Implications of Workforce Diversity

Workforce Diversity

In quite a number of organizations there has been an increase in workforce diversity as compared to early times, this has been brought about by demographic factors such as immigration and economic factors including globalization (Christian et al., 2006). In many economies, the minority workforce is expected to rise as the years come and go. This expected shift in the workforce has brought a lot of interest in programs aimed at managing workforce diversity. The process of adopting such programs has been affected by various challenges especially regarding the change in organizational behavior. In order to manage workforce diversity effectively, it is vital that the distinction between functional and non-functional diversity is clearly identified. It should be understood that functional diversity has positive contribution to organizational behavior and effectiveness while non-functional diversity deter organizational performance, this is why it is important to understand the impact of diversity on organizational behavior.

Before discussing further on the impact of workforce diversity, it is significant that this term is defined. Hornby (2005) defines workforce as the "totality of the people working in an organization." This means that whenever workforce diversity is being discussed, both similarities and differences that there are among individuals must be taken into consideration. The other important factor is that workforce diversity encompasses all individuals that are part of the organization. Even though most of the times it is assumed that workforce diversity just considers demographic characteristics of individuals, this is far from the truth since all differences and similarities that exist among the workforce in an organization and which make each and every person unique is put into consideration (Kreitner and Kinichi, 2004; Thomas, 2006). Therefore those who are tasked to manage workforce diversity must deal with both similarities and differences of individuals at one go, such a manager must examine, determine and establish such features with the aim of integrating them.

Discussion

There are a number theories attempting to define workforce diversity, these theories have given rise to various and sometimes contradictory hypotheses with regard to the impact of diversity on group process and performance. Social categorization and similarity-attraction theory predict negative effects, including reduction in inter-group communication, lesser satisfaction and commitment, and rise in labor turnover. However, from the perspective of information and decision-making, there is a hypothesis of positive effects of diversity, the major reason is that there is an expectation that work-teams that are diverse should process information in a different manner, since team members are naturally expected to bring forth differing opinions. With this it is expected that the outcome is more creativity and increased performance. There are cases where conflicts are provoked by diversity in work-team composition and there are several findings that have tried to explain this. There has been a proposal that identification of individual group members with distinct groups may lead to interruption of group dynamics (Pelled et al., 1999). Self-categorization theory has also used this line of argument to show that 'out-group' members evoke more abhorring, suspicion, and competition than 'in-group' members (Hogg et al., 1993). Even so, biases targeted at out-group members appear to come up automatically, the perception of a prominent quality more or less inevitably generates a corresponding categorization (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990). Further to these, if out-group members originate from cultures or sub-cultures which are unfamiliar to the in-group members, linguistic or paralinguistic differences may breed miscommunication and misunderstanding (Hambrick et al., 1998). Less profound differences associated with attitudes, perceptions, and expectations may bring about understated but nevertheless formidable deterrents to communication and understanding in diverse groups. When these factors are put together, diverse groups will became a perfect breeding ground for misunderstanding and discord. Generally, the assumption that all dimensions of diversity can have both positive and negative impacts has been supported empirically (Jackson et al., 2003). The emphasis laid by social categorization theory is that similarities and dissimilarities can lead to categorizations, which then leads to favoring one's group to the detriment of other out-groups. When considering intra-group level, this approach is typically known as relational demography. Therefore, problematic formation of sub-groups ("us" versus "them") can develop where there is categorizations in a workforce.

Whenever such sub-groups have cropped up, the organization starts facing challenges in effectively managing the diversity of the workforce. This is because such sub-groups will inculcate stereotypes and prejudice that are more often inaccurate. This is especially so when the existing differences are considered as weaknesses, this has a direct effect on competence and quality. Secondly, most employees still find it hard to balance between career and family, more so, women. This comes out prominently when considering working hours since most women are directly involved in raising children and managing other household chores which makes their working hours a bit rigid (Kanter, 2004). The other challenge is the tendency of individuals to resist change. Both organizational and personal change is significant when an organization wants to manage diversity effectively. Therefore whenever the individuals making up the organization's workforce are not willing to change, it becomes difficult to integrate them into a single harmonious force.