work force is being diversified in race and gender to a degree far beyond the hopes of all but the most expansive visionaries of two or so decades ago. Two clear-eyed observers (Tipple and Wellman, 1991) describe the developmental progress quite precisely: "From Simplicity and Homogeneity to Complexity and Diversity."
The diversity-friendly Forest Service does not yet exist in all major dimensions, but two points provide useful guidance about progress so far. First, the objective was to make the service a more effective claimant for resources by sharply expanding its portfolio of clients and good works. Diversity followed that key decision; it definitely did not lead it.
Second, and related, the decades-long effort is not motivated by a need to "do things right." Indeed, the Forest Service had ranked very high on that dimension for a long time. Rather, the motivation was to "do the right things." As Greg Brown and Charles C. Harris conclude (1993, p. 85): "The combination of gender and professional diversification in the agency will create an organizational culture very different from the past and ... these changes could dramatically impact future resource decisions." They have that just perfect, in the eyes of this participant in early Forest Service discussions — often shouting matches, to put it mildly — about whether it was not better to let the service die as it had been rather than to run the risks of diversifying its products, services, and personnel.
There is no dearth of raw material for diversity, that much is dead certain. Globally, Elise Boulding (1990) draws attention to "the 10,000 societies" she sees "living inside 168 nation states." The associated complexities for orderly life are patently great. And as Cleveland reminds us (1993, p. 25), those complexities are diminished not a whit by two facts: that many persons may have what amounts to multiple memberships and that many of "the 10,000 societies" in no reasonable sense fall "inside" some conventional political jurisdiction. So points of friction will not only exist within "societies" and their encompassing large political jurisdictions, but more particularly also in two loci — often between those large political jurisdictions and always within people. Few nerve endings will be left unaffected.
Other aspects of diversity add to these basic raw materials, heightening the tendency toward "several from all," or "everyone is in a minority," rather than toward the more comforting "one for all, and all for one." These "other aspects" include age, sexual preferences, race, gender, cultural heritages, and so on.
Major counterforces will inhibit the free play of these centripetal forces, it seems certain, of which only three get highlighted here. As Cleveland reminds us (1993, esp. pp. 28–29), diversity is tied closely to the ongoing central contention about whether rights are group-centered or whether they inhere inalienably in individuals. Bluntly, rights can come generically to all by birth or by membership in categoric groups.
How one stands on this issue makes for momentous differences. Group-centered rights raise many issues beyond the sensitivity threshold of "human rights," as in concerns about differentiating "authentic" from "unauthentic" group members. In San Francisco, for example, a number of fire fighters and police officers apparently claimed Latino or Indian backgrounds to improve their chances for promotion as members of protected categoric groups. Hence a candidate might claim "a small amount of Spanish blood." But this encouraged counterclaims concerning whether he was a true mestizo or only a European Castilian, with the latter status carrying no weight for promotion purposes. How this contention about rights — group-centered or individual — gets worked on will be consequential for diversity's balance of tension/promise. There seems no imminent likelihood that this contention will be worked out.
Moreover, again relying on Cleveland (1993, p. 29), the primal human penchant for "us" versus "them" distinctions also faces powerful resistance from modern science and technology. This dynamic duo encourage thinking of the world as a unity and acting as if it were or should be — in Cleveland's words, "as a global market for goods and services and money, as an integrated biosphere to be monitored and protected, as a global community in which nuclear war and human hunger could conceivably be outlawed."
Finally, for present purposes, exercises in diversity face the probability of backlashes — social, emotional, and economic. Thus Ann M. Morrison (1992, esp. p. 168) reports that most of the managers her team interviewed saw fear of backlash as one of the worst potential problems limiting efforts to deal with issues of gender in organizations. Similarly, Susan C. Faludi (1991) explores a conservative backlash against the feminist movement in particular, and against women in general. This list of backlashes could be extended easily and even interminably.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Managing Diversity in Organizations by Robert T. Golembiewski. Copyright © 1995 The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,1. Circumscribing Diversity: Orientations at the Organizational Level of Analysis,
2. Five Developmental Emphases in Diversity: The Past Can Be Prologue to the Future, If We Pay Attention,
3. A, Maybe the, Reason Why Most Systems Are Diversity-Unfriendly: Bureaucratic Structures as Barriers,
4. Moving toward Diversity-Friendly Systems, I: Attractions of an Alternative Structure,
5. Moving toward Diversity-Friendly Systems, II: Aspects of an Affirming Infrastructure,
6. A Temporary Concluding, but No Conclusion,
References,
Index,