BUS 387 Dahm Ch 2

Individualistic cultures

cultures in which people define themselves as an individual and form looser ties with their groups

Masculine cultures

cultures that value achievement, competitiveness, and acquisition of money and other material objects

Feminine cultures

cultures that value maintaining good relationships, caring for the weak, and emphasizing quality of life

Collectivistic cultures

cultures where people have stronger bonds to their groups and group membership forms a person's self identity

Expatriate

someone who is temporarily assigned to a position in a foreign country

Uncertainty avoidance

the degree to which people feel threatened by ambiguous, risky, or unstructured situations. Cultures high in uncertainty avoidance prefer predictable situations and have low tolerance for ambiguity. Employees in these cultures expect a clear set of instructions and clarity in expectations. Therefore, there will be a greater level of creating procedures to deal with problems and writing out expected behaviors in manuals.

Power distance

the degree to which the society views an unequal distribution of power as acceptable

Diversity

the ways in which people are similar or different from each other

Culture

values, beliefs, and customs that exist in a society

Faultlines

- A faultline is an attribute along which a group is split into subgroups - For example, members of the different subgroups may avoid communicating with each other, reducing the overall cohesiveness of the team. Research shows that these types of teams make less effective decisions and are less creative - Research shows that even groups that have strong faultlines can perform well if they establish certain norms. When members of subgroups debate the decision topic among themselves before having a general group discussion, there seems to be less communication during the meeting on pros and cons of different alternatives. Having a norm stating that members should not discuss the issue under consideration before the actual meeting may be useful in increasing decision effectiveness

Suggestions for Managing Demographic Diversity

- Build a Culture of Respecting Diversity - Make Managers Accountable for Diversity - Diversity Training Programs - Review Recruitment Practices - Affirmative Action Programs

The Role of Ethics and National Culture

- Diversity and Ethics - Diversity Around the Globe

Specific Diversity Issues

- Gender Diversity in the Workplace - Earnings Gap - Glass Ceiling - Race Diversity in the Workplace - Age Diversity in the Workplace - Religious Diversity in the Workplace - Employees with Disabilities in the Workplace - Sexual Orientation Diversity in the Workplace

Suggestions for Managing Cultural Diversity

- Help Employees Build Cultural Intelligence - Avoid Ethnocentrism - Listen to Locals - Recognize That Culture Changes - Do Not Always Assume That Culture Is the Problem

Benefits of Diversity

- Higher Creativity in Decision Making - Better Understanding and Service of Customers - More Satisfied Workforce - Higher Stock Prices

Race Diversity in the Workplace

- Race is another demographic characteristic that is under legal protection in the United States. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) prohibits race discrimination in all employment-related decisions. Yet race discrimination still exists in organizations. - Ethnic minorities experience both an earnings gap and a glass ceiling. In 2008, for every dollar a Caucasian male employee made, African American males made around 79 cents while Hispanic employees made 64 cents

Challenges of Diversity

- Similarity-Attraction Phenomenon - Surface-level diversity - Deep-level diversity - Faultlines - Stereotypes

Four types of affirmative action programs

- Simple elimination of discrimination - Targeted recruitment. - Tie-breaker - Preferential treatment

Stereotypes

- Stereotypes are generalizations about a particular group of people - The problem with stereotypes is that people often use them to make decisions about a particular individual without actually verifying whether the assumption holds for the person in question

Age Diversity in the Workplace

- The workforce is rapidly aging. By 2015, those who are 55 and older are estimated to constitute 20% of the workforce in the United States - Research shows that age is correlated with a number of positive workplace behaviors, including higher levels of citizenship behaviors such as volunteering, higher compliance with safety rules, lower work injuries, lower counterproductive behaviors, and lower rates of tardiness or absenteeism - In the United States, age discrimination is prohibited by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which made it illegal for organizations to discriminate against employees over 40 years of age

Diversity and Ethics

- When managing a diverse group of employees, ensuring the ethicality of organizational behavior will require special effort. This is because employees with different backgrounds or demographic traits may vary in their standards of ethics. - In addition to demographic diversity, cultural diversity introduces challenges to managing ethical behavior, given that cultures differ in the actions they view as ethical. Cultural differences are particularly important when doing cross-cultural business.

In the United States, the workforce is becoming increasingly multicultural, with close to __% of all employees being born outside the country

16%

Better Understanding and Service of Customers

A company with a diverse workforce may create products or services that appeal to a broader customer base

Higher Company Performance

As a result of all these potential benefits, companies that manage diversity more effectively tend to outperform others. Research shows that in companies pursuing a growth strategy, there was a positive relationship between racial diversity of the company and firm performance

Lower Litigation Expenses

Companies doing a particularly bad job in diversity management face costly litigations

Review Recruitment Practices

Companies may want to increase diversity by targeting a pool that is more diverse

Higher Stock Prices

Companies that do a better job of managing a diverse workforce are often rewarded in the stock market, indicating that investors use this information to judge how well a company is being managed. For example, companies that receive an award from the U.S. Department of Labor for their diversity management programs show increases in the stock price in the days following the announcement

Help Employees Build Cultural Intelligence

Cultural intelligence is a person's capability to understand how a person's cultural background influences one's behavior. Developing cultural intelligence seems important, because the days when organizations could prepare their employees for international work simply by sending them to long seminars on a particular culture are gone

Recognize That Culture Changes

Cultures are not static—they evolve over the years. A piece of advice that was true 5 years ago may no longer hold true

Diversity Around the Globe

Demographic diversity is a fact of life in the United States. The situation is somewhat different in other parts of the world. Attitudes toward gender, race, disabilities, or sexual orientation differ around the world, and each country approaches the topic of diversity differently.

Employees with Disabilities in the Workplace

Employees with a wide range of physical and mental disabilities are part of the workforce. In 2008 alone, over 19,000 cases of discrimination based on disabilities have been filed with the EEOC. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) prohibits discrimination in employment against individuals with physical as well as mental disabilities if these individuals are otherwise qualified to do their jobs with or without reasonable accommodation.

Avoid Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's own culture is superior to other cultures one comes across. Ethnocentrism leads organizations to adopt universal principles when doing business around the globe and may backfire. In this chapter, we highlighted research findings showing how culture affects employee expectations of work life such as work-life balance, job security, or the level of empowerment. Ignoring cultural differences, norms, and local habits may be costly for businesses and may lead to unmotivated and dissatisfied employees.

Similarity-Attraction Phenomenon

If a hiring manager chooses someone who is racially similar over a more qualified candidate from a different race, the decision will be ineffective and unfair. In other words, similarity-attraction may prevent some highly qualified women, minorities, or persons with disabilities from being hired.

Higher Creativity in Decision Making

In a diverse work team, people will have different opinions and perspectives. In these teams, individuals are more likely to consider more alternatives and think outside the box when making decisions.

Religious Diversity in the Workplace

In the United States, employers are prohibited from using religion in employment decisions based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Moreover, employees are required to make reasonable accommodations to ensure that employees can practice their beliefs unless doing so provides an unreasonable hardship on the employer.

Gender Diversity in the Workplace

In the United States, two important pieces of legislation prohibit gender discrimination at work. The Equal Pay Act (1963) prohibits discrimination in pay based on gender. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) prohibits discrimination in all employment-related decisions based on gender. Despite the existence of strong legislation, women and men often face different treatment at work. The earnings gap and the glass ceiling are two of the key problems women may experience in the workplace.

Build a Culture of Respecting Diversity

In the most successful companies, diversity management is not the responsibility of the human resource department. Starting from top management and including the lowest levels in the hierarchy, each person understands the importance of respecting others. If this respect is not part of an organization's culture, no amount of diversity training or other programs are likely to be effective.

Tie-breaker

In these programs, if all other characteristics are equal, then preference may be given to a minority candidate. In fact, these programs are not widely used and their use needs to be justified by organizations. In other words, organizations need to have very specific reasons for why they are using this type of affirmative action, such as past illegal discrimination. Otherwise, their use may be illegal and lead to reverse discrimination. These programs are viewed as less fair by employees.

Diversity Training Programs

Many companies provide employees and managers with training programs relating to diversity. However, not all diversity programs are equally successful. You may expect that more successful programs are those that occur in companies where a culture of diversity exists. A study of over 700 companies found that programs with a higher perceived success rate were those that occurred in companies where top management believed in the importance of diversity, where there were explicit rewards for increasing diversity of the company, and where managers were required to attend the diversity training programs

Make Managers Accountable for Diversity

People are more likely to pay attention to aspects of performance that are measured. In successful companies, diversity metrics are carefully tracked

Affirmative Action Programs

Policies designed to recruit, promote, train, and retain employees belonging to a protected class

Surface-level diversity

Surface-level diversity includes traits that are highly visible to us and those around us, such as race, gender, and age. Researchers believe that people pay attention to surface diversity because they are assumed to be related to deep-level diversity

Earnings Gap

The median earnings of women who worked full time in 2008 was 79% of men working full time.

Sexual Orientation Diversity in the Workplace

There is currently no federal law in the United States prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation, but as of 2008, 20 states as well as the District of Columbia had laws prohibiting discrimination in employment based on sexual orientation

Targeted recruitment.

These affirmative action plans involve ensuring that the candidate pool is diverse. These programs are also viewed as fair by most employees.

Simple elimination of discrimination

These programs are the least controversial and are received favorably by employees.

Preferential treatment

These programs involve hiring a less qualified minority candidate. Strong preferential treatment programs are illegal in most cases.

Do Not Always Assume That Culture Is the Problem

When doing business internationally, failure may occur due to culture as well as other problems. Attributing all misunderstandings or failures to culture may enlarge the cultural gap and shift the blame to others. In fact, managing people who have diverse personalities or functional backgrounds may create misunderstandings that are not necessarily due to cultural differences

Listen to Locals

When doing cross-cultural business, locals are a key source of information. To get timely and accurate feedback, companies will need to open lines of communication and actively seek feedback

More Satisfied Workforce

When employees feel that they are fairly treated, they tend to be more satisfied. On the other hand, when employees perceive that they are being discriminated against, they tend to be less attached to the company, less satisfied with their jobs, and experience more stress at work.

Deep-level diversity

Which includes values, beliefs, and attitudes. We want to interact with those who share our values and attitudes, but when we meet people for the first time, we have no way of knowing whether they share similar values. As a result, we tend to use surface-level diversity to make judgments about deep-level diversity.

Glass Ceiling

While women may be represented in lower level positions, they are less likely to be seen in higher management and executive suites of companies. In fact, while women constitute close to one-half of the workforce, men are four times more likely to reach the highest levels of organizations