1ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR Workplace diversity Workplace diversity is a very important concept in the corporate world. This is one of the major achievable objectives of the organizations. As there are many different types of tasks and responsibilities in an organization, workplace diversity is encouraged by the management to manage the workforce and the jobs in an efficient manner (Al-Jenaibi 2017). At the same time, the increasing diversity among the employees in terms of education, skills and culture also pushes the organizations to implement measures for workplace diversity. According to Madsen and Nielsen (2017), workplace diversity is a very common feature in the modern business world. This is more common in the multinational companies. Employees come from various origin, gender, age, cultural and educational background, ethnicities and nationalities and work together in these organizations to achieve the individual as well as organizationalgoals and objectives.Hence,it is crucial for the companiesto acceptthe diversities and differences and provide these employees opportunities to mutually respect these differences and work together for a better outcome. It also helps in reducing employee turnover. Lambert (2016) stated that workplace diversity helps to bring innovations and that brings business success. Due to diverse background, knowledge and skills of the employees, the organizations are able to adapt to the dynamic business environment and deliver better value to the customers. Thus, the diverse organizations are more efficient to attract more talents from the market and gain a better market share. Theacceptanceandimplementationoftheflexiblediversitypolicieshelpthe organizations create a global mindset and a cultural fluency. As stated by Barak (2016), diversity cannot be imposed later, rather the organizations need to integrate their attitude towards workplace diversity and design the measures since the beginning to bring the best results. Hence, diversity in workplace helps to build a positive and respectful work culture, which helps the employees to stay motivated by keeping aside the differences and apprehensions and working together to achieve a greater good. Shemla (2018) highlighted that the organizations often try to align their organizational goals with diversity practices. The problem arises in how the company designs its policies and implements those. To achieve workplace diversity, a company should be clear about their goals and objectives regarding diversity; they should not copy and paste from the theories, rather they should integrate the theories in their specific attributes; good implementation policies should be designed and the organization must try to motivate the employees.
2ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR This can be explained with the examples of Coca-Cola and MasterCard Malaysia. The Coca-Cola Company has designed its Global Diversity Mission to reflect and respect the diversities among their workforce. It is a global company that has units in almost all the countries in the world. The company stated that they address the inclusion and fairness in all facets of their business, that is, workplace, supply chain and distribution network, marketplace, and community services (coca-colacompany.com 2018). Coca-Cola believes that diversity is an integral part of their company and global business, which helped them to become a market leader in the beverage industry across the world. They have launched 2020 Vision People goals, that would help them to reduce differences in the workplace regarding age and gender and achieve a long term sustainable growth by operating in a multicultural world. It also launched a program for the managers to run an inclusion and diversity workshop during the meetings to implement these. Mastercard Malaysia is also famous for their workplace diversity policies. Grimes (2018) says in the report that Mastercard has been recognized by DiversityInc, Malaysia for creating an inclusive work culture that encourages decency and mutual respect. It was ranked 4thon the list of top 50 most diverse companies. It was also ranked 8thfor Diverse Recruitment, 11thfor DiversityCouncils,13thforEmployeeResourceGroupsandtopcompanyfortheLGBT employees. Thus, the company has been successful in designing not only efficient diversity policies that would encourage to reduce all types of differences among the workforce, but also successfully implementing the policies and achieve the organizational goals. Personality and values have a significant impact on the workplace diversity. Personality traits and values of the employees determine the behavior of people in the workplace, and that affects the organizational culture and attitude towards accepting diversity. The Big-5 personality traitsincludeOpenness,Conscientiousness,Extraversion,AgreeablenessandNeuroticism (Parks-Leduc, Feldman and Bardi 2015). With these traits, values also play a significant role in shaping the workplace diversity. Schwartz theory of basic values identifies 10 values and those are, Power, Achievement, Hedonism, Stimulation, Self-direction, Universalism, Benevolence, Tradition, Conformity and Security (Cieciuch et al. 2014). Recognizing these traits and values of an individual helps the businesses to identify the potential future employees. Since, workplace diversity requires the system to accept and respect the differences of the individuals and integrate those to achieve the organizational goals, hence, personality and values of the individuals are essential to implement the workplace diversity policies.
3ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR References Al-Jenaibi, B., 2017. The scope and impact of workplace diversity in the United Arab Emirates– A preliminary study.Geografia-Malaysian Journal of Society and Space,8(1). Barak,M.E.M.,2016.Managingdiversity:Towardagloballyinclusiveworkplace.Sage Publications. Cieciuch, J., Davidov, E., Vecchione, M. and Schwartz, S.H., 2014. A hierarchical structure of basic human values in a third-order confirmatory factor analysis.Swiss Journal of Psychology. coca-colacompany.com.,2018.GlobalDiversityMission.[online].Availableat: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/diversity/global-diversity-mission[Accessed on 3rdNov. 2018]. Grimes, M., 2018. Mastercard Recognized as a Leading Company for Inclusion and Diversity. [online]. Available at: https://newsroom.mastercard.com/news-briefs/mastercard-recognized-as- a-leading-company-for-inclusion-and-diversity/ [Accessed on 3rdNov. 2018]. Lambert, J., 2016. Cultural diversity as a mechanism for innovation: Workplace diversity and the absorptivecapacityframework.JournalofOrganizationalCulture,Communicationsand Conflict,20(1), p.68. Madsen, M.B. and Nielsen, V.L., 2017. Does Gender Diversity in the Workplace Affect Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intentions?.International Public Management Review,1(18), pp.77- 115. Parks-Leduc, L., Feldman, G. and Bardi, A., 2015. Personality traits and personal values: A meta-analysis.Personality and Social Psychology Review,19(1), pp.3-29. Shemla, M., 2018. Why Workplace Diversity Is So Important, And Why It's So Hard To Achieve. Forbes.[online].Availableat:https://www.forbes.com/sites/rsmdiscovery/2018/08/22/why- workplace-diversity-is-so-important-and-why-its-so-hard-to-achieve/#524f55393096[Accessed on 3rdNov. 2018].