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Managing Diversity
Talking about multiculturalism and diversity is really quite easy, and speaking of it in positive terms is also not a particularly arduous task. Even creating structures and laws to try to ensure that these aspects of cultural and working lives are upheld and respected is also worthily accomplished with ease by politicians and business leaders who can then feel confident that the right things have been done and that the right policies are in place. But then comes the harder part – how can it really be done? How can diversity with all of its implicit avenues and difficulties really be managed? Why are glass ceilings (Thomas 2005, p. 151) so difficult to break?
In a world that believes itself to be non-prejudice and fair, there is no real place left for obvious, or blatant, intolerance. Indeed, it may be assumed that if a person is to be accepted into a workplace or wishes to follow a career, that they will not have prejudices and it is very possible that they do not consciously have such discriminatory thoughts. Thomas (2005, p. 154), for example, tells us that ‘aversive racism’ can operate at a sub-conscious level and is likely to appear at times when there is some ambiguity. In other words, that the aversive racist will not show prejudice when it could be judged as such, for example when there is an obviously superior black candidate, but will show it covertly when there is ambiguity. In other words, when there are subjective decisions to be made, as is often the case with new employments or promotions. In similar fashion, ‘benevolent sexism’ and the ‘social role theory of sex difference,’ suggest on the one hand that that by the act of ‘cherishing’ women, males place them at a disadvantage when it comes to the real world of work and career development and, on the other, that women are assigned roles in terms of work and thus are the majority in areas such as caring (nursing) and teaching (Thomas 2005, p. 152).
So how can these and other barriers be broken through management strategies? One notion is for the individual to constantly strive to show that they could exceed the performance of their male colleagues (Thomas 2005, p. 157), but this surely cannot be a rationale strategy because it assumes an innate ability to perform better, and may thus only work in isolated cases. This leads to a consideration of management strategies which may work. One lies within an understanding that disadvantages can be based in experience, and a lack of this can accumulate to disenable equality. Therefore, a program which focuses on giving development experience to those who have been disadvantaged in this area may work towards breaking the ‘glass ceiling’ (Thomas 2005, pp 157-8). Another important area is in assigning ‘mentors,’ or role models. This fundamentally suggests that there are differences in backgrounds, in cultural identity and in mannerisms, therefore if one person is effectively working and living in two ‘worlds,’ a model – a person of their world who exists and succeeds in the other world is of extreme importance (Payne 2005).
These few examples of how the hugely complex areas of managing multiculturalism and diversity are important, but perhaps of most importance is that, once and if the ‘glass ceiling’ has been broken, some continuity of development must be acknowledged and recognized by the organization and the leaders themselves. Therefore, factors such as self-awareness become important, as does awareness of privilege and the resistance of ‘ethnocentrism,’ on the grounds that such an approach may re-invent all of the issues which have been broken down. In other words, it is important not to judge all others from one’s own cultural view (Thomas 2005, p. 61).
References
Payne R. K. (2005), A Framework for Understanding Poverty, 4th ed., Copyright aha! Process, Inc., Texas.
Thomas (2005), The leadership-Diversity Dynamic