ITM Bridging Topic 08 – Managing Diversity: Introduction To Management, Assignment, KU, Singapore

Learning Objectives

LO 1 Describe how changes workforce make diversity a critical organizational and managerial issue

LO 2 Distinguish between affirmative action and managing diversity

LO 3 Explain how diversity, if well managed, can give organizations a competitive edge

LO 4 Identify challenges associated with managing a diverse workforce

LO 5 Define monolithic, pluralistic, and multicultural organizations

LO 6 List steps managers and their organizations can take to cultivate diversity

Managing Diversity

• Managing diversity
  -Managing a culturally diverse workforce by recognizing the characteristics common to specific groups of employees while dealing with such employees as individuals and supporting, nurturing, and utilizing their differences to the organization’s advantage.

Components of Workforce Diversity

Gender Issues

• The overall labor participation rate of women rose throughout the 1970s
• Almost 60 percent of marriages are dual-earner marriages today.
• One of every four married women in two-income households earns more than her husband does

Glass ceiling :

•  an invisible barrier making it difficult for women and minorities to move beyond a Glass ceiling certain level in the corporate hierarchy

Sexual harassment:

• Conduct of a sexual nature that has negative consequences for employment.

Age

•  From 2008 to 2018, the fastest-growing age group is expected to be workers 55 and older.
• The 25- to 44-year-old group will increase its numbers slightly, so its share of the total workforce will fall.
• And young workers between the ages of 16 and 24 will actually be fewer in number.

Minorities and Immigrants

•  Asian and Hispanic workforces are growing the fastest, followed by the African-American workforce in USA
• All over the world, people want to work in different countries, thus higher immigration

Mentally and Physically Disabled People

• The largest unemployed minority in the world
• The share of the population with a disability is growing due to assistive technologies etc.

Managing Diversity versus Affirmative Action

• Affirmative action
  -Special efforts to recruit and hire qualified members of groups that have been discriminated against in the past.
  -The intent is not to prefer these group members to the exclusion of others, but to correct for the history discriminatory practices and exclusions in the past.

Advantages of Employee Diversity

The Challenges of Diversity

Building on Diversity

Managing across Borders

Expatriates:

•  Parent-company nationals who are sent Expatriates to work at a foreign subsidiary

Host-country nationals:

• Natives of the country where an overseas subsidiary is located

Third-country nationals

•  ProNatives of a country other than the home country or the host country of an overseas subsidiary.

Understanding Cultural Issues

Ethnocentrism:

•  The tendency to judge others by the standards of one’s group or culture, which are seen as superior

Culture shock

•  The disorientation and stress associated with being in a foreign environment.

Hofstede Cultural Dimensions

Hofstede’s Five Dimensions

Tutorial: Group Discussion Questions

Choose any company which is planning to internationalise to Singapore. Explain its strategies based on Singapore’s Hofstede’s 5 dimensions below: