Managing workplace diversity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Managing scarperplace motley - Essay ExampleIt is evident from the study that for the last decades, the term diversity has been used to mean the demographic constitution of a particular group or team. In experimental studies, the diversity of a team is formly determined using compositional technique, which focuses on how demographic characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, age among others are distributed within the team. Assessment of diversity in workplace entails determination of the extent in which members are similar or dissimilar to one another. According to Caleb, diversity represents the numerous individual disparities existing among people in particular organization. In studies of diversity in workplaces, various attributes of employees break been proved to be of critical importance in the current management practices. They include gender, ethnicity, length of service in the particular organization, areas of specialisation and skills, level of education, ethnical values in sum total to personality of the individual. The content of diversity in workplaces has been a subject of many research studies. Aparna and Susan classified the content of diversity into deuce categories, namely task and relations oriented. Relations oriented diversity involves the availability of traits or attributes that are influential in determining interpersonal associations. In normal circumstances, relations oriented diversity does not have direct noticeable effects on the performance of tasks (Aparna and Susan, 2000 60). Mike (2004 157) consider relations oriented diversity as the social -category diversity. Task oriented diversity is the distribution of the performance-relevant attributes. Examples of attributes that are more likely to be relationship-oriented diversity include age, sex, race, ethnicity, religion, political association, sexual predilection and nationality. These attributes are readily indentified or recognised in a particular context (Caleb, 2006). Othe r relationship oriented attributes are not readily notice in workplace setting. They include gender, attitudes, values, personality, racial and ethnic identity, sexual and class identity among other social identities. Task oriented diversity attributes in the work place include readily identified qualities such as education level, membership to an organisation or department, association with professional bodies, formal credentials and titles in addition to organisation tenure. However, some task oriented diversity attributes are not obvious, or easily detected. They include knowledge and expertise, cognitive skills and abilities, in addition to physical skills and capacities (Aparna and Susan 2000 201). Research on performance of employees in a multicultural background indicates that diverse teams perform differently from homogenous groups (Kreitner and Kinicki 199572) Although the exact mechanisms that cause the contrast in performance remain speculative, various existing theorie s provide feasible explanation to the difference.