Thomson South-Western Wagner & Hollenbeck 5e

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ChapterChapter Three Three

Managing Diversity

And

Individual Differences

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Chapter Overview This chapter examines the following topics:

– Capitalizing on Diversity• Selection• Training• Reengineering

– Diversity in Personality: Five Critical Factors• The Big Five Framework• Making Personality Tests More Effective

– Diversity in Cognitive Abilities: Four Critical Factors• General and Specific Aspects of Cognitive Ability• Validity of Cognitive Ability Tests

– Diversity in Physical Abilities: Three Critical Factors– Diversity in Experience: Two Critical Factors

• Broadening Demographic Experience: Political Aspects• Broadening Demographic Experience: Competitive

Aspects• Broadening Cultural Experience

– Adaptability: Flexibility in the Face of Diversity

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Introduction When it comes to building and

leading organizations, inexperienced managers often make one of two critical mistakes:– Mirror image fallacy– Prejudicial stereotypes

Managers need to treat each person as a unique configuration of ten characteristics rather than simply categorizing workers by surface characteristics such as race, sex, age, or culture

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Capitalizing on Diversity

Even the most tolerant managers might sometimes wish that individual differences might go away; however, such homogeneity is highly unlikely to happen

Successful organizations must try to capitalize on differences in a way that advances their competitiveness

Benefits can be derived from individual differences in organizational behavior through three ways

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Selection, Training, and Reengineering

Selection and placement programs enable managers to assess people and jobs and then try to match up the two in a way that maximizes the fit between the abilities and traits of the individual and the abilities and traits required for the job

Effective selection is critical for carrying out certain business strategies

Training compensates for any job-related deficiencies in their current profile of traits and abilities– Training can also be directed

at changing people’s personality styles

Reengineering is a different approach to respond to a mismatch between person and job; it requires changing the job or work processes– Successful managers strive

to put each worker in a position that best taps his or her own talents

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Diversity in Personality: Five Critical Factors

Given the vast number of personality characteristics, some type of classification scheme is needed before understanding both the characteristics and their interrelationships

Current personality literature tends to focus on a consensus group of five dimensions of personality known as the “Big Five”

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The Big Five Framework The Big Five personality characteristics home in on a person’s

social reputation in the sense that they describe what the person is like when viewed by other people also the five characteristics can be used to comprehensively capture what people are like

The Big Five traits include: – Extroversion – Emotional stability – Agreeableness– Conscientiousness– Openness to experience

Many companies rely heavily on personality assessment programs to evaluate and promote employees while many other firms use such programs as screens for initial hiring

Despite their widespread adoption by industry, the usefulness of such personality measures in explaining and predicting human behavior has been criticized on several counts with the most significant criticism dealing with the validity of these measures for actually predicting future job success

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Making Personality Tests More Effective

Although the validity of personality tests may never exceed that of ability tests, organizations can nevertheless take concrete steps to more successfully capitalize on individual differences in personality– First, the effects of some trait on performance are revealed

only when the person is also high in ability– Second, any one trait by itself may not be as important as

how the trait interacts with other traits– Third, the relationship between the trait and performance

could be a function of the specific demands of the job– Fourth, the relationship between the trait and performance

may be a function of whether the job is stable or unstable– Finally, obtaining information about the job applicant’s

personality is also an area where one can take steps to improve the predictive validity of such tests

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Diversity in Cognitive Abilities: Four Critical Factors

Although mental abilities are not one-dimensional, we do generally find positive relationships between people’s performances on different kinds of mental tests

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General and Specific Aspects of Cognitive Ability

Specialists tend to prefer the term general cognitive ability to intelligence because the former term is more precise and conjures up less controversy over issues such as the role of genetic factors in mental ability

Four facets of of cognitive or mental ability that stand out in terms of their generality and their usefulness as predictors of performance in the real world include:– Verbal ability: reflects the degree to which a person can

understand and use written and spoken language– Quantitative ability: reflects a person’s ability to perform all

kinds of arithmetic problems – Reasoning ability: the ability to invent solutions to many

different types of problems– Spatial ability: reflects a person’s ability to imagine how an

object would look if its position in space were changed

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Validity of Cognitive Ability Tests The usefulness of cognitive ability tests in

predicting task performance has been investigated in both academic and organizational contexts

A great deal of evidence suggests that general cognitive ability is also predictive of success in the work world

For certain jobs, tests of specific mental ability can add significantly to the predictive power of tests of general intelligence

General cognitive ability influences both how quickly a person can learn a job and how readily he or she can adapt to changing circumstances when on the job

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Diversity in Physical Abilities: Three Critical Factors

A great deal of the early research in the area of organizational behavior examined physical abilities– Edwin Fleishman

Physical ability consists of three major dimensions:– Muscle strength: tension, power and endurance– Endurance– Movement quality: flexibility, balance, and

coordination

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Diversity in Experience: Two Critical Factors

Recent trends related to the labor supply have heightened managers’ awareness of individual differences found among workers

Most of the awareness has focused less on differences in physical abilities, cognitive abilities,and personality traits and more on diversity related to demographic and cultural characteristics

The term demographic experience refers to the variability between people in terms of how much exposure they have had in working with people from different demographic groups

The term cultural experience describes the variability between people in terms of how much exposure they have had in working with people from different nations and cultures

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Broadening Demographic Experience: Political Aspects

In the past, political forces drove integration of the workforce

These political forces are still alive today , but have waned for several reasons– Many of the affirmative action

programs have achieved some measure of success

– Existing affirmative action programs no longer target groups who need the most support

– Backlash against affirmative action and other remedial programs aimed at minorities

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Broadening Demographic Experience: Competitive Aspects Hiring Issues:

– Rather than being motivated by a sense of social injustice or fear of litigation, affirmative action programs in the 21st century are part of a larger strategy that seeks to leverage diverse experience into competitive advantage

Successfully creating a diverse workforce can enhance a firm’s bottom line and hence its standing in financial markets

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Broadening Demographic Experience: Competitive Aspects

Retention Issues: – Firms that value diversity also

need to ensure that they can retain the services of members of these groups

To help with this problem, companies can:– Provide training programs– Establish programs that promote

mentoring relationships – Provide top managerial support

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Broadening Cultural Experience

Creating a workforce with diverse international and cultural experience can help firms move into global product markets

To broaden the cultural experience of employees, organizations can:– Teach employees of the intricacies of differing cultures– Send employees on international assignments– Import the type of talent needed to be competitive both

domestically and internationally

The ability to overcome problems wrought by individual differences is a critical skill for today’s managers

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Adaptability: Flexibility in the Face of Diversity

Given the complex and dynamic nature of the environment, perhaps the most critical aspect of human variability in the 21st century will be adaptability

Highly adaptable people can handle emergencies and deal effectively with uncertain and unpredictable situations

Research has shown that both general cognitive ability and openness to experience are related to adaptability

Given the changing nature of both work and the workforce, future managers will need this trait perhaps more than any other