On the other hand the “radical approach view” according to (Cockburn, 1998) as describe by Jewson and Mason is concerned with the outcome of the contest rather than the rules of the game. They went further to claimed that discrimination can only be identified at group level not at individual level and therefore equal opportunities policies should manipulate the system so that the disadvantage groups can have more chances than the main group. This is called positive discrimination or affirmative action. Positive discrimination is illegal in the UK and more over even the disadvantage groups do not like to receive preferential treatments at work for example see (Groschl and Doherty, 1999).
However Cockburn’s criticism of the two approaches is that they do not take into account complex situation, for example, a situation where the person is black, a woman and disable. She said that the radical and the liberal approaches can only work if there is only one disadvantage group and one aspect of the EO for example recruitment and promotion.
Either the equal opportunities policies are not working for those persuaded by the moral argument,(Wilson, 1996) or organisations realised that there is not much in it for them and the need to move to something which can be of interest to them, (the business argument). Many organisations are now moving toward managing diversity. The rationale for organisations adopting diversity policies are unclear and are also different from one organisation to another. For example, in their research to find how diversity oriented organisation manage their diverse workforce in a hotel in San Francisco found that the workforce mirrored the demographic composition of the population. (Groschl & Doherty, 1999:264)
Managing diversity have so many definitions depending on how it is been perceived by different academics. However the most common one adopted by many, see for example (Kirton and Greene, 2005, Groschl and Doherty,1999, McDougal,1996) is the definition of (Kandola and Fullerton 1994) as, the basic concept of managing diversity accepts that the work force consist of a diverse population of people. The diversity consist of visible and non visible differences which will include factors such as sex, age, background, race disability and work style. It is found on the premises that harnessing these differences will create a productive environment in which everybody feels valued, where their talents are being fully utilised and in which organisational goals are met.
Managing diversity is aimed at accepting that every person is unique and that people should be looked at not as a part of a group but as an individual otherwise this might bring about prejudices and stereotyping. Managing diversity also argue that people cannot be treated equally as people are all different. Example a disable person might need more time off work than an able bodied person. In the hospitality industry, the employments of stereotypes are very common. For instance, young and pretty girls would be employed in the reception just because of their looks not their ability.
As most hotels are international hotel chains and also the internationalisation of their customers, it is important to have a diverse workforce. (Maxwell et al, 2000). Most hotels have equal opportunities and diversity policies; however implementation can be very difficult. (See Maxwell et al, 2000). Whatever the rationale for managing diversity, most of the literatures have so far associated it with a wide ranging of benefits and therefore the MD should be driven by the internal need for change(McDougal,1996), for example the benefit to the organisation. “Managing diversity, when taken at face value, appears to be a remedy for many of the organisational problems. (Kandola and Fullerton, 1998:33) For example, the hotel industry has the problem of high staff turnover, low pay and long hours, managing diversity can be another tool of HR practice that can help to alleviate or reduce such problems.
Whatever many benefits managing diversity is linked with, the problem of measurability is always a problem and therefore amore concrete evidence can be hard to associate with managing diversity. There is a significant difference between the rhetoric and reality of the benefits associated with managing diversity. (Groschl and Doherty, 1999:262-263). As a result, (kandola and Fullerton, 1998:136) categorised the benefits derived for managing diversity into three
- Proven benefits: these are concrete evidences, for example, savings made by organisations as a result of retaining staff as it is well documented that new staff can be too expensive.
- Debatable benefits: normally inconclusive and largely based on ambiguous research.
- Indirect benefits: these ones are nearly impossible to establish
The question is, what must the Human Resources Managers do in order to gain the profits associated with MD?
For any diversity management to succeed, there should be an integration of both Human Resources Management and Human Resources development. Policies such as recruitment, selection and promotion, staff development, work life balance and try to attend to the need of the person are in place, monitored and accounted for.(Wilson,1996)
Another was is to educate the whole workforce about diversity and the benefits it comes with and also for the staff to see management creating opportunities that will develop their potentials and that they are open to all.
For managing diversity to succeed, cultures within the organisation need to be challenged. (Kirton and Greene, 2006:85) argue that equal opportunities policy statements usually fails to challenge organisational cultures.
Despite the equal opportunities and diversity policies, the problem in the hospitality industry is the job segregation on the basis that certain jobs are specifically for women or men. For example, men working night shifts and the notion that housekeeping is a woman’s work.
In most organisations, the HR team are not actually HR specialists and have no clue what managing diversity is. For example in the Tesco express that I work which employs about 30 staff, the recruitment and selection is carried out by the site manager who in most cases delegate it to the duty manager. None of them can distinguish between equal opportunities and managing diversity. When asked the issue of equal opportunity and diversity, they all perceived it to be how many black people and disable people(group) they employ instead of the helping the individual realising their potentials . One manager even interviewed a disable person because she said she had to show that in the books that they are being given opportunity. In this case she was following the company policy. (McDougall, 1996) questioned whether this approach can ever lead to a managing diversity orientation. Therefore as stipulated by (Maxwell et al, 2000), “ensuring that the potential of managing diversity is realised will require senior management commitment”, by ensuring that for example, in the case of Tesco, all the Express managers are trained in Human resources management.
The benefits associated with managing diversity can be a case for companies to adopt those policies however, the indirect and the debatable benefits are very unlikely to persuade the top managers to adopt the managing diversity policies (Kandola and Fullerton, 1998)
One major potential barrier to managing diversity is the much debated issue of immigration especially when the Prime Minister said “British jobs for British”. I assume the will be a massive to businesses especially if the Home Office decides to increase the fee for a work permit for migrant workers.
Bibliography:
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Kandola, R., Fullerton, J. (1998) Diversity in action: managing the Mosaic (2nd ed.). London: Institute of Personnel Development
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