Culture and Diversity at Work
Lecture notes
2023-2024
Lecture 1
8-2-2024
The course
Upon completion of the course, you can:
- Recognize and describe the key concepts and theories that are presented in the course.
- Explain how these relate to each other.
- Apply these concepts and theories to practical issues that are relevant to culture and
diversity at work.
Exam
- 40 multiple choice questions and 5 open questions.
- The literature is exam material.
The focus of the course: social psychological processes that play a role in the field of work and
organizations with regard to culture and diversity.
Theory and research regarding the impact of diversity on group processes, motivation and
performance:
- Benefits
- Challenges presented by diversity on
o Recruitment and selection
o Evaluation
o Leadership
o Decision making
- Effects of
o Stereotypes and prejudice hiring and career development?
o Group composition teamwork?
o Group processes motivation and performance?
What is diversity?
Everything that distinguishes people from one another.
In practice: focus on gender, age, race/ethnicity, religion, tenure, educational background, and
social/functional background.
,Two types of diversity
Surface-level diversity
- Differences among group members in overt, biological characteristics that are typically
reflected in physical features.
- E.g., age, gender, race/ethnicity.
Deep-level diversity
- More subtle attributes that cannot necessarily be directly and immediately observed. Such
attributes refer to members’ personalities, attitudes, beliefs and values.
- It is related to social groups, your membership in certain social groups can make the group
more diverse.
- E.g., sexual orientation, religious beliefs.
Benefits of diversity
It can produce effective decision making, it spurs innovation and it spurs economic growth.
Diversity can spur innovation because people from different backgrounds have different experiences,
knowledge and information. This can help companies or organizations develop technologies that
would never have been invented if everyone had the same background. People from different
backgrounds can think of ideas that may be different from common ideas.
Economic growth is associated with diversity, apart from innovation, because diversity opens up
various opportunities that come from diverse populations that could in the end produce more
diverse economic outputs. When you have diversity, the people can work and they can perform in
various ways to compliment each other. This could optimize economic outputs because different
opinions will cause criticism.
Challenges
If the population becomes more diverse, people who are not ready to accept and operate in a
diverse environment will be biased, but only in recruitment, selection and promotion.
If the biases in a diverse environment are not tackled, we are less likely to make use of the diversity
itself. Diversity can only be beneficial if the people within that organization are ready to accept
diversity and to take on possible problems that can hinder the benefits of diversity.
In order to address potential challenges with regard to diversity, transparency is key.
- Transparency can help us spot potential biases, you can’t solve a problem if you don’t know
what the problem is.
- Transparency is important from both sides because both sides can have biases that need to
be addressed.
, - When the decision making process is not transparent, there will be no criticism towards the
process and thus the person making the decisions will have no motivation to change their
bias(es). But if you make it transparent, the person making the decisions will try their best to
address their biases. Because if they don’t and people find out that your criteria are not
clear, they will be heavily criticized and maybe even fired.
- So, transparency motivates people in leadership decisions to make the most fair, open and
less biased decisions that they can make. It motivates them to create a fair system because
they want to maintain their reputation.
Diversity and the labor market
We can’t talk about the labor market without talking about privilege. “Ofcourse it is easier for you to
… because you have privilege.”
Privilege
The privileged white man checks the following marks (zeven vinkjes):
- Cis male
- White
- Heterosexual
- At least one highly educated or wealthy parent
- At least one parent born in the country of residence
- University diploma/high education
It is very superficial because every human being faces challenges. Just because a person has these
characteristics it doesn’t mean that that person would suddenly be granted with all the privileges
that makes life easier.
Having one of these boxes checked doesn’t necessarily mean that you have something extra, but that
you don’t have the struggles related to not being able to check that box.
Certain characteristics are associated with certain unique challenges that people who have different
characteristics do not have to face. Therefore, even though everyone has challenges in their lives,
there is not always a level playing field.
Everyone has challenges in their lives, but it is important to remember that certain characteristics can
determine whether or not a person has a good starting point.
Privilege is not an accumulation of characteristics, you should look at each characteristic and the
challenges that do or do not come with this characteristic.
History of diversity in the workplace
Historically, certain groups were benefitted in the workplace. The workplace was the domain of
white males.
The focus was on assimilation of others into this environment (as opposed to integration).
, When you talk about assimilation you sort of force people with minority backgrounds to comply or to
adjust themselves into people who have majority characteristics.
- E.g., women were expected to be like man, in this we ignore the challenges women have to
face.
- E.g., people with a minority religious background were expected to behave and think the way
people with a majority religious background do, so you didn’t get certain exceptions during
the ramadam.
Assimilation vs integration
- A long time ago assimilation was seen as an idea to unite people, but now we realize that
that is not true. We now try to be more inclusive, we try to change the way the workplace
works. We try to change from assimilation to integration.
- Integration means that people can still have their own unique characteristics, perspective
and backgrounds, but people have to work together.
- Assimilation should be avoided, it is not only inclusive but it is also harmful. If you try to mold
everyone into one form, it is going to impact the company badly in the long run.
Changes in population:
- Changes in working population
- Changes in consumer base/clientele
What has changed?
- More female employees.
- More ethnic minorities.
- More employees with disabilities.
- More sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQIA+).
- Increasingly international workforce.
- Need to maintain older employees.
- And other forms of diversification.
Given that now we have more differences and a higher level of diversity in the workplace,
assimilation is harder because there are too many different characteristics. If we want to be
pragmatic, integration is the way to go.
Examples of diversity on the work floor
Gender
Gender equality index (in the EU)
- More women work in labour force than ever.
- More women work in leadership positions than ever.
We can’t deny that there is progress compared to the experience of women before. But is the
progress enough?
