Discussion
Discuss About The International Journal Intercultural Relation.
Diversity refers to the recognition, understanding and the acceptance of the individual differences irrespective of the gender, age, class, race, physical ability, ethnicity, spiritual practice and sexual orientation (Harvey and Allard 2015). This view is supported by the fact that every individual is unique and share biological or environmental characteristics. There are two dimensions for classification of diversity, the primary and the secondary dimension. Primary dimension is the one that focuses on the gender, age and sexual orientation while the secondary dimension deals with the education, religion, income and the geographical location. Although the primary dimensions are easily noticeable but the secondary dimensions does not get on first encounter. They only become noticeable after considerable number of interactions with the individuals. The impact of globalization in the recent times led to the triggering of effective interaction amongst the people from the different backgrounds and cultures. This has also motivated people to become more open minded in the worldwide marketplace with competition from every corner of the continent. In such a scenario, questions arise on whether the acceptance of diversity is detrimental or beneficial to a workplace. In the changing scenario of the organization, diversity can never be a problem or a barrier to effective teamwork but a solution towards the benefit of the organization. The challenge however remains in extracting the essence of the diversity factor and tactically managing it for improving the organization and the people (Martin 2014).
Most of the organizations adopt diversity at the workplace based on their own perspective for becoming more creative and remaining open to the change. In the recent years, improving and increasing workplace diversity has become a vital issue for the management due to recognition of the change undergoing in the workplace (Saxena 2014). Although, management of diversity remains a challenge, managers are gradually learning the skills necessary for multicultural working ambience and are also undertaking the initiative of teaching others in valuing the cultural differences and treating all the employees with respect and dignity.
The United States first expressed the necessity for promoting workplace diversity during the period 1960 and 1970s. In the year 1961, President John F. Kennedy identified the committee of the president on the prospect of equal employment with the vision of putting an end to the discrimination in the employment by government (Barak 2016). The avoidance of discrimination gained momentum through the Civil Rights Act of the year 1964. However, the promotion of workplace diversity went further through the setting of a policy that promoted the chances of equal employment and ensuring equal treatment to everyone irrespective of skin color, human race and nationality. However, recent works has put forward queries against the concept of diversity management, its ability to enhance the productivity and lift the morale along with the underlying intention, assumptions and paradigms. Tatli ( 2011) put forward an argument against the use of the diverse people stating them as the repositories of the differences because they were divisive. On the other hand, Blommaert and Verschueren (2002) put forward that diversity management is not about managing the diversity but it deals with the management of the negative influence of the diversity that is unacceptable. This includes the fight against discrimination and racism.
Decision Making
According to Homan and Greer (2013), there are two competing views of the team diversity, heterogeneity and homogeneity. In the context of a team, cognitive diversity refers to the degree to which the members of a team differ based on experiences, perspectives and expertise. Based on the concepts of cognitive diversity researchers have put forward that diversity has a positive influence on effective teamwork due to the cognitive attributes contributed by each of the member. The cognitive diversity amongst the heterogeneous members helps in promoting, innovation, creativity and problem solving thereby leading to superior performance compared to the cognitive homogeneous team. In the context of the perspective of cognitive diversity, there are various counterarguments regarding acceptance of competing views of the diversity. The essay therefore, helps in conceptualizing the various characteristics of the diversity in a team for investigating its impact on effective teamwork.
The performance of the team represents a multidimensional construct that includes the measures of several outcomes such as qualitative team outcomes, team cohesion and quantitative production. According to Horwitz (2005), the research on a team focuses on the measures of the quantitative and operational objectives of a firm in determining the team outcome that includes volume of output/sales and the return on the equity. However, other qualitative and strategic objective helps in determining team outcome. Therefore, the three primary domain of the team outcome includes the quality, quantity and the social integration for accessing the strategic, operational and psychological outcomes of team diversity.
To understand the aspect of quality of team outcome for assessment of the impact of diversity it is necessary to consider decision-making, creativity and innovation, and problem solving.
Decision Making: Working teams often look for consensus and compliance in the process of decision-making (Rao and Tilt 2016). Although this is necessary in carrying out the team’s goals however an overemphasis on the behavior of consensus thinking result in the sub optimal process of decision making. When groups places too much importance on the attainment of the consensus then it fails in debating the various alternatives for the fearing the damage of group cohesion. In such scenario, team diversity helps in implementing different perspectives thereby ensuring healthy dissents and debates.
Innovation and Creativity: In present times, organizations are placing greater emphasis on the promotion of innovation and creativity as the means for competing in the turbulent market and adapting to the environmental uncertainty. The consensus of the organization research has put forward that heterogeneity of members’ acts as a medium for the introduction of the innovation and creativity in the teamwork. Richard, McMillan, Chadwick, and Dwyer (2003) led to the discovery that outcomes of the firm level influenced because of interaction between the growth strategy and the diversity. The aspect of diversity also influenced team performance through innovation strategy.
Innovation and Creativity
Problem Solving: Diversity in team also leads to better problem solving due to the extended scanning abilities and the consideration of the alternative perspective of the group in comparison to a non-diverse group (Richard and Miller 2013). Specifically diversity related to task such as difference in the education and the functional expertise leads to effective teamwork.
The quantity aspect of the team performance refers to the operational measures that includes both the measurable and the quantitative outcomes that includes the quantity of the produced outputs along with the time taken for completion of a task. There however exists a positive association between the team diversity and the quantitative aspects of the performance of a team. According to Edmondson and Nembhard (2009), there was association between functional diversity with the faster market time for the developmental effort of the new products in computer industry. Keller (2001) put forward that there existed that the functional expertise of diversity had positive but indirect impact on budget performance and scheduling of the development and research teams.
Social integration of the team depended on the proximal team outcome and is determined by two measures that included team cohesion and satisfaction of the team members. Team cohesion refers to the extent where the team members try to remain together for achieving the goals of the team (Rienties and Tempelaar 2013). On the other hand, the satisfaction of the team members portrays the extent to which the member remains intact in achieving the teams’ goals. Diversity can lead to social integration in teamwork.
The moderators that help in determining the effectiveness of the diversity on effective teamwork include team type, task complexity, team size and the task interdependence (Kalinoski et al. 2013).
Team Type: It is found that task types helps in moderating the efficiency of the teamwork. Srikanth, Harvey and Peterson (2016), distinguished teams based on tasks, tools and members where the project team and the top management remain diverse based on the task related attributes like the educational background and the expertise. Diversity ideally suits the top management due to the highly specialized and the complex tasks.
Task Complexity: The influence of team diversity on the team effectiveness is affected through structural aspects of the task. For instance, in achieving an uncertain and complex task, a diverse team pulls together the diverse expertise in formulating strategies for dealing with the task under complex situations.
Task Interdependence: The higher task interdependence implies that the team members would work in a collective manner for completion of the task while sharing the resources and the information. On the other hand, the task showing lower interdependence would have more independent team members thereby dropping the need for the collaboration and the coordination amongst the team members. Thus, team diversity will more under the conditions where the team needs the members for working in a collaborative and interdependent manner.
Problem Solving
Team Size: This acts as the possible moderator that helps in influencing the relationship between social integration and team diversity.
However, there are some observable advantages of managing a highly diverse workforce for guiding the process of decision making of a team. This includes (Martin 2014):
Higher Productivity level: Increasing productivity at workplace is one of the key challenges faced by the leaders, managers and the organization in general. Nevertheless, every organization is marked by its unique objectives, structure and strategies that might be used for challenging or address ing the company for increasing the productivity. One such strategy involves the adoption of diversity at workplace and its effective management.
Growth and Learning: Diversity at workplace and in teams helps in creation of an opportunity for the personal growth of an employee. When the workers get exposed to the newer ideas, culture and perspective it helps each individual in reaching out and having cleaner insight of the surrounding s and the global environment. The more the time spent with the culturally diverse co-workers help in slowly breaking barriers of ethnocentrism and xenophobia thereby encouraging team members to be experienced society members.
Encourage Effective Communication: Workplace diversity immensely strengthens relationship between the company and certain customer specific group through effective communication. The department of Customer service represents the core area requiring effectiveness in communication. For instance, a customer service representative can be effectively pair with the customers from his/her area or location thereby ensuring them with a feel at home experience.
Ensuring Diversified Experience: In a diverse team, the employee and the co-workers belong to a diverse background that put in certain degree of experience and perceptions that are unique during the performance of teamwork or a group task. Pooling the diverse knowledge and skills of the culturally discrete employees helps in immensely benefiting the company through strengthening the productivity and the responsiveness of the team for adapting to the conditions of change.
Conclusion:
To conclude, one can thus say that the prevalent usage of the diverse teams in the modern workplace provides the practitioners of the organization with a necessary empirical corroboration relating to the benefit of team diversity along with a demonstration of the forms of team diversity that holds importance in comparison to the strategic outcomes involving innovation and problem solving. Through the report, one can find that the diversity can also determine the competitive advantage of an organization provided it accept that the team diversity has unique influence on the team outcomes. Therefore, by shifting the importance from the individual attributes to the relational and compositional structures at the group level ultimately helps in enhancing the efficacy of the organization. Managers should prepare for changing certain portions of the organizational techniques when the techniques of diversity management do not work effectively. However, before doing so the manager must communicate it effectively. In addition, the managers must also adopt certain principles of change management for guiding them one the decision for making a change. Thus, should be some steps undertaken that involves constant development of the vision and strategy of the company and appointment of a person with a higher influence in leading the change. There should also be tangible reason provided for the acceptance of the change.
References:
Barak, M.E.M., 2016. Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage Publications.
Blommaert, J. and Verschueren, J., 2002. Debating diversity: Analysing the discourse of tolerance. Routledge.
Edmondson, A.C. and Nembhard, I.M., 2009. Product development and learning in project teams: The challenges are the benefits. Journal of product innovation management, 26(2), pp.123-138.
Harrison, D.A., Price, K.H. and Bell, M.P., 1998. Beyond relational demography: Time and the effects of surface-and deep-level diversity on work group cohesion. Academy of management journal, 41(1), pp.96-107.
Harvey, C.P. and Allard, M., 2015. Understanding and managing diversity: Readings, cases, and exercises. Pearson.
Homan, A.C. and Greer, L.L., 2013. Considering diversity: The positive effects of considerate leadership in diverse teams. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 16(1), pp.105-125.
Horwitz, S. K. (2005). The compositional impact of team diversity on performance: Theoretical considerations. Human resource development review, 4(2), 219-245.
Kalinoski, Z.T., Steele?Johnson, D., Peyton, E.J., Leas, K.A., Steinke, J. and Bowling, N.A., 2013. A meta?analytic evaluation of diversity training outcomes. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34(8), pp.1076-1104.
Keller, R.T., 2001. Cross-functional project groups in research and new product development: Diversity, communications, job stress, and outcomes. Academy of management journal, 44(3), pp.547-555.
Martin, G.C., 2014. The effects of cultural diversity in the workplace. Journal of Diversity Management (Online), 9(2), p.89.
Rao, K. and Tilt, C., 2016. Board composition and corporate social responsibility: The role of diversity, gender, strategy and decision making. Journal of Business Ethics, 138(2), pp.327-347.
Richard, O., McMillan, A., Chadwick, K. and Dwyer, S., 2003. Employing an innovation strategy in racially diverse workforces: Effects on firm performance. Group & Organization Management, 28(1), pp.107-126.
Richard, O.C. and Miller, C.D., 2013. Considering diversity as a source of competitive advantage in organizations. The Oxford handbook of diversity and work, pp.239-250.
Rienties, B. and Tempelaar, D., 2013. The role of cultural dimensions of international and Dutch students on academic and social integration and academic performance in the Netherlands. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 37(2), pp.188-201.
Saxena, A., 2014. Workforce diversity: A key to improve productivity. Procedia Economics and Finance, 11, pp.76-85.
Srikanth, K., Harvey, S. and Peterson, R., 2016. A dynamic perspective on diverse teams: Moving from the dual-process model to a dynamic coordination-based model of diverse team performance. The Academy of Management Annals, 10(1), pp.453-493.
Tatli, A., 2011. A multi?layered exploration of the diversity management field: diversity discourses, practices and practitioners in the UK. British Journal of Management, 22(2), pp.238-253.
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