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Managing Diversity in the Workplace The issues of gender and diversity in organizations are inextricably linked. Researchers, practitioners, and even laypersons have known for decades that women and racial minorities constitute a growing percentage of the labor force. More importantly, this growth exists at all levels of the organizational hierarchy. That said, however, groups that represent a statistical or social minority, or both continue to face challenges in U.
S. organizations. A variety of factors have been shown to influence work-related outcomes for women and people of color, including overall corporate climate, gender discrimination, sexual harassment, occupational segregation, and exclusion from mentoring opportunities. Although issues facing diversity in organizational careers are complex enough to fill several volumes, this paper examines many of the issues facing women, people of color, and yes, even White men, in todays organizations.
One of the most widely studied areas that examines the barriers to womens career advancement are the consequences of discrimination in the workplace. The most well-known illustrations of discrimination in the workplace are captured by the concept of the glass ceiling, which defines the invisible barrier that prevents many women and minorities from advancing into senior and executive management positions within organizations (Here, 76 - 79; Morrison, White, & Van Velson, 244). A number of studies have explored discrimination at work across factors such as job type, organization size and composition, and industry and target group involved. A study by the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission (1995) reported lower representation of women and minorities in occupations with high status, executive level positions, and board of directors. In addition, studies show that women experience barriers at all levels not only at the top (Marlow, Marlow, & Arnold, 36 - 45), and these barriers significantly retard a womans career advancement and detract from her performance in the profession. Work by a nonprofit organization known as Catalyst has devoted substantial attention to the issue of womens advancement in organizations.
Examples of differential treatment within organizations are one of the most widely cited reasons why women fail to advance to levels of authority and visibility within organizations (Catalyst, 1998). Another area that has received a great deal of attention in work on the glass ceiling focuses on earnings disparities between men and women. Legislation of the 1960 s drew considerable attention to discrimination at work as manifested in wage gaps and inequities in incentives and benefits. The notion of comparable worth and pay equity received a great deal of attention during the past two decades (see Corcoran & Duncan, 3 - 20). Efforts such as equal pay for equal work and affirmative action helped reduce some of this well-documented wage gap based on gender (Murrell & Jones, 77 - 92), but the pay for women of color continues to lag behind their White counterparts.
Recent attention has focused on why sex discrimination in wages in some occupations and industries continues and the particular issue of wage differences for women in top positions within organizations (e. g. , Catalyst, 1998). One explanation for the persistence of earnings discrimination in earnings that is frequently cited is the existence of what has been labeled as dual labor markets (Morrison & Von Glinow, 200 - 208; Morrison, White & Van Velson, 267). A greater number of men are employed in the primary labor market compared to women. This primary market offers better jobs with higher pay rates. Conversely, the secondary labor market is dominated by women and minorities and contains jobs that are low-paying and low-status.
What is key to the notion of the dual labor market is that it represents a structural barrier to womens career advancement that explains why there is relatively little movement between the two markets, especially for women and minorities. This dual labor market for women provides an impermeable barrier for career advancement and is of critical importance in explaining the gender gap in earnings. Diversity, which aims to create workforces that mirror the populations and customers that organizations serve, seems more inclusive and possibly less threatening than affirmative action. Some say that diversity's very inclusiveness has marginalized racial issues. Others point out that diversity offers more hope than anything that came before it. Benton sees promise in the diversity strategy, arguing that putting the spotlight back on race and pushing for compliance will only raise tensions and divisiveness.
If you continue to concentrate just on race, youll continue to get people to be steadfastly opposed, he says. If we continue to deal just with compliance, people will continue to sabotage the system. If you broaden the scope through diversity, you " ll avoid the inevitable defensive rationalizations. However, others see big disadvantages to diversity's broader approach. Lisa Willis-Johnson, chair of the Society for Human Resource Managements Workplace Diversity Committee, says that any diversity person will say we dont just look at race, we look at a number of factors.
This tells you they " ve discounted race. Race was a sacrificial lamb to launch diversity and make it palliative to corporate America. Who is corporate America? White males. And they dont want to hear about race.
Carol Kulik, a management professor at Arizona State University, in Tempe, Ariz. , also feels diversity takes away from race (HR Magazine, 2002). If I were trying to significantly improve race relations, I would not advocate such a broad approach, she says. George Gamble, director of the International Institute for Diversity and Cross-Cultural Management at the University of Houston, seems to take pages from both Benton and Willis-Johnson. By broadening the scope, the diversity movement has diminished the impact of color, he says. But at the same time, if [the diversity movement] hadnt happened, we wouldnt have had anything at all (HR Magazine, 2002). Alston thinks that efforts to level the playing field for racial minorities are dwindling, courtesy of the diversity movement.
You dilute [race], and youll be pushed back down the ladder because youve got other groups that are competing for the spotlight, he says. Some believe the argument that diversity training dilutes race is divisive. I dont play the zero sum game, that theres only enough here for some people and others have to be out in the cold, says Sharon Parker, president of the American Institute for Managing Diversity Inc. , a nonprofit research organization in Atlanta. The reality is that all the areas need emphasis (HR Magazine, 2002).
Conflict in the workplace is virtually unavoidable, and although there is an extensive body of research on the topic, precious little has been devoted to understanding the differences, or similarities for that matter, regarding how groups that represent different racial cultures reconcile conflict. Davidson's work begins to fill this gap in the literature. Using two laboratory studies, Davidson first establishes that there are different cultural responses to conflict between Blacks and Whites. Even more valuable, however, is his attempt to understand why those differences exist. Davidson cleverly uses attribution theory (Ross, 173 - 220) to provide a theoretical underpinning regarding why Blacks tend to be more emotionally expressive in their response to conflict than their White counterparts. Focusing more on organizational culture rather than racial / ethnic culture, Wootens paper uses Oliver's five predictors of institutional behavior to provide a framework for understanding why public accounting firms tend to adopt women-friendly human resource management policies.
Among other things, her study shows that public accounting firms (1) experience workforce diversity initiatives as a catalyst for social obligations to women-friendly policies; (2) conform to pressure from stakeholders (clients and governing bodies) encouraging the adoption of women-friendly policies; and (3) experience competition for labor and therefore adopt policies that would make them an attractive employer to all possible candidates for employment. Continuing with the focus on organizational context, Young and James studied how a firms demographic profile might influence ones attitudes and behaviors toward the organization. More specifically, they studied the effects of token status in an organization. What makes this study different from how one might usually think of tokenism is that their minority group was White men, male flight attendants to be precise. Using survey data they found that the relationship between male token status and organizational commitment, intent to quit, and job satisfaction was a function of the male tokens's elf-esteem, experience of role ambiguity, and job fit. Chrobot-Mason and Di Clementi bring us back to micro and psychological issues associated with gender and diversity in the workplace.
In particular, they examine the antecedents and consequences associated with various strategies gay and lesbian employees use to reveal their minority status at work. We are particularly pleased to include this research into the special issue because although diversity issues around race and gender have made their way into mainstream scholarly literature, research on gay and lesbian issues are still relatively new. Scholars in the area of gender and diversity in organizations have focused considerable attention on key issues such as the glass ceiling, discrimination, sexual harassment, affirmative action, mentoring, job interruptions, career mobility, part-time work, and leaves of absence. Contributors to this special issue represent a range of the empirical and theoretical work in this area as well as some emerging topics. Although it is clear that there have been a number of advancements for women and people of color in organizations, considerable barriers remain. Thus, the need for future research on gender and diversity in organizations remains significant.
Clearly one focus of future research efforts should be toward defining systems and structures that are effective in advancing positive outcomes for women and people of color in organization. In addition, more attention should be paid on the impact of legislative efforts toward a more inclusive workplace, especially within the global business environment. Third, more longitudinal studies that track the impact of social, economic, and managerial factors on outcomes for women and people of color are needed. These types of studies are essential in separating sustainable diversity in organizations from one-shot program interventions. In addition, a number of authors within this special issue caution scholars within the area of gender and diversity in organizations on their choice of conceptual models and methodological approaches. Smith, Di Tomaso, Farris, and Cordero argue that scholars should not lump women and minorities together as a standard approach to research and also caution against aggregating all Whites together in future studies.
In their work, issues such as favoritism and bias in performance ratings were significantly effected by the relative number, power, and status of these various groups within the organization. These authors argue that findings such as this are often masked because researchers often do not attend factors such as proportional representation within the workplace or within their own research samples. Goldberg's research included in this issue makes a similar argument through findings within the context of sexual harassment. Her work reveals that womens responses to negative events such as sexual harassment at work are, indeed, impacted by the gender proportions within their specific workgroup. The representation of women and people of color within the workplace also impacts ubiquitous phenomenon such as organizational commitment, as the research by David Porter demonstrates.
His work shows that conceptions and attributions of behaviors that demonstrate commitment to the organization are gendered constructs that have important consequences for womens progress within the organization. Thus, the proportional representation of women and people of color within organizations and research samples are topics that should receive more attention in future research. In addition to micro issues for future work in the area of gender and diversity in organizations, two papers within this special volume cite macro level issue for future study. Work by Bad and Dickson reinforces this point through data showing that organizational cultures that are supportive of gender equity are more likely to achieve higher proportions of women in managerial positions than organizations lacking this emphasis.
Alison Konrad and her colleagues provide data on the impact of identity and support of macro level policies and programs for affirmative action within the workplace. Her findings suggest that differences in worldview between women and men pose a threat to the success of anti discrimination efforts such as affirmative action. Lastly, research by Ebrahim i, Young and Luk reminds us that gender and diversity within organizations is not strictly a U. S.
phenomenon. Their paper reviews work on management and gender within an international context and reminds us that organizational effectiveness and diversity must be examined within the global context of the workplace. Thus, future research must not only focus on micro level issues facing a diverse workforce, but macro level issues impacting organizational policies and programs within a global work environment. Clearly each of the papers within this special issue raise important concerns that should be addressed by future work in this area.
The hope of the authors who have contributed their work to this project and the editors who have organized these efforts is that the issues raised herein will not only stimulate additional working in the area of gender and diversity in organizations, but will also uncover new solutions to the barriers and challenges facing women and people of color within a rapidly changing, global workplace. Bibliography: Here, A. J. The glass ceiling metaphor: Towards a theory of managerial inequity. Canberra Bulletin of Public Administration, 1994 Morrison, A. , White, R. , & Van Velson, E.
Breaking the glass ceiling. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987 Marlow, N. D. , Marlow, E. K. , & Arnold, V.
A. Career development and women managers: Does one size fit all? Human Resource Planning, 1995 Morrison, A. M. , & Von Glinow, M. A. Women and minorities in management.
American Psychologists, 1990 Corcoran, M. , & Duncan, G. J. Work history, labor force attachment, and earnings differences between the races and sexes. Journal of Human Resources, 1979 Murrell, A. J. , & Jones, R. Assessing Affirmative Action: Past, present and future.
Journal of Social Issues, 52 (4), 1996 Federal Glass Ceiling Commission. Good for business: Making full use of the nations human capital. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1995 Robert J. Grossman.
Is Diversity Working? HR Magazine March, 2000 Ross, L. The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed. ), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173 - 220). New York: Academic Press, 1977 Additional readings: James, E.
H. Race-related differences in promotion and support: Underlying effects of human and social capital. Organization Science, 2000, 11 (5) Murrell, A. J. , Frieze, L H. , & Olson, J. E. Mobility strategies and career outcomes: A longitudinal study of MBAs.
Journal of Vocational Behavior, 1996 Thomas, D. A. Racial dynamics in cross-race developmental relationships. Administrative Science Quarterly, 1993
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