MAKING DIFFERENCES

MATTER
David A. Thomas
Robin J. Ely
Introduction
■ A more diverse work-force increases organisational effectiveness, lift morale,
bring greater access to new segments of marketplace and enhance productivity.
■ Most people assume that workplace diversity is about increasing racial, national,
gender, or class representation.
■ Organisations usually take one of the two paths in managing diversity.
1. In the name of equality and fairness, they include higher number of women
and people of colour.
2. They set them apart in jobs that relate specifically to their background.
■ Diversity needs to be understood as the varied perspective and approaches to
work that members of different identity groups bring.
■ People from diverse groups bring in different , important and completely relevant
knowledge and perspective to do work i.e. how to design processes, reach
goals, frame tasks, create effective teams, communicate ideas, and
lead.
The Discrimination-and-Fairness
Paradigm
■ Paradigm’s underlying logic
“Prejudice has kept members of certain demographic groups out of
organisations such as ours. As a matter of fairness and to comply with
federal mandates, we need to work toward restructuring the makeup of our
organisation to let it more closely reflect that of society. We need managerial
processes that ensure that all our employees are treated equally and with
respect and that some are not given unfair advantage over others.”
■ This is dominant way of understanding diversity.
■ Leaders who look through this lens usually focus on
– Equal opportunity
– Fair treatment
– Recruitment
– Compliance with Law
The Discrimination-and-Fairness
Paradigm
■ Organisation that operate with this philosophy
– Institute mentoring and career development programs for women,
people of colour.
– Progress is measured through recruitment and retention goals.

■ Common Characteristics of Companies following this paradigm

– Usually run by leaders who value due process and equal treatment of
all employees.
– Companies often have bureaucratic structure.
– Companies have easily observable culture where values like fairness
are widespread and deeply inculcated and code of conduct are clear.
The Discrimination-and-Fairness
Paradigm
Benefits
■ This paradigm tends to increase demographic diversity.
■ Promote fair treatment of employees.

Limitations
■ Its implicit assumption that “we are all the same” “we aspire to being all the same”.
■ Under this, it is not desirable for diversification of the workforce to influence the
organisation’s work or culture.
■ Put pressure on employees to make sure that important differences among them does not
count.
■ Genuine disagreements about work definition are sometimes wrongly interpreted.
■ Undermines organisation’s capacity to learn about and improve its own strategies,
processes and practices.
The Access-and-Legitimacy Paradigm

■ Underlying logic
“We are living in an increasingly multicultural country, and new
ethnic groups are quickly gaining consumer power. Our company
needs a demographically more diverse workforce to help us gain
access to these differentiated segments. We need employees
with multilingual skills in order to understand and serve our
customers better and to gain legitimacy with them. Diversity isn’t
just fair; it makes business sense.”
■ This paradigm accepts and celebrates differences.
The Access-and-Legitimacy Paradigm

■ Organisation that operate with this philosophy

– Have pushed for access to– and legitimacy with– a more diverse
clientele.
– Effort to increase in organisational diversity.

■ Common Characteristics of Companies following this paradigm

– Companies operate in a business environment in which there is
increased diversity among customers, clients, or labour pool that
can be an opportunity or an imminent threat to company.
The Access-and-Legitimacy Paradigm
Benefits
■ This paradigm has market based motivation.
■ The potential for competitive advantage suggested by this paradigm can
be understood and supported by entire company.

Limitations
■ In the pursuit of niche markets, this paradigm tend to emphasize the role
of cultural differences in a company without really analysing affects of
those differences.
■ Leaders are too quick to push staff with niche capabilities into
differentiated pigeonholes.
■ This may leave some employees feeling exploited because many
organisations using this paradigm have diversified only in those areas in
which they interact with particular niche-market segments.
Emerging Paradigm– Learning-and-effectiveness Paradigm

■ Companies have developed an outlook on diversity that enables them

to incorporate employee’s perspectives into the main work by
– Rethinking primary tasks
– Redefining markets, products, strategies, missions, business
practices and even cultures.
■ Managing diversity through learning-and-effectiveness paradigm taps
true benefits of diversity.
■ Discrimination—and—Fairness paradigm is organised around the
theme of assimilation.
■ Access—and—Legitimacy paradigm can be regarded as coalescing
around differentiation.
■ Learning—and--Effectiveness paradigm organises itself around the
theme of integration.
Eight Preconditions for Making Paradigm Shift

1. The leadership must understand that a diverse workforce will embody different
perspectives and approaches to work, and must truly value variety of opinion and
insight.
2. The leadership must recognise both the learning opportunities and the
challenges that the expression of different perspectives presents for an
organisation.
3. The organisational culture must create an expectation of high standards of
performance from everyone.
4. The organisational culture must stimulate personal development.
5. The organisational culture must make workers feel valued.
6. The culture must encourage openness.
7. The organisation must have a well articulated and widely understood mission.
8. The organisation must have a relatively egalitarian, non bureaucratic structure.
Thank You !