Rethinking Diversity in Public Organizations

Diversity in the Workplace

With globalization, different people ascribing to different cultures have crossed national borders in search of greener pastures. Similarly, multinational companies have expanded their operations across different countries bring about issues of cultural diversity in the workplace. While diversity brings about increased efficiency due to the expertise and varied methods of pursuing tasks, diversity may result into numerous challenges such as culture shock and disagreements. The following study endeavors to discuss how diversity in the workplace is related to and might be promoted to democracy.

Estlund (2003) posits that the workplace is an important site for the creation and maintenance of social capital and networks of trust and norms that aid people to pursue shared objectives. The workplace is an essential avenue establishing social connections across typical divisions of gender and race. With increased emigration, different people from different family, cultural, and religious backgrounds are increasingly working together in organizations bringing about issues of diversity. The term diversity in the workplace largely revolves around the dimensions which influence the perspectives and identities that people bring such as education, profession and religious beliefs just to mention a few. Workplace diversity entails the act of learning from others on the concept of respecting others and dignity. It also extends to include the creation of workplace practices and environments that encourage learning from others and appreciation of diversity. Estlund (2003) holds that the workplace, though considered as an undemocratic institution, contains the seeds to reinforce democracy. She further adds that the workplace provides the most promising platform for racial integration.

According to Levine (2003), organizational commitment to diversity can be understood from two themes. Levine argues that the denial of hatred that expresses the operation of a fantasy of the organization. The fantasy envisions the company as a home for those with strong unique group identifications while failing to reflect on how attachment to group identity can promote exclusion and hate. The second argument equates the useful knowledge in the company with life experience connected to group identity. Diversity can be understood from three theoretical paradigms namely access-and-legitimacy, learning-and-effectiveness and discrimination-and-effectiveness.

Cheney (1995) posits that a democracy hardly ever extends to the workplace. He further cites that different researchers have researched on how democratic ideals apply to the workplace. For instance, he affirmed that employee's rights from a political standpoint arguing that workers should share in equal measure during decision making processes all levels their ventures. He further adds that workplace democracy is evident in many angles such as offering employees greater control through semi-autonomous work teams and quality circles.

Democratic ideals such as equality and fairness can promote workplace diversity in that it allows women and minorities to be given an equal chance of obtaining employment in organizations (Selden and Selden, 2001). In addition, the strengthening of affirmative action programs which falls in line with democratic ideals. According to Estlund (2003), affirmative action in the workplace, which entails deliberately using race or sex in employment decisions helps in promoting diversity at the workplace. In addition, diversity serves to promote the democratic ideals of fairness and equality.