Diversity in the American Workplace The Americ

The American workforce is an increasingly multicultural and culturally diverse environment in which people from often significantly different social, racial/ethnic, sociocultural, national, and even linguistic background meet, interact, and work together to achieve personal and organizational goals and objectives. Because this is the case, it has become important in recent years to examine how cultural diversity impacts upon the workplace and to develop strategic practices that will minimize any possible tensions emerging from cross-cultural interaction (Managing a multicultural workforce, 2001). It is the purpose of this report to examine the importance and sources of cultural diversity in the workplace, the negative effects that will be felt throughout society if diversity is not encouraged and practiced, and the practices that facilitate creation and maintenance of a proactive diverse corporate and organizational environment. The report is written in response to real life situations in which minority group employees (including women, the disabled, and individuals from racial or ethnic minority groups) have found that they are often not allowed to advance up a career ladder and in which it has become increasingly necessary for businesses to undertake affirmative action programs.

Diversity in the American workplace is an artifact of the population shifts that have occurred in the past several decades. Data contained in the 2000 U.

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reaching out to different racial, ethnic and other groups to recruit talent for their firms. While part of the impetus in the United States for diversity admittedly originated in legislation at the federal and State levels (including Affirmative Action programs), embracing diversity is not merely the legally and ethically right thing to do: these is an increasingly strong business case for it. The globalization and proliferation of new retail markets in an Internet-driven world are presenting many new opportunities for business (Koonce, 2001). Affirmative Action programs, according to Miller and Jentz (2000), attempt to compensate for past discrimination by giving members of protected classes preferential treatment in hiring or promotion. Any business receiving a certain level of revenue from government contracts at the federal and many state levels are required by law to demonstrate that they have actively hired and advanced members of minority groups. A number of companies that are not required under the law to do so also have taken this position and adopted affirmative action policies and programs in the interest of social responsibility. Others have done so because it is good business sense. From a human resource mana
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Approximate Word count = 2188
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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