Diversity in Organisations Flashcards
Defining Diversity
Two major forms or workplace diversity, surface-level diversity and deep level diversity.
Surface level diversity: gender, race, ethnicity, age, do not necessarily reflect how people feel or think, but may confine them to certain stereotypes
Deep level diversity: difference in values and personality of each employee and is a key determinant in helping people get to know each other
Discrimination
Effective diversity management refers to working to eliminate unfair discrimination.
Discriminate: make judgement about individuals based on stereotypes regarding their demographic group
Types of discrimination:
1. Discriminatory policies or practices: actions that deny equal opportunity to perform and rewards
2. Sexual harassment: unwanted sexual advances and other verbal or physical conduct
3. Intimidation: overt threats or bullying of specific groups
4. Mockery and insults: jokes or negative stereotypes
5. Exclusion: exclusion of certain opportunities or events
6. Incivility: disrespectful treatment
Biographical Characteristics
Personal characteristics that are objective and can be easily obtained from personal records, such as age, gender, disability.
Age: positive relationship between age and job satisfaction and job performance
Gender: performance is equal and woman prefer more flexible work
Race: biological heritage that people use to identify themselves, tend favour colleagues of their own race for promotion, pay raises etc
Disability: higher performance evaluations but lower performance expectations and less likely to be hired
Employee tenure: length of time that employee spend with same employer, positively related with productivity, job satisfaction and negatively related to absenteeism and turnover rates
Religion: employers who face religion discrimination show higher levels of absenteeism, turnover and health problems
Ability
Individual’s capacity to perform the various tasks in a job
Two sets of factors that make up ability:
1. Intellectual abilities: abilities needed to perform mental activities
- memory, spatial visualisation, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, perceptual speed, verbal comprehension, number aptitude
2. Physical abilities: abilities needed to perform physical activities
- composed of strength factor (dynamic strength, trunk strength, static strength, explosive strength), flexibility factor (extent flexibility, dynamic flexibility), and other factors (body coordination, balance, stamina)
Diversity Management
Processes and programme by which the managers make everyone aware and sensitive to the needs and difference of others.
- Attracting, selecting, developing and retaining diverse employees, gaining a diverse workforce from different backgrounds like minorities.
- Make employees perform tasks in diverse groups with various traits, this might harm the work quality because they might be outside their comfort zone but can facilitate positive performance because it may bring new ideas to the group.
- Effective diversity programs involve workshops and training to help managers understand a diverse workforce, it will teach them how to treat people fairly and also help maintain a healthy, conflict-free work environment.
Attitudes
Evaluative statements or judgements concerning objects people or events, how we feel about something.
3 components:
1. Cognition: feeling about the way things are and opinions or beliefs (reality)
2. Affect: the emotional segment
3. Behaviour: intention for a certain behaviour towards something or someone
Cognitive Dissonance
Incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behaviour and attitudes.
People try to maintain consistency among their attitudes and behaviour. They do this by altering either attitudes or behaviour.
Their willingness to tackle dissonance depends on three factors:
1. the importance of attitudes or behaviour
2. their ability to control the causes of this dissonance
3. the rewards of dissonance
Job Attitudes
- Job satisfaction
- Job involvement
- Psychological empowerment
- Organisational commitment
- Perceived organisational support
- Employee engagement
Job Satisfaction
Positive feeling about one’s job from an evolution of its characteristics.
Measuring job satisfaction:
1. The single global rating method: method which asks employees to answer one question about the degree of his/her job satisfaction for 1-5
- The summation of job facets: method which asks employees to complete a questionnaire and express their thoughts on different job elements
What causes job satisfaction?
1. Interesting jobs that provide training, variety, independence, control, interdependence, feedback, social support, and interaction with co-workers outside the workplace are strongly related to job satisfaction
- Core self-evaluation: bottom-line conclusions of individuals concerning their capabilities, their competence and personal worth, employees that show positive core self-evaluations are usually more satisfied
- Pay correlates with job satisfaction and overall happiness
- Corporate social responsibility (CSR), self regulated actions to benefit society beyond what is required by law, increasingly affects employee job satisfaction
Outcomes of Job Satisfaction
- Job performance: happy workers are more likely to be productive workers
- Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB): all the positive and constructive employee actions and behaviours that aren’t part of their formal job description, job satisfaction is moderately correlated with OCB
- Customer satisfaction: satisfied employees appear to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Life satisfaction: job satisfaction is positively correlated with life satisfaction, and your attitudes and experiences in life spill over into your job approaches and experiences
Impact of Job Dissatisfaction
- The exit response: behaviour towards leaving the organisation
- The voice response: activity and constructive attempts to improve conditions
- The loyalty response: passively but optimistically waiting for conditions to improve
- The neglect response: passively allows conditions to worsen
Personality
The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to an interacts with others.
Individual’s personality is the result of heredity and environment
- Heredity: factors determined at conception, thus by biological and physiological factors
Measuring personality:
1. Self-report surveys
2. Observer-ratings surveys provide and independent assessment of personality
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Consists of 100 questions that examine the feelings and the actions of individuals under specific typical circumstances
Classified as:
- Extroverted vs Introverted: extroverts are sociable and outgoing, introverts are shy and quiet
- Sensing vs Intuitive: sensing types are practical and choose routine and order, intuitive rely on unconscious processes and look at the “big picture”
- Thinking vs Feeling: thinking types apply logic to handle problems, while feeling types rely on their personal values and emotions
- Judging vs Perceiving: judging types prefer their world to be structure and want to control, perceiving types are more flexible and spontaneous
The Big Five Personality Model
Five basic dimensions underlie all others and encompass most of the significant variation in human personality.
- Extraversion: measures the comfort level of someone regarding relationships and social skills
- positively related with performance - Agreeableness: individual’s propensity to defer to others
- positively related with satisfaction - Conscientiousness: captures reliability of a person, these people are organised, dependable and persistent
- positively related with performance - Emotional stability: ability of an individual to withstand stress
- positively related with satisfaction - Openness to experience: degree of imagination, sensitivity and curiosity of an individual
- positively related with effective leadership
Type A/B Personality
Type A: always willing to achieve more and more in less time
Type B: someone that can relax without guilt and is not hurried by a sense of time urgency
Personality Traits
Core self-evaluation: the degree to which people like or dislike themselves
- positive core self-evaluation tends to perform better
Machiavellianism: degree to which a person is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance and believes that ends can justify the means
Narcissism: extreme sense of self-importance, need excessive admiration, a sense of entitlement and are arrogant
- Narcissists tend to believe they are effective leaders but are rates by their colleagues as worse leaders
Self-monitoring: ability to adjust behaviour to external, situational factors
Risk taking: differs in willingness to take changes
Proactive personalities: identify opportunities, show initiative, take action and persevere until meaningful change occurs
- creates positive change in their surroundings
Personality and Situations
Effect of particular trains on organisational behaviour depends on the situation
Situation Strength Theory: proposes that the way personality translates into behaviour depends on the strength of the situation
Strength determined by 4 elements:
1. Clarity: degree to which cues about work duties and responsibilities are available and clear
- Consistency: extent tow which cues regarding work duties and responsibilities are compatible with one another
- Constraints: extent to which individuals’ freedom to decide or act is limited by forces outside their control
- Consequences: degree to which decisions or actions have important implications for the organisation or its members, clients, supplies and so on
Trait Activation Theory (TAT): predicts that some situation, events, or interventions “activate” a trait more than others
Values
Basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable than another mode of conduct or end-state of existence. In general, values are rather stable and enduring than fluid and flexible.
Terminal vs Instrumental Values
Terminal values: desired end-state
Instrumental values: preferable types of behaviour to achieve the end-states
Personality-Job Fit Theory
Used to match job requirements with personality characteristics. Consists of six personality types.
1. Realistic
2. Investigative
3. Social
4. Conventional
5. Enterprising
6. Artistic
It depends on the degree to which individuals successfully match their personalities to a job.
The fit of employee’s values with the culture of the organisation predicts job satisfaction, commitment, and low turnover
Cultural Values
Hosftede:
1. Uncertainty avoidance
2. Power distance
3. Individualism vs collectivism
4. Masculine vs feminine
5. Long term vs short term
Globe
1. Uncertainty avoidance
2. Power distance
3. Collectivism
4. In-group collectivism
5. Gender egalitarianism
6. Assertiveness and completeness
7. Human orientation
8. Performance oriented
9. Future oriented
