1] affirmative action refers to purposeful steps taken by an organization to create employment opportunities for minorities and women.* By contrast, diversity has a broader focus that includes demographic, cultural, and personal differences.
2] affirmative action is a policy for actively creating diversity, but diversity can exist even if organizations don't take purposeful steps to create it.
3] affirmative action is required by law
for private employers with 50 or more employees, whereas diversity is not.
4] affirmative action programs and diversity programs have different purposes. The purpose of affirmative action programs is to compensate for past discrimination, which was widespread when legislation was introduced in the 1960s; to prevent ongoing discrimination; and to provide equal opportunities to all, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Organizations that fail to uphold affirmative
action laws may be required to:
- hire, promote, or give back pay to those not hired or promoted;
- reinstate those who were wrongly terminated;
- pay attorneys' fees and court costs for those who bring charges against them; or
- take other actions that make individuals whole by returning them to the condition or place they would have been had it not been for discrimination.
5] affirmative action is basically a punitive approach. By contrast, the general purpose of diversity
programs is to create a positive work environment where no one is advantaged or disadvantaged, where "we" is everyone, where everyone can do his or her best work, where differences are respected and not ignored, and where everyone feels comfortable.* So, unlike affirmative action, which punishes companies for not achieving specific sex and race ratios in their workforces, diversity programs seek to benefit both organizations and their employees by encouraging organizations to value all kinds of
differences.
- Despite the overall success of affirmative action in making workplaces much fairer than they used to be, many people argue that some affirmative action programs unconstitutionally offer preferential treatment to females and minorities at the expense of other employees, a view accepted by some courts.
- cost savings: reducing turnover, decreasing absenteeism, and avoiding expensive lawsuits. Because of lost productivity and the cost of recruiting and selecting new workers, companies lose substantial amounts of money when employees quit their jobs. When companies lose, the average individual settlement amounts to more than $600,000.* And settlement costs can be substantially higher in class-action lawsuits, in which individuals join together to sue a company as a group.
- attracting and retaining talent: Female employees at Google were once twice as likely as male employees to quit the company. Company data revealed that many of the women who left were young mothers. Google head of human resources Laszlo Bock responded by substantially increasing parental leave at the company.
- driving business growth: tapping into "diverse customers and markets" was the number-one reason managers gave for implementing diversity programs. More people, more service. Diverse people, diverse views and more divers market availability.
- higher quality problem solving: though diverse groups initially have more difficulty working together than homogeneous groups, diverse groups eventually establish a rapport and do a better job of identifying problems and generating alternative solutions, the two most important steps in problem solving
- Age discrimination is treating people differently [for example, in hiring and firing, promotion, and compensation decisions] because of their age.
- The victims of age discrimination are almost always older workers, and the
discrimination is based on the assumption that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks."
- It's commonly believed that older workers are less motivated, less productive, more prone to illness and accidents, not interested in learning new things, cost more, and make greater—more expensive—use of health care benefits
- The older people are more costly the longer they stay with a company, the more the company pays for salaries, pension plans, and vacation time. But older workers cost companies
less, too, because they show better judgment, care more about the quality of their work, and are less likely to quit, show up late, or be absent, the cost of which can be substantial.
- As for the widespread belief that job performance declines with age, the scientific evidence clearly refutes this stereotype. Performance does not decline with age, regardless of the type of job
- Prevention:
1] hiring and promotion decisions on the basis of qualifications, not age.
2] monitor the
extent to which older workers receive training
3] younger and older workers interact with each other
- Some studies have found that the disparities are due to preexisting differences in training, education, and skills. When African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and whites have similar skills, training, and education, they are much more likely to have similar jobs and salaries.
- Other studies, however, provide increasingly strong direct
evidence of racial or ethnic discrimination in the workplace.
- the degree to which someone is active, assertive, gregarious, sociable, talkative, and energized by others.
- In contrast to extraverts, introverts tend to be focused, thoughtful, quiet, reserved, and energized by ideas.
- For the best results in the workplace, introverts and extraverts should be correctly matched to their jobs.
- degree to which
someone is not angry, depressed, anxious, emotional, insecure, or excitable.
- People who are emotionally stable respond well to stress. In other words, they can maintain a calm, problem-solving attitude in even the toughest situations [for example, conflict, hostility, dangerous conditions, or extreme time pressures].
- By contrast, emotionally unstable people find it difficult to handle the most basic demands of their jobs under only moderately stressful situations and become
distraught, tearful, self-doubting, and anxious.
- the degree to which someone is organized, hardworking, responsible, persevering, thorough, and achievement oriented.
- Conscientious employees are also more likely to engage in positive behaviors, such as helping new employees, coworkers, and supervisors, and are less likely to engage in negative behaviors, such as verbally or physically abusing coworkers or stealing.
-
which is the most common method of approaching diversity
-focus: assimilation
-focuses on equal opportunity, fair treatment, recruitment of minorities, and strict compliance with the equal employment opportunity laws.
- Under this approach, success is usually measured by how well companies achieve recruitment, promotion, and retention goals for women, people of different racial/ethnic backgrounds, or other underrepresented groups.
- The primary limitation is that the focus of
diversity remains on the surface-level diversity dimensions of sex, race, and ethnicity.
- Benefit: brings fairer treatment and increases demographic diversity.
Focus: differentiation
- the acceptance and celebration of differences to ensure that the diversity within the company matches the diversity found among primary stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers, and local communities.
- This is similar to the business growth advantage of diversity
discussed earlier in the chapter.
- The basic idea behind this approach is to create a demographically diverse workforce that attracts a broader customer base.
- The primary benefit of this approach is that it establishes a clear business reason for diversity. Like the discrimination and fairness paradigm, however, it focuses only on the surface-level diversity dimensions of sex, race, and ethnicity.
- Furthermore, employees who are assigned responsibility for customers and
stakeholders on the basis of their sex, race, or ethnicity may eventually feel frustrated and exploited.
- focuses: on integrating deep-level diversity differences, such as personality, attitudes, beliefs, and values, into the actual work of the organization.
- One sign that a company hasn't yet created a learning and effectiveness paradigm is that people withhold their opinions for fear of being seen as different.
- The learning and effectiveness
paradigm is consistent with achieving organizational plurality.
- 4 benefits:
1] values common ground: Like the fairness paradigm, it promotes equal opportunity for all individuals. And like the access paradigm, it acknowledges cultural differences among people and recognizes the value in those differences. Yet this new model for managing diversity lets the organization internalize differences among employees so that it learns and grows because of them. Indeed, with the model fully in
place, members of the organization can say, 'We are all on the same team, with our differences—not despite them.'
2] makes a distinction between individual and group differences: managers can achieve a greater understanding of diversity and their employees by treating them as individuals and by realizing that not all African Americans, Hispanics, women, or white males want the same things at work.
3] less likely to encounter the conflict, backlash, and divisiveness sometimes associated
with diversity programs that focus only on group differences.
4] focuses on bringing different talents and perspectives [that is deep-level diversity] together to make the best organizational decisions and to produce innovative, competitive products and services.