Is discrimination good or bad in organizations? Explain.


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Is discrimination good or bad in organizations? Explain.


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Topic: Repercussions of Discrimination

List five strategies for successfully increasing diversity of the workforce.

Increasing diversity is an important strategy for organizations to implement, not only because it makes sense from a business standpoint in mirroring the communities in which the organization serves, but also because in so many ways, it’s the law to ensure fairness and non-discrimination.

Diversity is having a workforce comprising of two or more groups of employees with various racial, ethnic, gender, cultural, national origin, handicap, age, and religious backgrounds.

Diversity can produce behavioral barriers that undermine work team collegiality and cooperation. Understanding the underlying reasons for not having a diverse environment may be stemming from the following behaviors of employees within the environment. These behaviors must be identified and eliminated (employing those that are open to diverse work environments) and the work environment must be trained. For example:

1) Stereotyping is a process in which someone ascribes specific behavioral traits to individuals based on their apparent membership in a group.

2) Prejudice means bias toward prejudging someone based on that person’s traits.

3) Discrimination is prejudice in action. This would also include gender-role stereotypes (tendency to associate women with certain jobs).

4) Tokenism occurs when a company appoints a small group of women or minorities to high-profile positions, rather than more aggressively seeking full representation for that group.

5) Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view members of other social groups less favorably than one’s own.

Discrimination Legislation and Issues:

Age Discrimination
Age discrimination is a practice specifically protected by law. With a few rare exceptions, companies are forbidden from specifying an age preference in job advertisements. Employees must receive the same benefits regardless of age, the only exception being when the cost of providing supplemented benefits to young workers is the same as providing reduced benefits to older workers. Also, age discrimination in apprenticeship programs or internship opportunities is illegal.

Religious Discrimination
It is illegal for employers to discriminate based on an individual’s religious customs. Businesses are required to reasonably accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs, as long as doing so doesn’t have excessive negative consequences for the employer.

Gender Discrimination
When paying a salary to men and women of the same qualifications, responsibility, skill level, and position, employers are forbidden to discriminate on the basis of gender. Also, businesses are forbidden from lowering one gender’s salary in order to equalize pay between men and women.

Pregnancy-Based Discrimination
Additionally, pregnancy-based discrimination is illegal. Employers are required to handle pregnancy in the same way that they would handle a temporary illness or other non-permanent condition that would necessitate special consideration. Job seekers have the same rights as employees, and both are protected by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) passed in 1978.

Hostile Work Environment
A hostile work environment is created when harassment or discrimination interferes with an employee’s work performance or creates a difficult or offensive work environment for an employee or group of employees.

Required: Based on above discussion,

1. Is discrimination good or bad in organizations? Explain. Write 200 words.

2. How can diversity in the workplace be beneficial? How can it be problematic? Write 200 words.