Chapter 2 Environmental Context: Globalization, Diversity, and Ethics 41
have mixed emotions about being promoted. They may like advancement in terms of pay and prestige, but at the same time they may be concerned about receiving special treatment, failing, or not living up to everyone’s expectations. By learning how to empathize with these feelings and by offering encouragement, guidance, and after-the-fact backup support, the manager can play an important individual role in more effectively managing diversity.
42 Part One Environmental and Organizational Context
Training
Surveys indicate that the majority of U.S. companies have diversity training and have moved into the mainstream from the traditional role of merely equal employment opportu-nity compliant.44A comprehensive research study found those firms that adopted diversity training tended to have the following profile: (1) large size, (2) positive top-management beliefs about diversity, (3) high strategic priority of diversity relative to other competing objectives, (4) presence of a diversity manager, and (5) existence of a large number of other diversity supportive policies.45There are two ways in which this training can play a key role in managing diversity. One way is by offering training to diverse groups. Members from a diverse group can be trained for an entry-level skill or how to more effectively do their existing or future job. The other approach is to provide training to managers and other employees who work with diverse employees. In recent years a number of approaches have been used in providing such diversity training.
Most diversity training programs get the participants directly involved. An example is provided by Florida International University’s Center for Management Development (CMD). This center provides diversity training for employers in South Florida, a geo-graphic area where Latinos and African Americans constitute a significant percentage of the population. One of CMD’s programs involves putting trainees into groups based on eth-nic origin. Then each group is asked to describe the others and to listen to the way its own group is described. The purpose of this exercise is to gain insights into the way one ethnic group is perceived by another ethnic group. Each group is also asked to describe the diffıculties it has in working with other ethnic groups and to identify the reasons for these problems. At the end of the training, both managers and employees relate that they have a better understanding of their personal biases and the ways in which they can improve their interaction with members of the other groups.
Sometimes training games are used to help participants focus on cultural issues such as how to interact with personnel from other cultures. Here is an example:
In Hispanic families, which one of the following values is probably most important?
a. Achievement b. Money c. Being on time d. Respect for elders
The correct answer is “d.” As participants play the game, they gain an understanding of the values and beliefs of other cultures and learn how better to interact with a diverse workforce.
In many cases these diversity-related games are used as supplements to other forms of training. For example, they are often employed as icebreakers to get diversity training ses-sions started or to maintain participant interest during a long program. Research has found that the major key to the success of diversity training is top-management support for diver-sity; also important are mandatory attendance for all managers, long-term evaluation of training results, managerial rewards for increasing diversity, and a broadly inclusionary definition of diversity in the organization.46However, it must be remembered that aware-ness training is valuable to shift perceptions, but may not lead to behavioral change.47 All-state and other firms learned that the training must be linked to business outcomes in order to produce actual behavioral change.48
A major problem of training in general, and diversity training in particular, is the trans-fer problem. Those going through the diversity training may see the value and gain some relevant knowledge, but then do not transfer this training back to the job. A major reason for this transfer problem is a lack of confidence or self-effıcacy (i.e., the trainees do not believe that they can successfully carry out the diversity training objectives back on the job
Chapter 2 Environmental Context: Globalization, Diversity, and Ethics 43
in their specific environment). A recent field experiment by Combs and Luthans was designed to increase trainees’ diversity self-effıcacy. The results were that the training inter-vention significantly increased the trainees’ (N = 276 in 3 organizations) measured diver-sity self-effıcacy. More importantly, there was a strong positive relationship between the trained participants diversity self-effıcacy and the number and diffıculty of their stated intentions for initiating diversity goals in their specific environments of insurance and man-ufacturing firms and a government agency.49Chapter 7 will get into the self-effıcacy psy-chological state in detail, but it is these types of organizational behavior concepts that are needed to improve important application areas such as diversity training.
Mentoring
A mentor is a trusted counselor, coach, or advisor who provides advice and assistance. In recent years, many organizations have begun assigning mentors to women and minorities.
The purpose of the mentor program is to help support members of a diverse group in their jobs, socialize them in the cultural values of the organization, and pragmatically help their chances for development and advancement. There are a number of specific benefits that mentors can provide to those they assist, including the following:
1. Identify the skills, interests, and aspirations the person has
2. Provide instruction in specific skills and knowledge critical to successful job performance 3. Help in understanding the unwritten rules of the organization and how to avoid saying
or doing the wrong things
4. Answer questions and provide important insights 5. Offer emotional support
6. Serve as a role model
7. Create an environment in which mistakes can be made without losing self-confidence50 A number of organizations now require their managers to serve as mentors, but besides the above types of benefits, there may also be a downside. One problem is that mentors may become overly protective and encase those they mentor into a “glass bubble” by shunting them into jobs with adequate pay and professional challenges, but eliminate all chance of further advancement.51
Some guidelines for establishing an effective mentoring program typically involves sev-eral steps. First, top-management support is secured for the program. Then mentors and their protégés are carefully chosen. The mentor, who provides the advice and guidance, is paired with an individual who is very likely to profit from the experience. Research on the networking strategies of minorities has implications for this step. It seems that highly suc-cessful, fast-track minorities are well connected to both minority and white informal cir-cles, whereas their unsuccessful counterparts have very few, if any, network ties with other minorities.52In other words, this study would indicate that the effective mentor would be one who would be able to get the protégé involved in both the majority and the minority inner circles. Sometimes the advice has been to avoid association with other minorities, but this research would indicate the contrary.
The third step in an effective mentoring program would be to give both mentors and pro-tégés an orientation. The mentors are taught how to conduct themselves, and the propro-tégés are given guidance on the types of questions and issues that they should raise with their mentor so that they can gain the greatest value from the experience. Fourth, throughout the mentoring period, which typically lasts one year or less, mentor and protégé individually and together meet with the support staff of the program to see how well things are going. Fifth, and finally, at the end of the mentoring cycle, overall impressions and recommendations are
44 Part One Environmental and Organizational Context
solicited from both mentors and protégés regarding how the process can be improved in the future. This information is then used in helping the next round of mentors do a more effec-tive job.
Work/Family Programs
In the typical family today, both the mother and the father have jobs and work-family issues have recently received considerable attention in research and practice. Initially the needs of the dual-career family were met through alternative work schedules, which allow the parents flexibility in balancing their home and work demands. The most common alternative work schedule arrangements are flextime, the compressed workweek, job shar-ing, and telecommutshar-ing, but there are also some newer programs that help balance work and family.
Flextime allows employees greater autonomy by permitting them to choose their daily starting and ending times within a given time period called a bandwidth, as shown in Figure 2.2. For example, consider the case of two parents who are both employed at a company that has a bandwidth of 7 A.M. to 7 P.M. Everyone working for the firm must put in his or her eight hours during this time period. For example, the father may go to work at 7 A.M. and work until 3 P.M., at which time he leaves and picks up the children from school. The mother, meanwhile, drops the children at school at 8:45 A.M. and works from 9:30 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. Thus both parents are able to adjust their work and home schedules to fit within the bandwidth. Many companies are using this concept and similar ones to help their employees meet both organizational and personal demands. Recent U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicate that over a quarter of working women with chil-dren under 18 work flexible schedules.53Prominent examples are that about three-fourths of the workforce of both Hewlett-Packard and IBM use flexible work arrangements.
Another alternative work arrangement is the compressed workweek. This arrangement, which has been widely used in Europe, compresses the workweek into fewer days. For example, while the typical workweek is 40 hours spread over five days, a compressed work-week could be four 10-hour days. For those working a 35-hour work-week, the time could be compressed into three days of approximately 12 hours each. These arrangements give employees more time with their families, although their full impact on productivity, prof-itability, and employee satisfaction is still to be determined.
Job sharing is the splitting of a full-time position between two people, each of whom works part-time. This arrangement is more common in professional positions in banking, insurance, and teaching. A husband and wife, or any two people, could share the job 50-50 or in any other combination. For example, parents who want to return to work on a part-time basis only have found job sharing to be an attractive employment alternative.54 Com-pared to decade ago, on average, working mothers increasingly indicate that part-time work over full-time or not working at all would be ideal for them.55
7 A.M. 10 A.M.
Bandwidth
Flexible ending time Flexible
starting time
Core period
3 P.M. 7 P.M.
FIGURE 2.2 A Flextime Framework.
Chapter 2 Environmental Context: Globalization, Diversity, and Ethics 45
Still another alternative work schedule that is gaining in popularity is telecommuting.
Currently about a third of organizations allow employees to work from home or off site on a regular basis.56For example, over 9,000 Hewlett-Packard employees work entirely from home. This entails receiving and sending work between home and the offıce and is cur-rently being used to supplement the typical work arrangement. For instance, employees may come into the offıce on Monday and Tuesday, work out of their homes on Wednesday and Thursday via telecommuting, and come in again on Friday. By varying the on-site assignments of the personnel, companies are able to reduce the number of people who are in the building at any one time, thus cutting down on the amount of floor space and park-ing spots they need to rent. Increaspark-ingly employees have no offıce and work from home on a permanent basis.
Besides alternative work schedules, very innovative family-friendly programs are start-ing to emerge. When large numbers of women began enterstart-ing the workforce a number of years ago, organizations were ill prepared for the resulting conflict that both women and men had between their work and family responsibilities. Research shows that conflict goes both ways with dysfunctional outcomes. Specifically, for both men and women, work-to-family conflict was found to be linked to job dissatisfaction, turnover intentions, and stress, while family-to-work conflict resulted in stress and absenteeism.57However, there is addi-tional research evidence indicating that multiple roles provide benefits (e.g., practice at multitasking, relevant experience) for the managerial role at work and those who are com-mitted to multiple roles (i.e., doing it all) may have higher life satisfaction, self-esteem, and self-acceptance.58
Today there are programs to help solve the reality of dual-career families and working parents. Table 2.1 provides a broad sampling of these work/family programs.59Of course,
TABLE 2.1 Innovative Work/Family Programs
Child care or elder care These may include child care facilities at the work site benefits and transportation of aging parents to a senior citizens
center.
Adoption benefits These include leave policies and reimbursement for legal fees, medical expenses, agency or placement fees, temporary foster care, and/or travel expenses.
Leave/time-off policies These may include free time off for no reason or prior notice and paybacks for unused days off.
Convenience benefits This refers to on-site services such as dry cleaning, ATM machines, postal services, and video rentals.
Life-cycle accounts These are savings accounts designed to pay for specific life events, such as a college education. Often employ-ers will match employee contributions.
Health promotion benefits These include such things as fitness centers, health screenings, flu shots, and stress-management clinics.
Education assistance Examples include tutoring programs, tuition
benefits reimbursement, and scholarships.
Housing assistance This refers to such items as relocation assistance, seminars, and preferred mortgage arrangements.
Group purchase programs These include legal and financial planning assistance, discounts with local merchants, group auto and home owners insurance, and fleet arrangements for auto purchases.
Casual day program This would be dress-down days to have everyone relaxed in an on-the-job family atmosphere.
46 Part One Environmental and Organizational Context
not all organizations are using these programs, but an increasing number are, and a few well-known firms such as the following have even more unique programs.60
1. PepsiCo has a “concierge service” (similar to hotels) that helps employees with errands or tasks that need to be done during the workday (e.g., getting an oil change, lining up a baby-sitter, or contracting for house repairs).
2. Eastman Kodak has a “humor room” where employees can read light, funny materials or engage in activities to take their minds off a stressful day.
3. Ben & Jerry’s has a “Joy Gang” charged with creating happiness in the workplace. This group plans birthday and anniversary celebrations and creates other joyful events.
Research by Thomas and Ganster found work/family programs decrease family conflict, job dissatisfaction, and stress-related problems,61but it is diffıcult to empirically demon-strate the direct positive impact that these programs have on performance outcomes. How-ever, one comprehensive research study did find a strong link between work/family programs and the use of high-commitment work systems containing employee involvement/
participation and total quality initiatives.62