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1. Introduction to Managing diversity among the workforce in the UK Telecommunication
Managing diversity among the workforce in the UK Telecommunication, This paper focuses on workforce diversity management by reviewing past studies and theories and applying it to the UK retail sector. ‘The basic concept of managing diversity accepts that the workforce consists of a diverse population of people consisting of visible and non-visible differences… and is founded on the premise that harnessing these differences will create a productive environment in which everyone feels valued, where all talents are fully utilized and in which organizational goals are met’ (Torrington et al, 2011: 476).
2. Literature Review
According to Ellis and Sonnenfeld (1994) and Brenda (2010), the main purpose of diversity management and its primary function is to increase employee performance and to avoid quick-fix solutions (Trennery and Paradies, 2012) allowing maximizing advantages and minimizing disadvantages of a diverse workforce. Diversity was usually expressed only in the form of age, gender and ethnicity until the middle of the 20th century (Kosek et al, 2005), viewed simply as an obligation to follow the human rights legislation imposed by the government, However, due to globalization and demographic changes the diversity of the workforce, including the retail sector (Ellis and Sonnenfeld, 2013), has become much wider in scope (White and Rice, 2010), though the extent of certain types of diversity had expressed itself differently in various parts of the globe and according to Shen, Chanda, N’etto and Monga (2009), multiculturalism is the UK’s leading employee diversity type.
‘Diversity approach’ was introduced in the 1980s as part of HRM strategies to improve equality (Riach, 2009) and was supposed to benefit both minorities and management of the organization to achieve most productive results (Cox, 1994). The value of diversity management was further supported by research of Wilson and Iles (1999), showing that a diverse workforce is more productive and innovative in decision-making than a homogeneous workforce. However, Managing diversity among the workforce in the UK Telecommunication research into diversity management should not take the focus away from legislation issues like discrimination (Smith et al, 2010).
Growing demand for effective diversity management inspired researchers and theorists to develop theories on this subject (Kinyanjui, 2013). The ‘value diversity’ hypothesis argues that diversity is a source of competitive advantage (Cox and Blake, 1991), and is viewed in Europe as a chance to get ahead of competitors (Maxwell et al, 2001). Theory of social identity and belonging suggests that employees tend to act in self-interest to be accepted in a social group in a workplace (Kinyanjui, 2013), which motivates them to be more productive (Poston, 2009). Institutional theory states that organizations should make diversity part of their culture and identity and value it as a crucial resource (Cole and Salimath, 2013), making organizations proactive and improving decision-making (Bartkus and Glassman, 2008), and is reinforced by the social exchange theory which claims that every action in the workplace will cause a similar reaction (Cropanzano and Mitchell, 2005), so positive attitude to a diverse workforce in organizational culture will cause positive reaction among employees. People are reluctant to discuss diversity in general due to its sensitivity, which complicates the management process (Holloway and Carnes, 2011) because employees in a foreign environment tend to nurture and protect their cultural or ethnic individuality to feel more secure (Ewoh, 2013). Thomas Aquinas in his research on diversity (Neves and Mele, 2013) argues that managers should look for a ‘common ground’ among their diverse workforce as a starting point to establish connection, which can be found through Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (Tung, 1993) or through Cox’s IMCD model of cultural diversity (Triana et al, 2010), and enables efficient diversity management. Cox’s findings from his IMCD model conclude that effective diversity management lowers discrimination in organizations (Triana et al, 2010).
Various studies led researchers to believe that human resource management plays a crucial role in diversity management (Litvin, 1997) by being the primary ‘custodian’ of people management processes in organizations (Shen et al, 2009) and effective leadership and continuous support for the top management being its most effective tool to manage diversity (Popescu and Rusko, 2012; Childs, 2005) as also shown by US G.A.O. studies that training is least actually important in effective diversity management and leadership being a deciding factor (Kreitz, 2007). Team exercises of diverse employees are the most common strategies in organizations of effective diversity management (Code, 2007), Managing diversity among the workforce in the UK Telecommunication however Mor Barak (2005) argues that focusing on diversity management as a group approach rather than an individual approach can cause more negative results than positive by installing unhealthy competition among different teams which further damages organizations’ diversity management strategies (Brock, 2011).
The retail sector in the UK benefits greatly from research on diversity due to the vastly multicultural workforce it has (Foster and Harris, 2005), which is why it requires constant updating and re-evaluation of theories and researches to adapt to a constantly changing diversity environment in retail organizations. Due to limited research in the UK retail market on diversity management, this paper will evaluate existing theories and practical examples to form an up-to-date evaluation of this subject.
3. Aim statement
This paper aims to evaluate existing research on diversity management in the workforce to offer an up-to-date review of theories and practices for the UK retail sector.
4. Objectives
• To review existing theories of diversity management.
• To analyze the theories to identify trends and patterns.
• To evaluate theories based on analysis and practical examples of diversity management in the retail sector.
5. Methodology:
5.1 Philosophy
Constructivists believe that people desire to comprehend the world and how it operates by creating subjective meanings through experiences and qualitative research of these experiences (Creswell, 2014). This paper is following a constructivist view to understand these experiences and understand the mechanics of the theories and their relevance in the UK retail industry. Managing diversity among the workforce in the UK Telecommunication Petit and Huault (2008) however, argue that a constructivist approach does not offer the same views for theory-researchers and actors of the research, thus this creating a drawback for this paper, because the insight that will be achieved through the research might not be the same as for the actors actually undergoing diversity management in retail organizations and has to be taken into account.
5.2 Approach
This research has an inductive approach, which offers a framework to analyze qualitative data and analyze and evaluate it (Maxwell, 2013), however, this approach lacks analytical strategies that can offer more insight into patterns and trends outlined by various theories (Thomas, 2006). This research is implementing an inductive approach to generate understanding about diversity management through evaluation of past theories and examples to form an up-to-date understanding of this subject in the UK retail industry. It will also help to avoid the issue of reliability, which is dominant in the deductive approach (Stenbacka, 2001), and allow focusing subjectively (Edfeldt, 1996) on the qualitative data of this research, which is the dominant feature of the inductive approach.
5.3 Strategy
The strategy of this research is to look at various examples of diversity management in retail organizations to evaluate existing theories of diversity. This case-oriented strategy is unique to the inductive approach and, combined, offers greater insight into theories and improves the evaluation process (Eisenhardt, 1989). Even though such strategy offers various techniques to extract and analyze useful data from case studies (Yin, 2009), it contains bias opinions and requires a lot of cases for a proper analysis and evaluation, Managing diversity among the workforce in the UK Telecommunication which put the research at risk of being prejudiced on personal opinions and value-judgments (Flyvbjerg, 2006). This case study will review past theories and examples from different case studies in the UK retail industry to evaluate different theories and their application in these case studies to determine if these theories are applicable in the modern diversity management in the UK retail industry.
5.4 Choice
This is a mono-method research since it will use purely qualitative data for analysis and evaluation. There is no clear one definition of qualitative research since it involves too many aspects and a complete definition will be too large (Yin, 2011), but its main difference from quantitative is that it does not involve studying numerical data (Keegan, 2009). The benefit of this approach is that it studies human behavior and puts the research in the right perspective to analyze relevant data of human experience which will provide better insight into diversity management (Yin, 2011). Qualitative research is better suited for this research because it will help to evaluate theories and apply to examples of real life organizations (Merriam, 2009), Managing diversity among the workforce in the UK Telecommunication while quantitative research would only provide numerical data, which would not allow analyzing specific pattern of human behavior in diversity management (Newman & Benz, 1998).
5.5 Time horizon
This research is cross-sectional as it will analyze and evaluate data from a single point in time (Menard, 2002) and while this type of research allows a more accurate interpretation of data collected by previous studies and may quickly become outdated due to the changing environment of the field of research (Pettigrew, 1990), so using longitudinal research could be beneficial. However, this research focuses on existing theories and examples to form an up-to-date evaluation at a single point in time, so a longitudinal research will not be necessary, as this research does not test a proposed new hypothesis based on an observation of an organization over a period of time (Menard, 2002).
5.6 Techniques and procedures/Sampling
This research is using non-probability, purposive sampling to focus solely on material about diversity management in the UK retail sector. This will help to narrow the search and avoid unnecessary material that can misdirect the evaluation process (Creswell, 2014). On the other hand, probability sampling can offer access to more material that could potentially improve this research by offering more data from different perspectives (Stehman, 1999). So all available articles on UK diversity management, of any date in time, will be used in this research due to the limited number of conducted research on this subject. The cases for examples will be selected based on availability and focused on the UK retail sector. This will allow a more effective and focused research but again might lack different perspectives that examples from international organizations can provide (Schreuder et al, 2001).
Once the data is selected, it will be analyzed to identify trends and patterns that form supportive opinions or contradictions to update the existing research and theories about diversity management in the UK retail sector. The main keywords used to find the relevant articles online in Athens search engines are Diversity management, UK
retail sector, practical examples of diversity, theories and applications of diversity management etc.
6. Ethics and Access:
6.1 Academic Integrity
On the ethical note, this research follows the ‘code of honour’ (McCabe et al, 2002) to avoid misinterpreting and taking credit for someone else’s work. That is why every statement or idea taken from the different academic material will be properly referenced in the research and included on the back of this paper.
6.2 Data Protection Act
This research follows the law of Data Protection Act and will not use any material that requires the consent of individuals to be used in the research, even though it may limit the availability of data, which may compromise the extensiveness of the research (Iversen et al, 2006). This is a purely qualitative research so it will not require interviews or questionnaires where confidentiality of individuals could become an issue…
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