Workplace Diversity: A Critical Analysis of Research Papers

This essay provides an analysis of diversity in the workplace, drawing insights from three articles. The first article highlights the prevalence of cultural bias despite corporate efforts to promote diversity, noting that employees who perceive bias are more likely to leave. The second article focuses on racial discrimination against African Americans and Hispanics in the accounting profession, emphasizing the resulting gap in the talent pipeline. The third article examines the negative stereotypes affecting the employability of Turkish immigrants in German companies. The essay concludes that negative stereotypes and discrimination based on sex, religion, race, or ethnicity can negatively impact a company's productivity and create gaps in the talent pipeline, depriving companies of valuable human resources and talent. Desklib offers this essay and many other resources for students.

Running head: DIVERSITY
Diversity
Name of the student
Name of the university

1DIVERSITY
Diversity may be defined as the diversification of myriad cultures, values, traditions or a
homogenization of the various groups. In other words, diversity means that each person is
unique, with a different set of values and beliefs. Thus, it is important for each individual to be
tolerant of each other. The following paper analyzes the viewpoints on diversity as established in
the three articles titled, “When employees think the boss is unfair, they are more likely to
disengage and leave”, “A pipeline for diversity” and “Evaluating the effect of negative Turkish
stereotypes on evaluative workplace outcomes in Germany.”
In the first paper, the authors, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Ripa Rashid and Laura Sherbin claim
that although the corporations in the United States are spending huge sums of money on
spreading awareness about diversity and the need for a bias free working environment, cultural
bias continues to prevail in the working place. For instance, women and other minority groups
continue to remain underrepresented in most companies, with a strong bias as to their
capabilities. Bias, in the workplace, may be related to a number of factors – namely, gender,
race, ethnicity, social status, cultural values and so on. The research in this paper shows that
employees who tend to perceive bias in the workplace are more likely to leave and find a job that
is more tolerant and accepting of diversity. The most interesting aspect about this paper is the
mode of research. Most papers tend to focus on the actions of the managers and how they plan to
avoid bias in the workplace. Instead, the paper focuses on the perception of the employees and
the factors that they would perceive as biased. According to these authors, a biased workplace
and consequent high turnover rate of employees could be detrimental for the company since they
could be losing valuable assets.
The article by Frank Ross, Jean Wells and Allyson Clarke on the other hand, takes a
different perspective of diversity in the professional sector. Instead of a generalized concept of

2DIVERSITY
bias in the workplace, this research paper focuses on a specific aspect – bias in the employment
of African Americans and Hispanics. Racial discrimination and bias is a very real problem when
it comes to employment. Owing to the common stereotypes that prevail around such ethnic
groups, a large number of companies hesitate to hire them. As such, only about 4 per cent and 6
per cent of African Americans and Hispanics have been hired in the accounting professions in
the years 2011-2012. The authors also claim that there is a common misconception about the
accounting profession which has led to a bias in this profession as well. For instance, the younger
generations do not have much regard for the profession; a large number of people thus have less
respect for the profession and the career opportunities it offers. Yet, as the authors argue, the
accounting industry is expected to grow at an alarming rate in the upcoming years. Even then,
the representation of the Hispanic communities, the African American communities and the
Asian communities continue to be at an all time low. The failure to include these communities in
the accounting profession has led to a gap in the talent pipeline, depriving the accounting
companies of precious human resources.
The third paper by Boris Baltes and Cort Rudolph suggests that the negative stereotypes
surrounding Turkish immigrants has had an adverse impact on their employability in German
companies. This paper is much more specific, when it comes to employability than the previous
paper. The authors claim that that how the Turkish immigrants are evaluated depends to a large
extent on their race and ethnicity. The authors have also noticed an inequality in the way the
German companies treat their Turkish employees. The paper examines in great detail the
common negative stereotypes associated with the Turkish immigrants in Germany. For example,
they are considered to be backward, oppressive, inferior, dependent, fundamentalist in terms of
religion, corrupt and in general, incompetent. As a result, there is a lot of prejudice surrounding

3DIVERSITY
these groups in the German companies which would prefer to hire native Germans than open up
their companies to Turkish employees.
To conclude, there is one aspect that is common in all three papers. Each of the three
papers highlights how negative stereotypes and discrimination against people on the grounds of
sex, religion, race or ethnicity can affect the overall productivity and performance of a company
or an industry. As a matter of fact, such biases tend to form gaps in talent pipeline, depriving
companies of valuable human resources and talent.