Abstract

Shehroze Shahid, 500707283, Kemi Fola-Salawu,

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WORKFORCE DIVERSITY
Assignment 2

Workforce diversity means similarities and differences among employees in terms of age,
cultural background, race, religion, gender and sexual orientations. Diverse workforce is
important to employers and employees because people who are hired are of different cultures,
religions, ages and races. They might find it hard to adjust to the environment of the organization
because everyone is different. Also, because everyone is of different age, they may have a
different mentality and way of thinking and people may not agree on one point or come to a
conclusion. To supervise a diverse workforce is a challenge for any organization. (Ankita
Saxena, 2014). Also, workforce diversity is important to employers and employees because it
refers to the composition of work units in terms of cultural or demographic characteristics that
are important and meaningful in the relationships among group members (DiTomaso, Post, and
Parks-Yancy, 2007). Companies have implemented management and diversity programs
(Weisinger, 2008) and have spent over eight millions dollars on such programs (Hansen, 2003).
Diversity has been justified because it is thought that diversity increases productivity, innovation
and creativity (Finkelstein and Hambrick, 1996). People who come various backgrounds can
solve problems in different ways and have access to various resources allowing for more
creativity and productivity (Williams & OReilly, 1998), making the workplace more interesting
and satisfying to work in (Podsiadlowski, 2002). Having diverse workforce can allow for
companies to interact better with internation markets or diverse customers (Podsiadlowski,
Grschke, Kogler, Springer, and Zee, 2012). In conclusion diversity is an important part of
organizations because it allows companies to have more flexibility of which markets to go into or
which kinds of customers it wants to have. It allows companies to get work done more
productively because employees may know how to solve it better in a different way which may
be more effective. Diverse workforces allow companies to be more productive and innovative.

The article Workforce Diversity and Inequality: Power, Status, and

Numbers, talks about how workforce diversity refers to a combination of
work units in terms of cultural or demographic characteristics that are
important and meaningful in relationships among team members. Workforce
diversity is often thought of as a scope of mangement research but it is from
and is relevant to sociology and psychology. The article is highlighting two
issues which are: the importance of research of inequality and the need to
connect discussions of workforce diversity to the structural telationships of
the society. The article also highlights power in terms of who get what
position and power in the organization and who gets to have access to
resources within the organization. Who gets rewarded for their contributions
to the organization. Status is a part of life and it communicates a way of life
and shows who gets to be treated with honour or respect (Bourdie, 1985).
Status may be undermined and may have new challenges because of
economic and technological changes (Weber, 1968). Diversity for some
people has always been about the numbers. It is about the number of
diverse groups or how much diversity is there in an organization. In
conclusion, workforce diversity is important in organizations nad it helps to
creat storng bonds between groups. Inequality highlights power which is the
rank of a certain individual in an organization, status which is they way
someone gets treated in society wheather it may be positive or negative and
numbers which is the number of diverse groups.

The article Managing a culturally diverse workforce: Diversity

perspectives in organizations analyses why and how organization manage
diversification of different cultures in the workplace and determine the
organizations diverse perspectives. The article has two cases. The first case
revealed the organizations apprioaches to diversaity and how it is connected
to hiring and managing people of different cultures. The second case showed
the testing and development of the Diversity Perspective Questionnaire
(DPQ). The DPQ is a measure of jow organizations look at diversity.
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