the impact of workforce diversity on organizational effectiveness
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TRANSCRIPT
THE IMPACT OF WORKFORCE DIVERSITY ONORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
INTRODUCTION
• the quality or state of having many different forms, types, ideas
OR
• the state of having people who are of different races or who have different cultures in a group or organization
• Globalization web increase demographic diversity in the workforce
• Increased competition demand from workgroups to generate innovations, flexibility, and quick
decision making for sustained business success
• Demographic changes and laws aimed at promoting fairness in recruitment practices are urging
diversity within work teams
INTRODUCTION
• Diversity as multi-ethnic (previous studies)
• work place (workforce) diversity is found to have a contrasting dual implication on
organizational effectiveness.
• Milliken and Martins (1996) opines that
'diversity appears to be a double-edged sword, increasing the opportunity for
creativity as well as the likelihood that group members will be dissatisfied and fail to
identify with the group’
INTRODUCTION
One side
• Greater innovation
• improved strategic decision making
and
• organizational performance
Other side
• increase conflict
• reduce social cohesion
and
• increase employee turnover
business organizations are contending with the challenges of effectively managing a diverse workforce
RESEARCH HYPOTHESES
(1) Workgroups that are demographically diverse are likely to be less effective in
workgroup contexts that emphasize competition oriented cultures than in contexts that
do not emphasize competition-oriented cultures.
(2) Workgroups that are demographically diverse are likely to be more effective in
workgroup contexts that pursue growth oriented business strategies than in contexts
that do not pursue growth-oriented business strategies.
LITERATURE REVIEW
• Workplace diversity is a complex, controversial, and political phenomena
(Janssens & Steyaert, 2003)
Perspective about Diversity
Narrow Perspective
Broad perspective
Nkomo,1995
NARROW PERSPECTIVE
• Diversity should be restricted to specific cultural categories such as race and gender
• Diversity based on race, gender and ethnicity differ from the diversity based on
organizational function, abilities or cognitive orientation
So,
• Narrow concept is deficient as cultural diversity dimension interacts with other
dimension of diversity
BROAD PERSPECTIVE
• Encompasses all the possible ways people can differ
Race, gender, age and other
demographic categories
Values, abilities, organizational
function, tenure, personality
CLUSTER CLASSIFICATIONMcGath, Berdahl & Arrow (1995)
workplace diversity
demographic characteristic
values,views and attitudes
task-related knowledge, skills and capacities
Status in the organization
personal, cognitive and
attitudinal styles
social categorization (turner)
• categorization of people based on salient attributes like gender, ethnicity or age
• result in stereotyping on the basis of these differences
similarity/attraction theory• Asserts that similarity
on salient and non-salient attributes like race or values increases interpersonal attraction and attachment
information and decision-making theory• examines the impact of
distribution of information and expertise on work-teams
Theories about diversity
CONFLICTS BY DIVERSITY
• Disrupt group dynamics
• Out-group members evoke more disliking, distrust, and competition than in group members
• the perception of a salient quality (e.g., race) more or less inevitably triggers a corresponding categorization
• Biases seem to unfold automatically
• Linguistic or paralinguistic differences may foster miscommunication and misunderstanding
• Problematic formation of sub-group (“us” versus “them”)
DIVERSE TEAM VS. HOMOGENOUS TEAMS
• Relative to homogeneous groups,
members of diverse work-groups
display less attachment to each other
• Show less commitment to their
respective organizations
• Communicate less with one another,
miss work more often
• Experience more conflict
• And take more time to reach decisions
• Dissimilar belief structures
i.e., priorities, assumptions
about future events, and
understandings of alternatives
based on previous training and
Experiences
• divergent preferences and
interpretations of tasks
THE CONTROVERSY Whether or not there is a positive connection
BetweenWORKPLACE DIVERSITY AND ORGANIZATIONAL
PERFORMANCE Still persists
METHODOLOGY
• Gleaned both from primary and secondary data sources
• Random sample of work teams within the bank’s 62 branch network in Lagos Island
and Mainland, using questionnaires
• Sample size surveyed is 120 work-teams
• Response rate to the survey was 40%
Dependent
variable
Performance Measure
independent variabl
e
Cultural Diversity
FINDINGS
• Gender is negatively related to both employee productivity and performance bonus, but is significantly related to employee productivity
• Age is positively related to employee productivity, and it is significantly positive in its correlation to performance bonus
• Ethnicity is insignificantly negative in its relationship to both employee productivity and performance bonus
• Tenure is insignificantly positive in its correlation to employee productivity, and is not related to Bonus
• In terms of the moderating effects of workgroup contexts (competition oriented workgroup culture, and growth-oriented strategy) of diversity factors, the research results indicate that context effect is insignificant.
RECOMMENDATION&
CONCLUSION
• Diversity sometimes is associated with effectiveness, other times with negative
outcomes, and often it has no effects at all.
• Company executives are not likely to see a direct positive relationship between
workforce heterogeneity and organizational effectiveness.
• The effects are likely to be determined by the strategies a firm pursues and by how
organization leaders and participants respond to and manage diversity
The impact of workforce heterogeneity on organizational effectiveness when moderated by workgroup contexts is minimal
Thank you!