Organisational Theory: How to Create & Manage an Effective Team - Free Research Paper Sample

Introduction

Organisation refers to a group, business, or team that is organized with a common goal. The organization includes groups of people who come together with different ideas, but they have the same goals. According to the Post-modern theory, organizations, therefore, are part of human being and cannot be separated only can be modified (Uidaho.edu, 2019). It was socially constructed to fit the ideas and contributions of different people. It is important to understand how the organization works. To know how it works, we will focus on the issues with workplace diversity and how the organizations have tried to solve these issues since the genesis of Post-Modern theory.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Diversity in an Organization

Having workplace diversity means that there is a group of people from diverse cultures, gender, race, ethnicity, group, sexual orientation, color, race, religion, and but not limited to physical appearance. Diversity is as essential as it is dangerous to any organization. When people with different characteristics come together in a workplace, there are challenges in managing as well as the importance of having work diversity. Diversity, in most cases, is of benefit to the organization embracing it, therefore, leading to a broader market reaching many customers, thus increasing profits. When employees understand each other with their flaws and strengths and agree to listen to each other's opinions and ideas, it is likely to encourage growth n business ideas.

On the contrary, we cannot overlook the dangers and risks of diversity in workplaces. Some conflicts might arise among the employees. Disputes, including racism, discrimination on a broader area, and gender stereotyping, have become a regular part of the organization. According to the post-modern theory, an organization is part of us, and we cannot live without it because there will be no organisation without humans. In this essay, I will identify and discuss issues with diversity and how the organizations are trying to solve these issues to promote cohesion and better management of the workplace. I will use related stories and research articles on how different organizations are trying to deal with the problems related to diversity to create cohesion in workplaces. Also, I will discuss the importance of workplace diversity and solutions to the challenges using real-life stories of different companies. Therefore the essay purports to answer the question, "To what extent has our understanding of organization and management progressed in theory and in practice since the beginning of the 20th C to help address the diversity issues in organizations?"

Importance of Diversity in the Organization

Many organizations that have become successful have had a history of embracing workplace diversity. The organizations with employees with diverse cultures are reported to be more productive and produce excellent profits, and also they are innovative (Nelson, 2014). Diversity also promotes gender equity, where women are given positions in senior management of the organizations. In the pre-modernism, women were not given high positions in the organization. They were regarded as weak objects and stereotyped as not capable of leading and directing organizations with men. But with postmodernism and the need for inclusion in the workplace, diversity has made it easy for women to drive with no objection or discrimination.

Also, diversity has helped curb the problem of racism. Although in America today, we still have cases of racism, the organizations are trying to embrace diversity to improve their sales and market reach. When people come together irrespective of race or color, they will be harmony and interrelationship that will help to make the organization exist. The social interaction of people from different cultures and backgrounds has made it easy for the existence and management of the organization. The administration needs to understand how to cooperate with these diverse cultures and develop inclusive policies. Most companies, including Toyota, Apple, UBER, Coca-Cola, are embracing workplace diversity because it promotes the quantity and quality of competitiveness in the business world.

The statistics of immigration of American show that they have been a tremendous increase in the number of immigrants for the past years. During the time of Obama, there were a huge number of immigrants. In the different American states, their immigration from different countries has contributed to the economy (Patterson, 2005) and cultural integration in the country. The organization has grown and benefited from diversity because immigration brings in different cultures, religion, origin, race, education, and ethnicity.

In the USA today, many states have enacted laws to support transgender sexual marriages, and other countries are yet to follow. The identification, acceptance, and inclusion of sexuality rights are a form of diversity. It has made it easy for the LGBT community to work freely without being discriminated in workplaces. In a YouTube video of Debbie Storrey (Senior Vice President for Talent Development and Chief Diversity Officer, AT$T) says that diversity includes not only people of different races, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation but also the diversity of thought, experience, and education. She describes that one of the primary goals of their organization is to ensure that every person goes to work freely. She went ahead to explain that diversity has helped the organization to attract and retain the employees, which in this case, cut the costs of recruiting and training new employees.

According to Douge Melville, at training at Syracuse University on improving Your IQ, he talks about what diversity entails. He says diversity involves religion, age, gender, country race, education, and experience brings forward he understand about his family image. He always says that diversity, people always hire people who are just like them, but to him, diversity helps people to grow. Also, in the experiment made by Newhope church called "Don't put people in Boxes," participants were out in boxes, all with different features. When the team leaders started calling out people in with different characters, it is evident that every box had a member who shares the same attributes. From this experiment, we indeed are the same, although we are from different cultures, explaining the purpose of diversity. Diversity has created organizations that we have, and the organisation depends on the variety. If there is no workplace diversity, there would be a successful organization.

With gender diversity, females tend to get discriminated in workplaces. They are seen as objects rather than subjects. The ways the community perceives women exclude them from senior roles in the organization. They are termed as weak and stereotyped as objects of procreation and family care. The perception and issues of gender discrimination, therefore, have led to unhealthy relationships in the workplace, thus poor performance and financial results. According to the research report from McKinsey & CO, women are termed as weak, hostile, and not desirable enough to be managers and exclude from challenging roles in the organization; thus, the women in the society have become underrepresented in the corporate world.

Issues With Workplace Diversity

Despite the essential features of workplace diversity, some challenges come with it. Organizations have fully embraced workplace diversity, although, with the innovation and inclusion of diversity, it has come with a lot of issues. The big companies, including Apple, Google (“Google Diversity, 2019”) as discussed in the above, have tried to embrace diversity in a higher percentage. Still, they are facing discrimination issues of gender, race, and sexual orientation. The problems have led to conflicts in workplaces whereby people disagree, others resigning from jibs, and others suffering from mental health. The issues make it a challenge for the organization to maintain, therefore developing policies that will help solve the conflict. These shows that organization is an integral part of us, it is in our mind and revolves around what we do, what we believe in, and we don't. The more the management embrace diversity in workplaces, the more the issues and the more influential the need to manage those issues from recurring and to bring to a minimum.

With the inclusion of people from different ethnic and cultural groups, they have been issues with stereotyping, as Schwartz explained that the culture of an organization is made of the different cultures and beliefs of diverse individuals in that particular organization. The way those individuals understand and interpret different behaviors, views, and opinions of each other differs. For example, we can all get the message, but how we perceive it is deferent. In the YouTube video by Dale Carnegie Training, the trainer gave an illustration story of the students who delivered a task on Sunday morning to visit an old age of people home to collect dry leaves. He says that on Sunday morning, the student arrives at the family home in four different groups with a different perception. All the students were given instructions at the same by the same lecturer, but the perception was different.

Conclusion

Thus, these explain how diversity works. We are all the same, but how we perceive each other's opinions is different. Every individual sees massages differently because our understanding is rooted in our state minds. We tend to direct our thoughts into processing what we believe in and give a rational or irrational meaning that we think it's right to the environment around us. Therefore, the different process of mindset often leads to conflict in the organization and affect how we socially behave towards each other.