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Chapter 1 Organizational Behavior and Management 25 want to avoid doing harm to people and other organizations. Developing a code of ethics helps organizations protect their reputation and maintain the goodwill of their customers and employees. The challenge confronting managers is to create an organization in which members resist the temptation to engage in illegal or unethical acts that promote their own interests at the expense of the organization or promote the organization’s interests at the expense of people and groups outside the organization. Workers and managers have to recognize that their behavior has important effects not only on other people and groups inside and outside the organization but also on the organization itself. The well-being of organizations and the well-being of the society of which they are a part are closely linked and are the responsibility of everyone. 36 (How to create an ethical organization is an issue that we take up throughout the text.) ■ ■ ■ CHALLENGE 4: MANAGING A DIVERSE WORKFORCE Diversity Differences resulting from age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic background. The fourth principal challenge is to understand how the diversity of a workforce affects behavior, performance, and well-being. Diversity is differences resulting from age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic background. If an organization or group is composed of people who are all of the same gender, ethnicity, age, religion, and so on, the attitudes and behavior of its members are likely to be very similar. Members are likely to share the same sets of assumptions or values and will tend to respond to work situations (projects, conflicts, new tasks) in similar ways. By contrast, if the members of a group differ in age, ethnicity, and other characteristics, their attitudes, behavior, and responses are likely to differ. In the last 20 years, the demographic makeup of employees entering the workforce and advancing to higher-level positions in organizations has been changing rapidly. Partly as a result of affirmative action and equal employment opportunity legislation, the number of minority employees entering and being promoted to higher-level positions has increased. 37 By the year 2005, African American and Hispanic employees are expected to make up over 25 percent of the workforce, and the percentage of white males is expected to decrease from 51 percent to 44 percent. 38 At the same time, the number of women entering the workforce has also been increasing dramatically, and they are ascending to higher and higher positions in management. 39 Finally, because of increased internationalization, diversity is evident not just among Americans but also among people born in other nations who come to the United States to live and work. They are expected to contribute significantly to these totals by 2005. 40 The increasing diversity of the workforce presents three challenges for organizations and their managers: a fairness and justice challenge, a decision-making and performance challenge, and a flexibility challenge (see Figure 1.5). Fairness and Justice Challenge Jobs in organizations are a scarce resource, and obtaining jobs and being promoted to a higher-level job is a competitive process. Managers are challenged to allocate jobs, promotions, and rewards in a fair and equitable manner. As diversity increases, achieving fairness can be difficult, at least in the short run, because many organizations have traditionally appointed white male employees to higher organizational positions. Also, seniority plays a role, and many minorities are recent hires. 41 Rectifying this imbalance by actively recruiting and promoting increasing numbers of women and minorities can lead to difficult equity issues because this attempt to fix the traditional imbalance reduces the prospects for white male employees. An
26 Chapter 1 Organizational Behavior and Management FIGURE 1.5 The Challenge Posed by a Diverse Workplace Fairness and justice challenge Age Gender Capabilities/ Disabilities Race challenge Flexibility challenge Socioeconomic background Sexual orientation Religion Ethnicity Decision-making and performance increase in diversity can thus strain an organization’s ability to satisfy the aspirations of its workforce, creating a problem that, in turn, directly affects the workforce’s well-being and performance. Organizations must learn to manage diversity in a way that increases the well-being of all employees, but deciding how to achieve this goal can pose difficult ethical problems for managers. 42 Decision-Making and Performance Challenge Another important challenge posed by a diverse workforce is how to take advantage of differences in the attitudes and perspectives of people of different ages, genders, or races, in order to improve decision making and organizational performance. 43 Many organizations have found that tapping into diversity reveals new ways of viewing traditional problems and provides a means for an organization to assess its goals and ways of doing business. Coca-Cola, for example, in an attempt to increase its top managers’ abilities to manage a global environment, has deliberately sought to recruit top managers of different ethnic backgrounds. Its CEO came from Cuba originally, and other top managers are from Brazil, France, and Mexico. To increase performance, organizations have to unleash and take advantage of the potential of diverse employees. Union Bank of California has been a leader in exploiting the advantages of a diverse workforce for the last decade. The Diversity Insights in this and other <strong>chapter</strong>s, particularly in Chapter 4, describe the management of diversity in organizations. (See Insight 1.6.)
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