MGT 291 Chapter 2 Exam Study Guide

Goal of Affirmative Action

to outlaw discrimination and to encourage organizations to proactively prevent discrimination

IBM's Four Pillars of Change

- Demonstrate leadership support: deepen awareness - Engage employees as partners - Integrate diversity with management practices - Link diversity goals to business goals: demographic customer segments, etc.

Unequal access to organizational networks

Women and minorities are often excluded from organizational networks, which can be important to job performance, mentoring opportunities, and being seen as a candidate for promotion

Exposure to People with Different Backgrounds and Characteristics Component to Diversity Management

adds a more personal approach to diversity by helping managers get to know and respect others who are different.

Affirmative Action

an artificial intervention aimed at giving management a chance to correct an imbalance, injustice, a mistake or outright discrimination that occurred in the past. Focuses on achieving equality of opportunity in an organization

Strategies to Diversity Management Program

education, enforcement, exposure to people with different backgrounds and characteristics

Diversity Management

enables people to perform up to their maximum potential. It focuses on changing an organization's culture and infrastructure such that people provide the highest productivity possible.

The Emerging Paradigm: Connecting Diversity to Work Perspectives (Learning and Effectiveness?):

enables them to incorporate employees' perspectives into the main work of the organization and to enhance work by rethinking primary tasks and redefining markets, products, strategies, missions, business practices, and even cultures. Tapping diversity's true benefits.

Goal of EEO

to ensure fairness in hiring, promotion and other workplace practices

6 Barriers to Inclusion

1. "Like me" bias 2. Stereotypes 3. Prejudice 4. Perceived threat of loss 5. Ethnocentrism 6. Unequal access to organizational networks

Tools to create effective diversity programs

1. Engage managers in solving the problem 2. Expose mangers to people from different groups 3. Encourage social accountability for change.

Stereotypes

A belief about an individual or a group based on the idea that everyone in a particular group will behave the same way or have the same characteristics

Corrected Misconceptions of Affirmative Action

Affirmative action does not legitimize quotas, quotas are illegal. They can only be imposed by judges. Affirmative action does not under any circumstances require companies to hire unqualified people. Affirmative action does not foster the type of thinking that is needed to effectively manage diversity. Women wanted to be hired based on merit, not affirmative action. Liberals like affirmative action more. White people tend to like affirmative action less than minorities.

Reasonable Accommodation

An adjustment made in a system to accommodate or make fair the same system for an individual based on a proven need. That need can vary. Accommodations can be religious, physical, mental or emotional, academic or employment related and are often mandated by law

Pregnancy Discrimination Act

Broadens discrimination to cover pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions, projects job security during maternity leave

Reciprocal Mentoring

Matches senior employees with diverse junior employees to allow both individuals to learn about a different group, is one technique to promote diversity awareness and inclusion

Why most diversity programs fail

Most diversity programs focus on controlling managers' behavior, and as studies show, that approach tends to activate bias rather than quash it. People rebel against rules that threaten their autonomy.

Surface-level Diversity

Observable differences in people, including race, age, physical abilities, physical characteristics and gender. Characteristics that are observable and known about people as soon as they're seen

Perceived threat of loss

If some employees perceive a direct threat to their own career opportunities, they may feel that they need to protect their own prospects by impeding diversity efforts

Deep Level Diversity

Individual differences that cannot be seen directly, including goals, values, personalities, decision making styles, knowledge, skills, abilities and attitudes. These "individual characteristics" take longer to learn but can have stronger effects on group and organizational performance than surface level characteristics

Prejudice

Outright bigotry or intolerance for other groups

"Like me" Bias

People prefer to associate with others they perceive to be like themselves

The Access-and-Legitimacy Paradigm:

Predicated on the acceptance and celebration of differences. "We are living in an increasingly multicultural country, and new ethnic groups are quickly gaining consumer power. Our company needs a demographically more diverse workforce to help us gain access to these differentiated segments. We need employees with multilingual skills in order to understand and serve our customers better and to gain legitimacy with them. Diversity isn't just fair; it makes business sense.

American with Disabilities Act

Prohibits discrimination against essentially qualified employees with physical or mental disabilities or chronic illness, requires "reasonable accommodation" to be provided so they can perform duties

Age Discrimination in Employment Act

Prohibits discrimination in employees over 40 years old, restricts mandatory retirement

Civil Rights Act

Prohibits discrimination on basis of race, color, religion, national origin or sex

Diversity

Refers to the variety of observable and unobservable similarities and differences among people. Combination of characteristics can result in diversity

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one's own language, native country, and cultural rules and norms are superior to all others

The Discrimination and Fairness Paradigm

leaders who look at diversity through this lens usually focus on equal opportunity, fair treatment, recruitment and compliance with federal EEO requirements. "Prejudice has kept members of certain demographic groups out of organizations such as ours. As a matter of fairness ands to comply with federal mandates, we need to work toward restricting the makeup of our organization to let it more closely reflect that of society. We need managerial processes that ensure that all our employees are treated equally and with respect and that some are not given unfair advantage over others.

Discrimination

occurs when employment decisions are based on factors that are not job or performance related

Educational Component to Diversity Management

one part of this component is to prepare non-traditional managers for increasingly responsible posts. The other is to help traditional managers overcome their prejudice in thinking about and interacting with people who are of a different sex or ethnicity.

Enforcement Component to Diversity Management

puts teeth in diversity goals and encourages behavior change.