Organizational Behaviour: Managing Diversity And Ethics In The Workplace

Managing Diversity in the Workplace using Social Identity Model

Organizational Behaviour (OB) is an important aspect at a workplace, the behaviour of individuals in an organization determines the quality of their own work as well as the productivity of others. An organization can only function properly if all the employees maintain proper behaviour at workplace and respect the people belonging from various cultural backgrounds then the organization will prosper in no time. This essay is going to focus on two particular topics related to organizational behaviour; the first one is diversity and how to manage it and the second one is ethics and ethical issues that arise within an organization. In the following paragraphs, the two aspects or organizational behaviour will be discussed based on the real life situations. The real life situations will be judged based on the two theories pertaining to the respective topics. Two models are required to be utilized to define the two topics and theories will be discussed in details, to manage diversity at workplace the model that I will be using in this essay is the Social Identity Model and to determine the role of ethics in organizational behaviour I will use the Justice based Ethical Theory. Through these theories will try to analyze the real life problems and will try to find the solution.

In a multinational company, importance is given to employ a diverse workforce, as it is believed that people belonging from various backgrounds will add different perspectives and will contribute though their various skills. The company in which I work is a reputed MNC based in, thus people from all around the world work in this company. While working in this company as a team member I have come across several instances where employees coming from different cultural backgrounds have problem communicating with one another. For example, there was a new team member in my team, Mr Kyoto he came from Japan, he had certain problems while communicating with the others especially with those who belonged from other nationalities like France or Russia. Sometimes he used to say something and the other members used to understand something different resulting in conflicts thus most of the Mr Kyoto was avoided by his colleagues. He knew the English language but had certain difficulties in pronunciation people used to make fun of his way of speaking, how much he tried there were always some gaps between him and the other employees, at times people used to make fun of his appearance. This problem continued and people started completely avoiding him, Mr. Kyoto also became suspicious about the intentions of others and he used to be angry and depressed all the time. After one year or so he resigned, several things could have been changed to alleviate the situation. I would like to use the Social Identity theory to explain the importance of diversity and inclusion, and why I have selected this particular model to analyze the situation.

Real-Life Example: Cultural Misunderstanding

Social Identity Theory was first developed to find out the causes behind the psychological reasons why there is discrimination between various cultural groups; certain tests were conducted to determine why certain groups are inclined to favour their own cultural groups rather than that of some other cultural group. According to this theory, a person has a number of selves as the number of acquaintances increase his/her group(Hogg 2016). An individual also has a “personal self”, different situations which the individual might face in the society can affect how the person may feel about himself and about his family members or others, except the identity of one’s self an individual has several social identities. The social identity of a person is based upon the person belonging to a particular group, that means an individual’s concept of “us” is based upon the person’s choice of social group (Haslam et al. 2014). This is different from the individual identity, which is dependent on the uniqueness in character of a person. According to the social identity theory, the members of the group create a category and favour the people belonging to their own group and try to caste out the others. The experiments conducted by Turner and Tajfel showed that if the individuals merely proclaimed that they belong to a particular group it displayed favouritism and thus created  problems in a diverse environment. An individual always tries to compare the group in which he/she belongs with other groups and tries to prove that the particular group is better than the other groups(Brown and Capozza 2016). This means that as people define their identity often on the basis of the group they belong to or rather than taking their own individual identity.

According to the Social Identity Theory, the formation of group takes place through three stages. The first stage is “Social Categorization” during this stage an individual sees himself/herself belonging to a group, which is the social identity of that person and at the same time that person, has an individual identity(Hogg and Terry2014).The social identity groups may involve various types of categories like gender, caste, religion, college groups or school friends. The second stage of building a group is “Social Identification” which means that once an individual identifies with a particular group the person will automatically categorize everyone into two groups the “in-groups” and the “out-groups”. The in-groups contain people who belong to the individual’s own social group and the out-groups are comprised of the others, the individual always tries to adopt the behaviour and attitudes of the in-group members. The third stage is “Social Comparison” in this stage the individuals believe that the activities, behaviour or attitude of the social group in which he/she belongs is superior to that of the out-group members, in their mind they form a biased opinion about the others. (Jenkins 2014). The development of this type of mentality leads to social discrimination and create problems adapting with a culturally diverse environment.

Strengths and Limitations of Social Identity Theory

The situation that occurred in the MNC where I work can be justified using the Social Identity theory. Mr. Kyoto came from a different cultural background or social group thus he faced various problems while communicating with the others belonging to out-groups from his perspective. On the other hand, for the employees of the company Mr Kyoto belonged to out-group according to their cultural perspectives thus there was a misunderstanding right from the beginning. The Social Identity theory justifies the diversity related problems that take place in a multicultural environment. Mr Kyoto was shunned and taunted by everyone just because he was different from others. The feeling of superiority over others is the third stage of social identity theory, which was displayed by his fellow colleagues. Things could have been dealt in a much different way if this problem was identified before, then the manager or even the supervisor could have arranged a meeting to discuss the problems faced by Mr Kyoto, and his colleagues should have been trained and taught about the importance of diversity.

There are certain strengths as well as limitations of Social Identity Theory as well. Among the strengths it has been said that the intergroup conflicts are not necessary for discrimination to happen, another strength is that the Social Identity Theory has been used  to understand concepts such as favouritism within a particular group, ethnocentrism, believe in the rules of that particular in-group (McKinley,Mastro andWarber2014). The limitations are, the theory cannot prove how favouritism within a social group can encourage violent behaviour towards other people outside the group. The experiments were conducted within a limited controlled environment thus the findings cannot be completely relied upon.

Nepotism is a common ethical issue faced by the employees in an organization. Not only it creates dissatisfaction among the employees, nepotism is one of the major reasons behind employee attrition. Nepotism in an Organization is considered as the practice of hiring or providing unethical advantages to family members regardless of their job and educational qualification.

In the MNC where I work, I had once evidenced an act of nepotism performed by the manager of the company Mr. Stanley. Mr. Robert, who is the cousin of Mr. Stanley, is a junior employee in the above mentioned organization. However, Mr. Robert was given several advantages like one in six month tour and prolonged vocational leave, which were subjected only to senior executives. Partiality in distributing workload that is, imposing least work pressure on Mr. Robert, while pressuring other employees for over time, had also happened in the organization. This was one of the chief reasons for dissatisfaction among the employees in our organization. During the time of performance appraisal, regardless of the fact that several employees had better appraisal report than Mr. Robert, Mr. Stanley chose Mr. Robert for promotion. As a result, the deserving employee, Mr. Thompson, got severely demotivated and depressed. Within two months of the above mentioned phenomenon, Mr. Thompson had left the organization.

Ethics in the Workplace using Justice Based Ethical Theory

Being an evidence of the above mentioned unethical scenario, I realized that certain things need to be changed in order to eradicate unethical activities in the organization and enhance employee satisfaction and retention. I would like to implement the Justice Based Ethical theory to explain the importance of ethics and justice in an organization.

The Justice based Ethical theory had been formulated back in the fifth century B.C. by eminent politicians and  philosophers like Aristotle and Plato (Broad 2014). The crucial components of the above mentioned theory are equity, fairness and impartiality. This concept chiefly deal with the action taken by an individual or a group of individuals as well as the fairness, equity and impartiality of the action taken. One of the crucial researcher of the above mentioned Theory is John Rawls (Brown and Forster 2013). According to the theory of ‘Justice and Fairness’, designed by Rawls, the society should be developed in a way that will enforce equal liberty to each and every member of the society, provided, the liberty of one member shall not impose negative impact on that of another member. Secondly, according to the theory, inequality, either economic or social, should only be allowed if and if only the result of equality in a situation is worst and the only way to deal with the situation is by imposing inequality. Otherwise, inequality among individuals should be avoided at the highest priority (Kidwell Kellermanns and Eddleston 2012).

The theory of Justice is majorly based on three principles, namely, The Greatest Equal Liberty Principle, The Difference Principle and The Equal opportunity principle. The first principle which states that each individual has equal right and liberty in the society, deals with distribution of right and liberties that includes political liberty  among citizens and employees of an organization. Apart from this it also deals with freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of personal property and liberty of conscience (Kunnan 2014). The Difference principle states that economical and social inequalities need to be arranged in such a way that it provide greatest benefit to the least privileged members of the society. The equal opportunity principle states that Organizations and position must be open to every individual under the condition of fair equality and opportunity. According to this theory, the basic requirement for providing equal opportunities to individuals is that positions in organizations shall be distributed on the basis of skill and merit. This theory is highly relevant to the situation evidenced by me. For this reason, I will analyze the above mentioned scenario of my organization with the help of this theory.

Real-Life Example: Nepotism

As mentioned earlier, according to the theory, equality must be to every individual irrespective of his social and economic conditions (Ko and Hur 2014). However, Mr. Thompson was the victim of inequality in the Organization. Not only Mr. Thompson, all the junior employees were subjected to inequality due to Mr. Stanley. Therefore it can be said that this theory is not followed by the MNC. Secondly, according to this theory, inequality is only applicable in places where the same will be beneficial for a greater good and to the least advantaged individuals. However, this is not true for my organization since, the unequal act performed by Mr. Stanley was only beneficial for Mr. Robert. Moreover, these acts impose severe negative impacts on the employees, the worst sufferer being Mr. X. Finally, according to the above mentioned theory, every individual is subjected to equal amount of justice and liberty. Here also the theory contradicts with the unethical act of Mr. Stanley since justice was not been provided to Mr. Thompson and as a result he had to leave the organization. According to me, this situation can be dealt with a totally different approach. Considering the fact that according to this theory, every organization must implement equality among its employees, application stating the details of the unethical acts of Mr. Stanley can be given to the higher authority of the MNC. Actions can be taken against the injustice that happened to Mr. Thompson too.  

The strength of the theory is that it is highly relevant to the issues faced by the organization and one can obtain clear concept of equality, liberty and injustice with the help of this theory. One of the greatest limitations of this theory is that it has not provided with the solutions of the issues that may happen due to inequality and injustice.

The Justice based ethical theory is highly effective in the given scenario. This theory helped me point out the unethical act performed by Mr. Stanley as a manager. This theory alone is sufficient to analyze the whole scenario. The lesson learned from the theory about the ethics of justice, equality and liberty will help me to act accordingly. Finally, it can be said that this ethics have helped me to learn about ideal implementation of equality, ethics and liberty in organizations.

To conclude, in the real life situations for both the persons mentioned in the above paragraphs it can be said that managing diversity and organizational ethics are the two most important sections in the organizational behaviour of an organization. Mr. Kyoto was a victim of discrimination within the organization due to the fact that the employees were not aware of the practice of multicultural inclusion or the importance of diversity at workplace which is also a part of proper organizational behaviour. In the second part, Mr. Roberts was a victim of nepotism, which is a very common ethical issue faced in certain organizations. Understanding the Organizational Behaviour is important as it helps in understanding the complex nature of the human beings. Depending upon the behaviour of the individual’s decisions can be taken within an organization. Diversity is the most important aspect in a multinational organization one has to deal with people belonging to various cultural backgrounds and while dealing with people certain ethical issues also occur in the organizations, to deal with both of the issues strong organizational policies and managerial intervention is required. The company, which will be able to deal with all the aspects of organizational behaviour will flourish in their business and will have competitive advantage over their contemporaries.

Reference List:

Broad, C.D., 2014. Five types of ethical theory (Vol. 2). Routledge.

Brown, J.A. and Forster, W.R., 2013. CSR and stakeholder theory: A tale of Adam Smith. Journal of business ethics, 112(2), pp.301-312.

Brown, R. and Capozza, D. eds., 2016. Social identities: Motivational, emotional, cultural influences. Psychology Press.

Haslam, S.A., van Knippenberg, D., Platow, M.J. and Ellemers, N. eds., 2014. Social identity at work: Developing theory for organizational practice. Psychology Press.

Hogg, M.A. and Terry, D.J. eds., 2014. Social identity processes in organizational contexts. Psychology Press.

Hogg, M.A., 2016. Social identity theory. In Understanding Peace and Conflict Through Social Identity Theory (pp. 3-7). Springer International Publishing.

Jenkins, R., 2014. Social identity. Routledge.

Kidwell, R.E., Kellermanns, F.W. and Eddleston, K.A., 2012. Harmony, justice, confusion, and conflict in family firms: Implications for ethical climate and the “fredo effect”. Journal of business ethics, 106(4), pp.503-517.

Ko, J. and Hur, S., 2014. The impacts of employee benefits, procedural justice, and managerial trustworthiness on work attitudes: Integrated understanding based on social exchange theory. Public Administration Review, 74(2), pp.176-187.

Kunnan, A.J., 2014. Fairness and justice in language assessment. The companion to language assessment.

McKinley, C.J., Mastro, D. and Warber, K.M., 2014. Social identity theory as a framework for understanding the effects of exposure to positive media images of self and other on intergroup outcomes. International Journal of Communication, 8, p.20.