Article Summary
Discuss About The Managing Contradictions Of Social Corporate.
In recent times there has been an exponential increase in the competition. The companies across the world have to fight among themselves to acquire and retain customers. Therefore, it is critical that organizations should have strong strategy in place. Typically, the strategic direction of any company would depend on number of internal and external factors. The organizations have direct control over the internal factors and they should not have problem to manage the internal factors. However, it is not easy for organizations to manage the external factors. The key external factors that have a deep impact on strategic direction of any organization are political factors, social factors, economical factors, technological factors, environmental factors and legal factors (Ashikali & Groeneveld, 2015). Therefore, it is important that organizations should conduct a PESTLE analysis before making any strategic decision. The macro-environment encompasses the broad environmental context in which a company’s industry is situated that includes strategically relevant components over which the firm has no direct control. Another key model that should be used to assess the macro environment of the firm is the ‘Porter Five Forces Model’. With Porter Five Forces model, organizations can realize the threat that they face from competitors’ products and substitute products.
In this era of globalization, organizations have realized that employees and human resources are their biggest assets (Bjerregaard & Lauring). One of the key agenda of organizations is to get the best talent from the market. It is still easy to get the best talent; however, it is difficult to retain the best talent. There are cases when people will leave the organization because of lack of fitment. Every large organization or a small organization that focuses on talent would have people from different caste and backgrounds (Richard, Roh & Pieper, 2013). Therefore, it is important that organizations must have a culture of diversity management wherein the employees from different cultural background can work together. The objective of this paper is to discuss and compare three articles in the field of workplace diversity. The key databases included in the literature review are Google Scholar, ebscohost, CINAHL database, etc.
It was interesting to analyse the sources from different databases. The summary of these three articles can be discussed as:
The first article is ‘Harnessing demographic differences in organizations: What moderates the effects of workplace diversity’? In this article, authors argued that business is one of the vital contributors of a country in terms of economic aspects. In this context, it can be argued that both the government and business world want to improve the quality of business operation to make more profit. In this regard, most of the companies have focused on innovation to gain competitive advantages. Authors highlighted that innovation should also be used in the human resource management function to maintain the diversity in the organization. This article, is an interesting article to read as authors provided several examples of large organizations that have actually improve the productivity with the use of diversity management practices.
Article Analysis
The second article is , ‘An Emic Approach to Intersectional Study of Diversity at Work: A Bourdieuan Framing’. In this article, authors highlighted that for any business entity small or big, the prime business objective is revenue and profit maximization. From an organizational perspective, diversity management is the practice and culture to support multiple and varied lifestyles and behaviour of employees. The organizations that score high on diversity management do not differentiate employees based on caste, religion, background, etc. These organizations acknowledges the fact that every employee is different in nature and it is the responsibility of management to provide good working conditions to employees where they can work to achieve work life balance (Tatli & Ozbilgin, 2015). By studying this article, it has come to know that there are some factors that have associated with the diversity management. Observation method was applied to find out the relevant information about the research topic of diversity management. This research work has helped to identify the use of diversity management in private sectors in Australia and across the globe. The process of evaluation of data also has used the gather data about importance of innovation accounting in decision making process of Public sector organisations of the country. It has gathered data from 15 companies to identify the process and sectors of innovation accounting.
The third article is, ‘The link between diversity and equality management practice bundles and racial diversity in the managerial ranks: Does firm size matter’. In this article, authors highlighted that the financial outcome of innovation also has to consider as vital to make the balance in business process. Two different terms ‘Innovation’ and ‘Accounting’ make the different meaning for the business organisations (D’Netto, Shen, Chelliah & Monga, 2014). Under this concept the business measures actual progress of innovation in terms of customer retention, customer satisfaction, which effect on financial management and other business operations. The clear concept about this matter will help the business organisations to take decision about future strategies in terms of innovation. Innovation is the new concept that have included in the modern business process. Thus, this study intends to identify how innovation plays a key role in case of accounting and financial management procedure. The concept of workplace diversity allows the business to do the same. In this regard, the aim of the study is to evaluate the impact of innovation accounting on financial management (Sabharwal, 2014).
The above articles provide a detailed analysis of workplace diversity. One of the key themes or similarity among these three articles is the use of innovation in workplace diversity and human resource management function. As per the view of Guillaume, Dawson, Otaye?Ebede, Woods & West (2017), innovation is the most valuable aspect of business and human resource management to make distinct image on customer mind. All the companies should use the process of innovation to gain customer attraction and customer loyalty. Innovation measures the progress of the business; it also takes care of financial growth of the business against the innovation in product or business process. Therefore, it is important that innovation should be practiced in human resource management function also. On the other side Tatli and Ozbilgin (2015), also stated that innovation helps the business organisation to set future finance functions and influences innovation to get more positive result in terms of business profit. Therefore, innovation helps the financial management process to take decisions.
Another common or similar theme between these three articles is the discussion around the benefits of diversity management. The key benefits of diversity management for organizations is improved productivity of employees, high retention, improved profit margins, etc.( Mahadeo, Soobaroyen & Hanuman, 2012). The focus on the diversity within the workplace also brings innovation as employees gets a platform to learn from the experiences of different people. With the focus on diversity management, employees get the opportunity to learn from the best practices of other employees. It is observed that the productivity of the team can improve a lot if the team is diverse in nature (Richard, Roh & Pieper, 2015). In one of the articles, the researcher has chosen positivism research philosophy, which will help to conduct the research work based on observable facts those are related with the research topic. Under the positivism philosophy the researcher will be able to set the data collection process based on the need of the research work. Positivism philosophy also will be effective to gain relevant data from different sources as per requirement.
The articles discussed the role of diversity management for large organizations and diversity management is not much of the issue for small organizations. One of the examples in the article was the case of IBM. One of the renowned business organisations IBM has focused on diversity management to make the business more effective against market demand. In accordance with diversity management practices, it is vital concept to indicate validation of the product or service and it is important for both new and established business. Business organisations should use right metrics of diversity management benefits to understand the cause and effect of practices on business. It has increased the business volume of the firm and makes effect on value of intangible assets positively (Ashikali & Groeneveld, 2015).
It would be correct to say that research findings of all the articles matter as every article has something new to offer. These three articles provided three different perspective of diversity management with some similarities. The findings from these articles can be applied in real settings. The research findings would come useful for large organizations which have employees from different cultural backgrounds.
One of the inferences that can be derived from above articles is that it is not easy to practice diversity management. The key recommendations that would help organizations to manage diversity management and take benefits can be discussed as:
- The use of practices of diversity management would need initial investment from organization. There is always a possibility that the people from different cultural background would have conflicts among themselves as they are not well aware of the culture of other people (Sabharwal, 2014). Therefore, it is recommended that firms should be willing to make the initial investment. The initial investment can be arranged from different internal and external stakeholders. The bottom line is that all the stakeholders should be kept informed about the practices of diversity management.
- There are various models of diversity management and it is important that organizations should use the model based on their internal and external environment (Klarsfeld, Ng & Tatli, 2012). The choice of model for organizations would depend on number of internal and external factors. It is recommended that organizations should analyse both internal and external factors before making any decision.
- It is recommended that organizations should collect regular feedback from employees about diversity management practices (Sabharwal, 2014). The mechanism of feedback is an important mechanism that would truly help the organizations to take complete advantage of the principles of diversity management. The feedback from employees should be documented so that different stakeholders have real time access of the diversity management practices.
Conclusion
The above paper discuses and analyses the three articles in the field of diversity management. With the above discussion it can be said that diversity management is important for organizations. It is important that organizations should have a dedicated policy around diversity management. The real benefits of diversity management can be achieved only when different stakeholders join hands. The literature review from three articles suggest that organizations should analyse their strengths and weaknesses before deciding the best model of diversity management. The organizations should also plan the diversity management objectives from a long term perspective. One of the widely used tool of diversity management is benchmarking. With benchmarking, organizations can actually learn from the successful cases of diversity management. For organizations, diversity management is usually practices as a top-down approach. The inclusion of different stakeholders can actually strengthen the diversity management practices for organizations.
References
Ashikali, T., & Groeneveld, S. (2015). Diversity management in public organizations and its effect on employees’ affective commitment: The role of transformational leadership and the inclusiveness of the organizational culture. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 35(2), 146-168.
Bjerregaard, T. and Lauring, J. (2013), ‘Managing Contradictions of Corporate Social Responsibility: The Sustainability of Diversity in a Frontrunner Firm. Business Ethics: A European Review, 22 (2): 131–42.
D’Netto, B., Shen, J., Chelliah, J., & Monga, M. (2014). Human resource diversity management practices in the Australian manufacturing sector. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(9), 1243-1266.
Guillaume, Y. R., Dawson, J. F., Otaye?Ebede, L., Woods, S. A., & West, M. A. (2017). Harnessing demographic differences in organizations: What moderates the effects of workplace diversity?. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(2), 276-303.
Klarsfeld, A., Ng, E. and Tatli, A. (2012), ‘Social Regulation and Diversity Management: A Comparative Study of France, Canada and the UK’, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 18 (4), 309–27.
Mahadeo, J.D., Soobaroyen T. and Hanuman, V.O. (2012), ‘Board Composition and Financial Performance: Uncovering the Effects of Diversity in an Emerging Economy, Journal of Business Ethics, 105: 375–88.
Richard, O. C., Roh, H., & Pieper, J. R. (2015). The link between diversity and equality management practice bundles and racial diversity in the managerial ranks: Does firm size matter?. Human Resource Management, 52(2), 215-242.
Sabharwal, M. (2014). Is diversity management sufficient? Organizational inclusion to further performance. Public Personnel Management, 43(2), 197-217.
Tatli, A. and Ozbilgin, M.F. (2015), ‘An Emic Approach to Intersectional Study of Diversity at Work: A Bourdieuan Framing’, International Journal of Management Reviews, 14 (2): 180–200.