Diversity in Qantas Airline

This article explores the concept of cultural diversity in Qantas Airlines. It discusses discrimination, prejudice, and racism in the workplace and how Qantas Airlines is addressing these issues. The article also highlights the company's policies on leadership, equal opportunities, and removing biases from the work environment.

Running head: DIVERSITY IN QANTAS AIRLINE
Diversity in Qantas Airline
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Executive Summary
The purpose of the assignment is to understand some of the concepts which is associated with
cultural diversity. The theories that are discussed in the assignment are Discrimination, Prejudice
and racism. These are some of the important issues in establishing cultural diversity in the
society as well as in an organisation. The company that has been selected to write the assignment
is Qantas Airlines; the company is an Australian multinational company that has achieved
success in the process.

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Critical analysis of the concepts related to cultural diversity..........................................................3
Discrimination.............................................................................................................................3
Prejudice and racism....................................................................................................................4
Examination of the theories in workplace.......................................................................................4
Cultural diversity in Qantas Airlines...............................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Reference List..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Globalization has encouraged business organisations to have a wider rich to their target
market. Political scenario, economic conditions and society are some of the aspects in the
external business environment which become more significant in international market.
Acceptance of various cultures all over the world is a large part of globalization (Martin, 2014).
There are various advantages in the process as it provides a broader perspective of things; it also
helps the company in management and building relations with the customers. Diversity is a
concept that includes different factors that make up an individual, including age, gender, culture,
religion, personality, social status and sexual orientation (Grivastava & Kleiner, 2015). In a
business organisation, diversity and acceptance of individual based on their talent and skill leads
to a number of benefits. In order to understand the aspects of multiculturalism or cultural
diversity, one of Australia’s famous airline companies is going to be analyzed: Qantas Airline.
Critical analysis of the concepts related to cultural diversity
Discrimination
Discrimination is the process by which a person is treated in a different way based on
beliefs, values norms conditions. For example: in an organisation, if a person is treated in a
different way because of the gender of a person overlooking the skills of the person. There are
four aspects of the concept of discrimination in the society, direct effect, indirect effect,
Harassment, Victimization (Mishra & Mishra, 2015). In direct discrimination a person is directly
treated in a manner that is unjustified compared to another individual with similar skills in a
similar situation. Indirect discrimination is the process by which a person feels he or she is

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treated in a way which is not direct or the impact of the discriminating behavior (Mishra &
Mishra, 2015). Harassment is associated with the conduct of a person, unwanted behavior with
the purpose or effect of abuse the honour of an individual and of creating a threatening,
aggressive, demeaning, embarrassing or offensive environment. For example: one of the most
highly complained case of harassment is based on gender. The last concept of discrimination is
victimization it is the process by which a person is being continuously subjected to misconduct
and unjustified treatment (Jones et al., 2017).
Prejudice and racism
Racism can be defined as any biases towards a person or a group of people based on their
cast, creed, skin colour and ethnicity. Racism is an issue that has been reported and combated by
organisations all over the world. For example: mistreating a person because of their cast or
religion. Prejudice is said to be the case when there is a certain stereotype towards a person or a
group of people, then there are certain outcomes or behavioral expression which are associated
with the stereotype. For example: a preconceived notion that people from the Muslim community
is orthodox (Emerson & Murphy, 2014).
Examination of the theories in workplace
An organisation can be defined as a group of people who strive towards achieving the
goals. In the process of achieving the objectives, organisations appoint employees on the basis of
their skills and talent. With globalization there is an increased need of understanding the
importance of cultural diversity, for example a company that originates in Australia may also
have its operations in India, the two countries have a huge cultural difference and thus in order to
operate in the Indian environment the company have to adapt to the culture of the country

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((Grivastava & Kleiner, 2015). The importance of cultural diversity improves the potential of the
company in terms of broadening the perspective. A company can be called as diverse when there
is a variety of groups represented by the population of the organisation. In order to strengthen the
philosophy of diversity in the company the idea should be integrated in the core values and
principles. The management of the company is expected to have a broad mindset and non-
judgmental approach towards value of differences. Discrimination as well as the issue of
prejudice and racism is issues in the society that has been recorded and devised for a long time.
In workplace these issues are also relevant; there are instances where people have reported
harassment and other forms of discrimination (Grivastava & Kleiner, 2015). These issues in
culture diversity leads to a number of issues within the company as well as impacts the
shareholders as well for example some of the most significant impact of absence of cultural
acceptance and diversity are: increase in the attrition rate, increase in the internal conflict,
reduction of the perspective etc.
In order to maintain diversity in the organisation companies should have a similar
approach towards any employee. The Human Resource department of the company is
responsible to ensure that there is no cultural biases in the company, policies and decisions
should be made discriminating people on the basis of their culture. The management should
ensure that every individual should be given equal chance (Tjosvold, 2017). For example: the
HR department can allow holiday for a person during their festival time. People should be
allowed to embrace their ethnicity. An example of such a scenario is the acceptance of Saree as
formal attire among the Indian community as well as organisations that operate in India.
Encouraging the people to uphold their cultural uniqueness helps the company as well. It

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increases the faith in the brand and helps the company establish a valuable relation with the
customers (Barak, 2016).
Cultural diversity in Qantas Airlines
The management of the company claims to value diversity in the workforce in order to
encourage thought and experience. Qantas is a company that encourages inclusive and collaborative
work culture as is of the view that this is an aspect that contributes towards the success (Qantas.com,
2018).
The objectives that the company follows in order to encourage multiculturalism in the work culture
are:
 Treating every individual in the organisation with dignity and respect.
 Leaders are trained and developed in the organisation to encourage inclusive behavior and
build teams and work environment which is culturally diverse
 The management is should focus on developing programs and providing support to the
subordinates so that they
 Maintain the inclusive policy of the company by ensuring there is global acceptance,
communication plays an importance role in the process (Qantas.com, 2018)
The company believes in developing collaborative leaders who are capable of managing an
inclusive team and supporting every individual to perform in their best. This is an essential part of the
cultural diversity strategy that the company has undertaken. The focus is on the leaders as they are
responsible for establishing the culture of inclusive and cultural diversity (Qantas.com, 2018).

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Some of the policies apart from developing the leaders are: ensuring flexibility in the mainstream
process across all operational segments, challenging and mitigating bias and supporting the employees
of the organisation with equal opportunities to develop their career and future (Qantas.com, 2018).
Apart from these steps that company focuses on gender inclusion in the organisation. In Australia
there has been reported imbalance in gender among the higher management (Davey, 2017). The
company has recognized this issue and is addressing it by removing all the biases of hiring and
promotion based on gender in order to avoid discrimination among the employees based on gender
(Qantas.com, 2018).
Conclusion
It can be concluded form the above discussion that the cultural diversity of Qantas
airlines is focused on leadership, equal opportunities, removing biases from the work
environment. Discrimination prejudices and racism is held as a major issue in the work
environment and the company is focused on eliminating these aspects. One of the major ideas of
the policy of developing leadership is team building activities are as it is one of the important
ways in which the management ensures cultural diversity. This provides an advantage for the
company as well as different proficiencies match the Global requirements. The company
employees a number of policies for the different employees to feel that there are not biased or
stereotyped against and they can relate to the organisation and its goals giving the maximum
output. The development of multicultural groups is one of the best ways to develop the cultural
diversity and dependent upon the different employees who's Qantas uses. Building in inclusive
culture environment employees the different processes to improve in inclusion free from any bias
based on gender class ethnicity or religion. This process is best achieved by assigning people

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work based on their professions is and merits on which they are employed in the organisation.
Qantas also ensures employee indigenous culture and the cultural activities in this program so
that the employees can relate to the organisational culture and the overall goals of the
organisation.

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Reference List:
Barak, M. E. M. (2016). Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage
Publications.
Davey, M. (2017). Australian report finds disturbing evidence of gender inequality. Retrieved
from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/08/australian-women-display-
tremendous-resilience-in-face-of-gender-inequality-kate-jenkins-finds
Emerson, K. T., & Murphy, M. C. (2014). Identity threat at work: How social identity threat and
situational cues contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in the workplace. Cultural Diversity
and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 20(4), 508.
Grivastava, S., & Kleiner, B. (2015). Managing Cultural Diversity In The Workplace. Journal of
International Diversity, 2015(1).
Jones, K. P., Arena, D. F., Nittrouer, C. L., Alonso, N. M., & Lindsey, A. P. (2017). Subtle
discrimination in the workplace: A vicious cycle. Industrial and Organizational Psychology,
10(1), 51-76.
Martin, G. C. (2014). The effects of cultural diversity in the workplace. Journal of Diversity
Management (Online), 9(2), 89.
Mishra, B., & Mishra, J. (2015). Discrimination in the Workplace. Journal of Higher Education
Theory & Practice, 15(4).
Qantas.com. (2018). Qantas Diversity and Inclusion Statement. Retrieved from
https://www.qantas.com/infodetail/about/corporateGovernance/diversityStatement.pdf

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Tjosvold, D. (2017). Cross-cultural management: foundations and future. Routledge.