Influence Of Lack Of Organizational Diversity Direction And Leader

Problem statement

Discuss about the Influence of Lack of Organizational Diversity Direction and Leader .

This assignment seeks to examine the effect of the absence of organizational diversity direction as well as leader attitude on the activities. The Australian workforce recruitment industry has been known for supporting the firms which operate in Australia by providing them with services of searching, selecting, referring, and placement of employees (IBIS World, 2016; KPMG, 2016). In this country, the problem that workforce recruitment organizations have always battled with on daily basis is the issues of diversity. In as much as some have a notion that diversity in the place of work is simply fulfilling the quotas that are needed for the employee gender and race, it seems to be much more than this perception. It is worth noting that diversity in the working environment enhances imperative values such as respect, teamwork, and acceptance regardless of the differences in gender, age, native language, race, sexual orientation, political beliefs, communication styles, and religion among the workers (Madera, 2013). Therefore, the current research will investigate the association between the direction of organizational diversity and the attitude of the leader and the activities of diversity.

This paper has been structured in five main parts, where the project justification as well as the potential research output will be discussed in the first section. The subsequent part will comprise the conceptual framework developed for this study. A brief research methodology will be explained in the fourth part where the technique which will be used in the collection of the data will be a mixed research method. The next part will outline of how the actual research will be organized. The budgetary considerations and the schedule for the research will be provided in the last two sections of this paper.

Problem statement

The population of Australia is becoming increasingly diverse as there are so many multinational companies identify the need to manage the diverse workforces.  It has been researched that an organization that efficiently handles their workforce diversity might experience better results (Australian Government, 2018). The major problem that has been identified is that due to diverse workforce in the organization, workers get discouraged because of the challenges that come with workers who have different behaviours and handle things differently. This issue arises based on age, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, communication styles, political beliefs, and native language among employees (Hood, 2017). Thus, there is a need for a proper training and support from leaders to make them acquire relevant skills that would help them deal with other employees who come from different backgrounds and nationalities. Additionally, this condition calls for identifying and addressing issues within the company and attracting the talented workforce in a respectful manner (Hor, 2012). International research has proven that a diverse workforce enables organization to drive worth tangible and intangible benefits to businesses (Australian Government, 2018). However, there are various organizations in Australia that struggle to manage diversity efficiently. It has been found from the conducted diversity and inclusion survey by Ferry and Diversity Council Australia that only 41% of businesses specified they were at the stage of building foundation of diversity program (Australian Government, 2018). The leader’s attitude of the organization does not give proper response to the employee who belongs from different background. Diversity at workplace can raise the number of issues such as gender equality, ethnic and cultural differences, language and communication and generations gaps (Alcázar, Fernández, & Gardey, 2013; Hood, 2017). For example, women in Australia do not get same position in comparison with male, not even in position but also in salary, which is the major problem (French & Strachan, 2015). The leader’s attitude is vital for the diversity activities and lack of commitment, collaboration and cultural intelligence raise the conflict within an organization.

Research aims and objectives

Research Aims and objectives

The core objective of this research is to study the role of organizational diversity direction as well as the leader attitude on diversity activities in workforce recruitment industry in Australia. The specific objectives of this research as given below:

1. To find out relationship between the role of organisational diversity and leader attitude.
2. To analyse the different activities of diversity in the firm and absence of the leader engagement in the provision of the support to the workers.
3. To determine the possible impact of the leader attitude and organisational diversity on initiatives of diversity.

The Questions of Research

The questions that this research will seek to respond to include:

1. What is the relationship between the role of organisational diversity and leader attitude?
2. How do the various firms’ diversity activities as well as absence of leader involvement influence the employees?
3. What is the possible impact of organisational diversity and leader attitude on diversity initiatives?

Investigating the problem of this research study is important as it will contribute to a wider knowledge and comprehensive understanding of the impact of the absence of the guidance of organizational direction as well as leader attitude on diversity activities. The anticipated outcome this research is that lack of organizational diversity direction as well as leader attitude has an adverse impact on the activities of diversity within an organization. In practice, the findings obtained from this study will be helpful to the managers as well as the decision-makers among other stakeholders of the organizations. In particular, they will use this information to identify the problems that they are facing and seek to address them based on the suggested theories and policies as applied to business management aspects.

It is also worth mentioning that the research objectives will bring some reasonable solution (s) to counter the problem being examined. In the first place, an examination of the relationship between the role of organisational diversity and leader attitude will generate the outcome which the organizations can use to address the various problems facing them in line with organizational diversity. Additionally, the analysis of the different activities of diversity in Australia workforce recruiting firms and lack of the engagement of leaders supporting the workers will also play a central in addressing the problem being faced by the companies in Australia. In this case, the top management of the firms will see the need to contact training to their employees to ensure they have the skills that they need to work in diverse working environment. 

Moreover, this research project will be important to the researcher since it will demonstrate the understanding of the issues of research the need to be addressed in the context of the topic under investigation. One of the texts that seem to be the most interesting for this research is how the absence of the direction of organizational diversity and the attitude of leaders may influence the activities of diversity within a firm. The interesting thing about this outcome is that one has to conduct a thorough investigation to find out the relationships between the variables involved. Furthermore, the researcher will benefit by advancing different skills as applied project management, research methods, and time management among others. While undertaking the research, the researcher will identify the gaps in the literature in the previous study which call for more research in the future to address the aspects or problems that have not been tackled in the prior research.

The justification of the research and the potential output of the study

There is a wider body of research investigating the connection that exists between organizational diversity as well as leader attitude and how they impact different activities with a company. The two main points of concern that these research seeks to investigate are discussed based below on the basis of the literature from the previous research studies that have been carried out on this subject.

The Relationship between the Role of Organisational Diversity and Leader Attitude

Davis, Frolova, and Callahan (2016) conducted a study to explore the attitudes as well as knowledge of the managers in Australian organizations concerning the concept of workforce diversity management (WDM) and the incorporation as well as the practices of this aspect in the companies (Robbins & Judge, 2013). This framework developed in this study has been used in the current study to examine how workforce diversity and leader attitudes are connected. The key findings for the research by Davis, Frolova, and Callahan revealed that there have been little understanding and appreciation of the workforce diversity, and particularly by non-HR managers. The prior research acknowledges that in Australia, only few organizations have recognized that becoming competitive in the modern global marketplace requires them to have employees that are culturally diverse to serve a customer base that is also diverse (Madera, 2013). Therefore, the conceptual model designed in this study is built on the fact that there is a need for the workforce diversity policy to address the current issues affecting the workforce recruiting industry in Australia.

This study also establishes the attitudes of the leaders towards workforce diversity in Australian organizations. French and Strachan (2015) have pointed out a negative attitude that leaders have shown when managers are dealing with employees from different backgrounds, ethnicity, and gender among others. Most importantly, women have been given little priority at the place of work unlike men (Nielsen & Huse, 2010; Larkin, Bernardi, & Bosco, 2012; Smith, 2013). Because of this issue, Bernardi, Bosco, and Columb (2009) and French and Strachan (2015) suggest the need for the workforce diversity policy which protects women amidst men who dominate many aspects at the place of work. Several studies have suggested that the attitudes of diversity relates to the aspects of awareness of the race as well as an individual’s cultural heritage (Buttner, Lowe, & Billings-Harris, 2006; Leveson, Joiner, & Bakalis, 2009). Therefore, it will be important to investigate how such policy would impact the diverse aspects within the Australian organizations.

Conceptual Framework

The Activities of Diversity in the Firm and Absence of the Leader Engagement

It has been noted that firms seem to be generally fail to prioritize WDM, where the levels of senior manager involvement with this subjective are tentative (Davis, Frolova, & Callahan, 2016). In this research, the framework used provides the comparison between the involvement of male and female leaders toward diversity within an organization. Some research studies contend that commitment as well as the support of diversity initiatives by the top management contributes to the efforts of diversity change (Buttner, Lowe, & Billings-Harris, 2006; Davidson & Burke, 2011). The involvement of such leaders has been little based on the fact they are not fully enlightened on the aspects of diversity. It is also worth to note that the HR managers have been reluctant in endorsing the benefits that come with WDM (Mondy & Mondy, 2014). Researchers also point out that HR forums have not clearly promoted WDM like other subjects. As a result, a the firms might generally fail to view WDM as a crucial aspect to their businesses like other topics of HR, including the retention of the talents, it is likely that this is the reason for HR community not showing much interest in this subject (Davis, Frolova, & Callahan, 2016). Therefore, the conceptual framework developed in this research will seek to dig deeper into this issue and suggest the need for the HR managers to hold this topic important to boost organizational diversity.

Research Design

In this research study, the researcher has considered employing the mixed research method to collect the data on the topic of research. In this technique, both qualitative as well as quantitative approaches have been used to get the desired data (Wilson, 2016). A combination of methods has been used since it offers the promise of greater flexibility while conducting the study and particularly in the generation of better supported arguments from study data (Bazeley, 2015).  Its flexibility attribute is also experienced in the improved relevance to a larger stakeholder cycle. These assumptions, in part, gain support from the evidence of higher rates of citation in the journal for combined approach as compared to the articles which have used only one method (Bazeley, 2015).

Qualitative research approach has proved to be helpful in the collection of the information and data with quality. Because of this outstanding feature, the method has been chosen for this research to aid the evaluation of the concerns on the impacts of lack of the direction of organizational diversity and leader attitude on the dealings of diversity. It is an effectual approach since research can make changes in the frameworks and evaluation if required (Flick, 2017). Quantitative data is effective approach to gather the information in numeric form concerning the role of organizational diversity direction and leader attitude on diversity activities in workforce recruitment industry in Australia. This data can be converted into graphs tables and charts which is useful while making the comparison of the variables used in this research. The main feature of this research is that its objective are measurable, which the quantitative research method helps in analysing the collected data. In this case, surveys were conducted where well-designed questionnaires were used to collect the data on the research topic.

Methodology

The Collection of Data

To gather the information about the chosen topic, secondary data will be considered. Secondary data is a kind of quantitative data that has already been accumulated by someone in their different purpose. Journal articles were searched on the Internet using the keywords like organizational diversity direction and leader attitude on diversity Activities. These sources provide the secondary data regarding the influence of lack of organizational diversity direction and leader attitude on diversity activities. Importantly, this data was obtained from the literature review from the prior studies on this subject. The qualitative method was used to explore the information on this topic. It will be made with the help of journal articles which were obtained from ABI/INFO database and the government reports published on this subject. Additionally, the data on the government amendments, working condition, latest news about organization and country and many more on the Internet and company Websites will be collected in relation to the subject under investigation. The nature of this research is exploratory research in which the motivation and problem solving method can be applied which can reduce the problem in the organization due to lack of support of leaders’ attitude.

The kind of the data that will be gathered will be based on the different organization and their organizational culture (Palinkas et al., 2015). Such data will be the relationship between the role of organisational diversity and leader attitude. The different diversity activities in the organization will also be another form of data that the researcher will collect in the context of this study. Moreover, the data will involve the involvement of leader in the provision of the support to the employees within an organization while working with multicultural employees. Additionally, it will be important to collect the demographic data of the employees on the basis of native language, race, age, sexual orientation, gender, religion, communication styles, and political beliefs (Hood, 2017; Miller & Triana, 2009).

The data obtained from the surveys concerning the research topic will be used to give the statistical comparison of the variables chosen for the quantitative study approach. The variables will be both dependent and independent variables. While the independent variables chosen for this study comprise organizational diversity and leader attitude, the dependent variable will involve diversity activities. In the research, the graphs will be shown and drawn based on the response of the participants from the survey. Each graph will bear details below it, which will offer a comprehensive understanding of the meaning of graph based on what it is describing, contributing to drawing of the conclusion.

Analysis of the Research Findings

The findings obtained in when carrying out this study will be discussed in response to the questions of research formed in Chapter One. To address these questions, it will be important for the researcher to compare the findings obtained in this research with those provided in the literature from the prior studies on the research topic. In this case, the trends in the relationship between the independent and dependent variables will be discussed in relations to the subject under investigation. Also, while exploring the relationships between the variables used in this research, the researcher will identify the gap in the literature and suggest the need for further study to fill them in the offing.

The research paper will be structured six main chapters. In the first chapter, the researcher will give an introduction of the study. In this case, the purpose of the study, the problem statement, and a brief background on the topic will be provided. The second chapter will be the literature review where the researcher will critically review the previous work of the researchers that has examined this topic of research. In the third chapter, it will be important to discuss the research approaches that will be employed for the data gathering during in the course of the research. In this case, the mixed research methodology where both quantitative and qualitative research approaches will be used. The discussion of the research findings will be provided in the fifth chapter. This part will involve comparing the results obtained in this research and those provided in the literature from the previous studies concerning the topic of study. In a similar vein, the researcher will identify the gaps in the literature of this research and suggest the need for the future to address such limitations. In the last chapter, the conclusion and the recommendations will be provided. While the conclusion will entail giving the summary of the key findings of the study, the recommendations will involve suggesting the ways of improving organizational culture and leader attitude within Australian companies.

While conducting the research study, it will be important to consider the budgetary implications. Below is a proposed budget for each activity of this research. The estimated budget for the success of this project is $10,000

Activity	Cost
Conducting Reconnaissance	2,500
Literature search	500
Transport to collect data	4,000
Stationary and postage	1,500
Tapes	1,000
Photocopying	500
Total Cost	10,000

The research is expected to take a total of 77 days, starting from June 4, 2018 to August 12, 2018. The schedule is as shown in the chart below.

Name of the Task	Duration (Days)	Starting Date	Date of Completion
Writing a research proposal and sending to the required individuals or firms.	7	June 4, 2018	June 10, 2018
Writing literature review	14	June 11, 2018	June 24, 2018
Collection of data	21	June 25, 2018	July 15, 2018
Analysis of the data	7	July 16, 2018	July 22, 2018
Preparation of the report	28	July 23, 2018	August 12, 2018
Total	77 Days

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