Making differences matter a new paradigm for managing diversity

Using the thinking behind the access-and-legitimacy paradigm, they also saw it as bad for business.

Paradigms for understanding and managing diversity include

In some cases, the effort has led to substantial increases in organizational diversity. Well-articulated and widely understood mission companys mission must be clearly communicated to all employee so they may strive to achieve common goals. Similar with the first paradigm, the second paradigm also has significant drawbacks. For their part, project leaders who were women and people of color felt that they were not accorded the same level of authority to carry out that work as their white male peers. Perhaps the most extreme example of an organization in which all these factors are at work is the United States Army. The Idea in Practice The Integration Paradigm The integration paradigmtranscends assimilation and differentiation—promoting equal opportunity and valuing cultural differences. When employees use their differences to shape new goals, processes, leadership approaches, and teams, they bring more of themselves to work. When one firm opened its annual strategy conference to people from all hierarchy levels, everyone knew their contributions were valued. By correctly apply and continuously improving those two competencies, managers will be able to tap into the holistic benefits of diversity in each of their company, resulting in good career progress, happy employees and low turnover rate. The common definition of diversity emphasize on quantity the numbers of employees from minority groups in a company and their contribution. And in doing so, they are able to bring more of their whole selves to the workplace and identify more fully with the work they do, setting in motion a virtuous circle. Our company needs a demographically more diverse workforce to help us gain access to these differentiated segments. Moreover, if she were then to defend her opinion by citing, let us say, her personal knowledge of the ethnic group the company wanted to reach, she might risk being perceived as importing inappropriate attitudes into an organization that prides itself on being blind to cultural differences.

The article reported that Xerox has officially recognized employee caucus including one for minority groups. The paradigm has therefore led to new professional and managerial opportunities for women and people of color.

Making differences matter analysis

These companies who learned that they need to use new diversity paradigm later on adopted the third paradigm which is Learning-and-Effectiveness Paradigm. This caucus actively support diversity issues in work and communicate with senior executives about potential diversity related work issues. Meanwhile, there also was some concern expressed about tension between white managers and nonwhite subordinates, who claimed they were being treated unfairly. What was occurring, she realized, was a mismatch between the cultural background of the recently promoted woman and the cultural environment of her work setting. The definition of this paradigm is companies taking advantage from their workforce diversity by pushing for access to diverse clientele segments to gain legitimacy to market their products or services for these clients. Through ubiquitous definition of diversity, companies managements felt that they already addressed and solved diversity issues in their respective company if they give a portion of job positions to employees from minority groups. Leaders who look at diversity through this lens usually focus on equal opportunity, fair treatment, recruitment, and compliance with federal Equal Employment Opportunity requirements. Its market-based motivation and the potential for competitive advantage that it suggests are often qualities an entire company can understand and therefore support. But today managers are voicing a second notion as well.

These skills are technical, administrative, management and people skill. From this report we can draw conclusion that Xerox is looking at diversity from the third paradigm. Encourage openness company tolerates debate in workplace and support constructive conflicts.

For their part, project leaders who were women and people of color felt that they were not accorded the same level of authority to carry out that work as their white male peers.

The Access-and-Legitimacy Paradigm focuses on match the companys diversity workforce with consumer diversity structure. Rather than seeing differences in the way project leaders defined and approached their work as an opportunity to gain new insights and develop new approaches to achieving its mission, the firm remained entrenched in its traditional ways, able to arbitrate such differences only by thinking about what was fair and what was racist.

Effective diversity management is best demonstrated when an organization

While this can be beneficial for the companys operation, the more complete benefits of workforce diversity are still untapped. Significant number of companies made defensive moves due to legal requirements by hiring workers from underrepresented groups and didnt go beyond that. Managers can learn to assess whether they need to change their diversity initiatives and, if so, how to accomplish that change. Such a mission enables people to be clear about what the company is trying to accomplish. Access responded by hiring Europeans who had attended North American business schools and by assigning them in teams to the foreign offices. Fairness is an idea to treat all employees equally without partiality. Difference was valued within Access Capital—hence the development of country teams in the first place—but not valued enough that the organization would try to integrate it into the very core of its culture and into its business practices. The first paradigm is Discrimination-and-Fairness Paradigm. The organizational culture must create an expectation of high standards of performance from everyone. But today managers are voicing a second notion as well. They feel more committed to their jobs—and their companies grow. If we find out that the companies we working for are still on the first or second paradigm, it is our responsibility to introduce to the third paradigm to responsible persons for further follow-up. Download