Disclaimer: This study guide is NOT a substitute for reading the textbook chapters, and this guide

alone will not guarantee you a passing grade on exams. You must read the textbook chapters in their
entirety in order to fully prepare for the exam.

Management Chapter 12: Managing Individuals and a Diverse Workforce

Diversity: a variety of demographic, cultural, and personal differences among an organization's

Affirmative action: purposeful steps taken by an organization to create employment opportunities for
minorities and women

A common misconception is that workplace diversity and affirmative action are the same, yet these
concepts differ in several ways: their purpose, how they are practiced, and the reactions they produce

1. affirmative action is more narrowly focused on demographics such as sex and race, whereas
diversity has a broader focus that includes demographic, cultural, and personal differences
2. affirmative action is a policy for actively creating diversity, but diversity can exist even if
organizations don’t take purposeful steps to create it
3. affirmative action is required by law for private employers with 50 or more employees while
diversity is not
4. The purpose of affirmative action programs is to compensate for past discrimination, to prevent
ongoing discrimination; and to provide equal opportunities to all, regardless of race, color,
religion, sex, or national origin while the purpose of diversity seeks to benefit both organizations
and their employees by encouraging organizations to value all kinds of differences

Diversity makes good business sense for 3 reasons:

1. helps companies with cost savings by reducing turnover, decreasing absenteeism, and avoiding
expensive lawsuits
a. Diversity programs also save companies money by helping them avoid discrimination
lawsuits
2. helps companies attract and retain talented workers
3. driving business growth

Different types of Diversity:

1. Surface-level diversity: differences such as age, sex, race/ethnicity, and physical disabilities that
are observable, typically unchangeable, and easy to measure
a. Most people start by using surface-level diversity to categorize or stereotype other
people, but those categorizations give way to deeper impressions formed from
knowledge of others’ behavior and psychological characteristics such as personality and
attitudes.

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 2. Deep-level diversity: differences such as personality and attitudes that are communicated
through verbal and nonverbal behaviors and are learned only through extended interaction with
others
a. Example: personality differences, attitudes, beliefs, and values

If managed properly, the shift from surface- to deep-level diversity can accomplish 2 things:

1. Coming to know and understand each other better can result in reduced prejudice and conflict.
2. Leads to stronger Social integration.
a. Social integration: degree to which group members are psychologically attracted to
working each other to accomplish a common objective

Dimensions of surface level diversity that affect decisions and behaviors in organizations:

1. Age
a. Age discrimination: treating people differently (e.g. in hiring and firing, promotion, and
compensation decisions) because of their age
2. Sex
a. Sex discrimination: occurs when people are treated differently because of their sex
3. race/ethnicity
a. Racial and ethnic discrimination: occurs when people are treated differently because of
their race or ethnicity
4. mental or physical disabilities age discrimination
a. Disability: a mental or physical impairment that substantially limits one or more major
life activities
b. Disability discrimination: occurs when people are treated differently because of their
disabilities
c. Assistive technology: an accommodation provided by companies that gives workers
with disabilities the tools they need to overcome their disabilities

Deep-level diversity can be explored by the “Big Five” dimensions of personality and other significant
work-related aspects of personality

Personality: the relatively stable set of behaviors, attitudes, and emotions displayed over time that
makes people different from each other

Disposition: the tendency to respond to situation and events in a predetermined manner

The “Big Five” dimension of personality:

1. Extroversion: the degree to which someone is active, assertive, gregarious, sociable, talkative,
and energized by others
2. Emotional stability: the degree to which someone is not angry, depressed, anxious, emotional,
insecure ,and excitable
3. Agreeableness: the degree to which someone is cooperative, polite, flexible , forgiving ,good
natured, tolerant, and trusting

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 4. Conscientiousness: the degree to which someone is organized ,hardworking, responsible,
preserving thorough, and achievement oriented
5. Openness to experience: the degree to which someone is curious broad-minded and open to
new ideas, things and experiences; is spontaneous; and has a high tolerance for ambiguity

Although studies indicate that extroversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and
openness to experience are the five basic dimensions of personality in any culture, setting, or language,
research has also identified additional personality dimensions that directly affect workplace attitudes
and behaviors.

1. Authoritarianism is the extent to which an individual believes there should be power and status
differences within the organization
2. Machiavellian personalities believe that virtually any type of behavior is acceptable if it helps
satisfy needs or accomplish goals
3. Type A/B personality dimension is the extent to which people tend toward impatience,
hurriedness, competitiveness, and hostility.
a. Type A personality a person who tries to complete as many tasks as possible in the
shortest possible time and is hard driving, competitive, impatient, perfectionistic, angry,
and unable to relax
b. Type B personality a person who is relaxed, easygoing, and able to engage in leisure
activities without worrying about work.
4. Locus of control is the degree to which people believe that their actions influence what happens
to them
a. Internal locus of control is the belief that what happens to you is largely under your
control
b. External locus of control is the belief that what happens to you is primarily due to
factors beyond your control, such as luck, chance, or powerful people
5. Affectivity is the stable tendency to experience positive or negative moods and to react to
things in a generally positive or negative way.
a. Positive affectivity: consistently notice and focus on the positive aspects of themselves
and their environments
b. Negative affectivity: consistently notice and focus on the negative in themselves and
their environments
c. Affectivity is also important because of mood linkage
i. Mood linkage: a phenomenon in which one worker’s negative affectivity and
bad moods can spread to others

Several different methods or paradigms for managing diversity:

1. the discrimination and fairness paradigm: focuses on equal opportunity, fair treatment,
recruitment of minorities, and strict compliance with the equal employment opportunity laws
a. the most common method of approaching diversity,
2. the access and legitimacy paradigm: focuses on the acceptance and celebration of differences
to ensure that the diversity within the company matches the diversity found among primary
stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers, and local communities.
a. similar to the business growth advantage of diversity

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 b. The basic idea behind this approach is to create a demographically diverse workforce
that attracts a broader customer base
3. the learning and effectiveness paradigm: focuses on integrating deep-level diversity
differences, such as personality, attitudes, beliefs, and values, into the actual work of the
organization
a. One sign that a company hasn’t yet created a learning and effectiveness paradigm is
that people withhold their opinions for fear of being seen as different.
b. This paradigm is consistent with achieving organizational plurality.
i. Organizational plurality is a work environment where:
1. all members empowered to contribute in way that maximizes benefits
to the organization, customers, and themselves
2. the individuality of each member is respected by not segmenting or
polarizing people on the basis of their membership in a particular group
c. The learning and effectiveness diversity paradigm offers 4 benefits:
i. values common ground
ii. makes a distinction between individual and group differences
iii. because the focus is on individual differences, this paradigm is less likely to
encounter the conflict, backlash, and divisiveness associated with diversity
programs that focus only on group differences
iv. unlike the other diversity paradigms that simply focus on surface-level diversity,
the learning and effectiveness paradigm focuses on bringing different talents
and perspectives together (i.e., deep-level diversity) to make the best
organizational decisions and to produce innovative, competitive products and
services

There are 2 basic types of diversity training programs:

1. Awareness training: training that is designed to raise employees' awareness of diversity issues
and to challenge the underlying assumptions or stereotypes the may have about others
2. Skilled-based diversity training: training that teaches employees the practical skills the need for
managing a diverse workforce, such as flexibility and adaptability, negotiation, problem solving,
and conflict resolution

Companies also use diversity audits, diversity pairing, and minority experiences for top executives to
better manage diversity.

1. Diversity audits: formal assessments that measure employee and management attitudes,
investigate the extent to which people are advantaged or disadvantaged with respect to hiring
and promotions, and review companies' diversity-related policies and procedures
2. Diversity pairing: a mentoring program in which people of different cultural program in which
people of difficult cultural backgrounds, sexes, or races/ethnicities are paired together to get to
know each other and change stereotypical beliefs and attitude