final proposal
cincletvfkru
_project_roughdraft_090716_-_copy.docxRunning head: DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT PROJECT-ROUGH DRAFT
DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT PROJECT-ROUGH DRAFT 2
Diversity Management project rough draft
Rasmussen
Author Note
This paper is being submitted on September 8, 2016,
Diversity Management Project-Rough Draft
Proposal for Wal-Mart
Today, diversity has become the most effective and most important attribute of team performance. The teams without diversity are considered as dull and local ones. How to enhance the team performance through diversity management is problem to be discussed within the paper. The objective of this proposal is to analyze the relationship between team diversity and team performance. Diversification is most important attribute of effective teams. There is diversification of skills, abilities and personalities within effective teams. It may affect the team performance both positively and negatively (Knight et al., 2011).
An analysis of the factors contributing to the problem: In Little Rock Arkansas, in the early part of two thousand nine, Walmart was part of a court case, which involved several African American truck drivers. There were several African American truck drivers who are accusing Walmart of racial discrimination when recruiting or hiring for over the road truck drivers (Associated Press, 2009).
Who does it affect? Walmart’s employees, both current and upcoming will be impacted by these actions. The diversity management has direct impact on team performance, team cooperation and team cohesion. Need to formulate team, the role of team members within the team and diversification are one of those major variables. Where does it impact the business the most? It will impact the team performance and then organizational performance. The diversity management within the team will enhance team cooperation and commitment of employees. On the other hand, absence of diversity management may cause the decline in team performance, racism, discrimination and prejudice within the team.
When did the problem start and how long has it been going on? The problem has been started right after the emergence of concepts of globalization, cross-cultural teams, multifunctional teams and diversity management. The roots of problem are lying in second half of 20th century. However, this particular issue of discrimination has been going on since the late nineteen nineties (Glater, 2005).
What are the business implications of the problem? As discussed earlier, there is direct relationship between diversity management. This problem statement is supposed to offer a solution to global organizations to manage diversity and enhancing the team performance. Although, the implications for Walmart’s discrimination issue are shown in percentage rate of African American truck drivers compared to other highway truck drivers. Walmart has faced court cases from nearly twenty five different African American Truck drivers seeking a position with the company. It has been determined that nearly three percent of Walmart’s truck drivers are African American compared to the nearly fifteen percent of other truck drivers.
Not considering the diversity may harm the organizational performance in all sectors including HRM, Finance, marketing as well as manufacturing and productivity. However, HRM is most important factor to be affected by the issue if solution was not implemented (Horwitz & Horwitz, 2014).
A solution to avoid this issue in the future would be to hold a, “mass interview” to ensure all candidates are aware of the hiring requirements. The requirements would be to ensure the hiring of qualified truck drivers; the proper CDL license, with the needed endorsements, proper medical certificates, experience, and driving record. The top three criteria for choosing this solution are; less time to interview potential candidates, cost of employee time (executive or managerial) due to the interviewing process, and revenue, since the company would have the experience of new truck drivers delivering the product to the stores to ensure no shortages of supply. However not everyone will feel that a mass interview would work for the particular stores; however it would be more feasible financially.
To enhance the organizational performance, it is needed to enhance the team cohesion and team cooperation within the organization. Managing the team diversity through team cohesion and team cooperation is offered as solution to problem. Through change management, seminars, conferences and lectures as well, the team diversity could be enhanced. Profit maximization and wealth maximization are major goals of any organization. Through managing the diversity and creating the effective team, organization can easily reduce its expenditures and increase its profit ratio (Jackson & Joshi, 2013).
This solution has been chosen as through promoting team cooperation and team cohesion, issues like racism, discrimination, gender harassment, limited communication and interaction can be resolved. Who needs to be involved in the solution? Team leaders, team supervisors, team members, monitoring staff and executives of organization are needed to involve in this solution. Without their involvement, it is not possible to attain the expected goals of plan.
How will your solution make the problem you identified better, or what are the resulting benefits? By incorporating the new solution, the stores would gain more experienced employees who are capable of performing their job descriptions and it would also raise the capital gain and profitably of the stores. After globalization, development of cross-cultural teams and diversity management both have emerged as hot topics. Interestingly, both concepts are interrelated to each other. Through incorporating the solution, it will let the diversified organization to manage diversity on workplace as well as within the diverse teams.
Why must the solution be implemented now? The solution should be implemented now as it is based on latest literature and research. The managerial implications of this solution will open a new era of research on team diversity and diversity management.
The plan: In order to implement the new plan, the executive members, along with upper management would need to revise the policies and procedures. Next step would be to inform the current managerial employees along with the up level employees of changes that are coming, so that everyone can be involved with the implementing of new interviewing techniques. Set up training classes, to ensure that everyone involved will perform to the company’s mission and vision statement.
a. The most important point to manage diverse culture in any organization is to create awareness and provide proper information to your employees.
b. Team diversity basically understands that each individual within the team is unique and it is recognition of team differences. The concept of diversity within a team shows the acceptance and respect for all members.
c. Diversity is basically a description of individual differences with a safe and respectful environment. It is about the respecting each other within the team and enhancing the cohesion within the team (Horwitz & Horwitz, 2014).
d. One research commented about the organizations to cultivate managers with global competences. The research also said that making somebody conscious about cultural diversity is somewhat that has to initiate at the day one of his job in any company.
e. It is not only important to comprehend the difference among cultures but it is also impotent that everyone respect other’s values and try to understand potential advantages of every culture.
f. Hofstede provide a great work related to cultural diversity, he differentiates two major types of culture on the basis of FOUR DIMENSIONS: Power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism vs. collectivism, Masculinity vs. femininity (Jackson & Joshi, 2011).
g. To opposing degrees, the similar kinds of difficulties are common across dissimilar nation states. The talent is not to be blinded by nationwide narrow dissimilarities. Consideration should be specified to implementing those devices that are compulsory to emphasis on achieving business objectives.
h. Framework for making effective international organization teams needs following major points: Procedures for cultural diversity understanding, valuing, respecting and leveraging; Awareness and understanding of cultural diversity in individual behavior; Understanding about features linking to operational team performance.
i. Cultural knowledge must be assimilated into every aspect of a business. Workforce must be proficient, trained, and skillful and be capable to efficiently use knowledge gained. Strategies of organization must be responsive to diverse culture (Baixauli-Soler, Belda-Ruiz, & Sanchez-Marin, 2015). All guidelines of the organization should replicate positive descriptions of all cultures.
j. Suggest a control method for evaluating the success of the plan. In order to show the success of the plan, the company would and should perform team evaluation on a regular basis. Team’s surveys would also show if the plan has assisted in managing the diversity or not.
Challenges will come with any plan that is put in place. To overcome the challenges with this plan or solution would consist of employees not seeing eye to eye with the interview process and feel that it should be performed on a one on one basis, however by offering incentives to employees who perform well, including the new employees that have been gained through this solution, will aid in the outcome.
Today, diversity management has become the 2nd name of innovation and creativity. An organization having employees from different ethnic groups is very innovative and creative Origin, Nation, Race, Color, Language, Age, Sexual orientation, Ideologies, Physical abilities, Religious beliefs is main dimensions of diversity. Standards, actions, approaches, perform, strategies, and arrangements that make it probable for cross-cultural communication provide guidance for a culturally proficient organization. When a business is able to identify, respect, recognize and value all types of diverse cultures and assimilate those values & standards into the organization (Jackson & Joshi, 2011), culturally capable businesses can meet the requirements of diverse customers and groups.
The performance of team is always expression of its needs. The team goals are also decided within the requirement of task. In the same line, the team members are selected through matching their skills and needs of team. Moreover, every team member has his or her personal needs. But an effective team needs cohesion and all the team members sacrifice their personal needs to achieve the common goals of team. The objective of this proposal is to enhance the team performance through proper team diversification (Jackson & Joshi, 2013).
References
Pilley, N., (2014). Developing National Action Plans against Racial Discrimination.
Retrieved from, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/HR-PUB-13-03.pdf
Associated Press (2009). Judge Oks Wal-Mart race bias suit settlement.
Retrieved from, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/31831931/ns/business-retail/t/judge-oks-wal-mart-race-bias-suit-settlement/#.V7S1Lc6cHL8
Glater, J. D., (2005). 2 Black truckers sue, accusing Wal-Mart of hiring bias.
Retrieved from, the New Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/14/business/2-black- truckers-sue-accusing-walmart-of-hiring-bias.html?_r=0
Horwitz, S. K., & Horwitz, I. B. (2014). The effects of team diversity on team outcomes: A meta-analytic review of team demography. Journal of management, 33(6), 987-1015.
Jackson, S. E., & Joshi, A. (2011). Work team diversity.
Jackson, S. E., & Joshi, A. (2013). Diversity in social context: a multi‐attribute, multilevel analysis of team diversity and sales performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25(6), 675-702.
Knight, D., Pearce, C. L., Smith, K. G., Olian, J. D., Sims, H. P., Smith, K. A., & Flood, P. (2011). Top management team diversity, group process, and strategic consensus. Strategic Management Journal, 20(5), 445-465.
