Cultural Diversity in the Workplace

Recent years have seen considerable attention paid to diversity programs in the workplace. Affirmative action has come under increased scrutiny when applied to university applicants--a recent Supreme Court decision was hailed as a victory by both sides of the affirmative action issue, for example. In the workplace, diversity has evolved to be seen as highly desirable in many organizations, giving companies an edge in the market and enriching the creativity of the workforce. In other companies, diversity programs are implemented only as a way to prevent lawsuits or unfavorable publicity, but the corporate culture as a whole does not necessarily embrace diversity. This research considers cultural diversity in the workplace from legal, ethical and social responsibility perspectives.

Diversity programs have become popular in the United States in recent years because of shifting demographics. According to analysts, 47.5 percent of the work force was composed of women in the late 1990s, and 29 percent of the net additions to the work force overall were non-whites (Carlozzi, 1999). This means that managers and executives will be under increasing pressure to establish diversity programs that recognize that the American work force is no longer a homogeneous group of white males, but rather a diverse combination of gender and ethnicity

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es--failed to implement the diversity program's recommendations, the company could be in worse shape from a legal standpoint than if no diversity program existed at all. However, the existence of the program may be sufficient to demonstrate that employees acted outside accepted company parameters, and that such employees are subject to dismissal or other disciplinary actions that do not necessary need to include the company as a whole ("Just How," 2002). Diversity in the workplace--and complaints regarding diversity programs--is often handled by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In general, employers must demonstrate that they do not encourage a "hostile work environment," a term which can be used to include everything from ethnic jokes to overt sexual harassment (Hafets & Mallos, 2003). Much of the legal difficulty in establishing firm guidelines for diversity programs comes from the fact that the hostile work environment itself is a subjective term that depends on the personal reactions of those in the workplace. Behavior--such as jokes--that might have existed for years in a workplace may be unacceptable to a new employee, or could be used to show that the company does not actively encourage promo
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Approximate Word count = 2614
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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