The Importance Of Diversity Management For Market Goodwill: Meeting Plan

Draft meeting plan

I:  The plan of the meeting would be to discuss significance diversity management and its impact on the reputation and marketing position of the business organisations. The participants would discuss the reason behind poor diversity management at ABC Company, a medium sized global company having its head office in the United States.

A:  The company has received 50 on the diversity and cultural management. The leadership team of ABC Company consisted of the chief executive officer (CEO), chief financial officer (CFO) and the chief operating officer (COO). The director of technology and         director, human resource management are also part of the leadership team.

B:  The poor rating of the company on the grounds of diversity management pointed out to the failure of the apparently strong leadership to ensure diversity among employees. This diversity leadership management failure at ABC Company and the attack of media would form the purpose of the meeting.

The meeting would have two main purposes, which are discussed as under:

The above discussion shows that ABC Company has fared poorly on the parameter of diversity and cultural management leadership. The media has hounded the media relations department of ABC Company for this poor diversity management. The leadership of ABC viewed this criticism as an indication of falling market reputation, which would affect future marketing of its product manufacturing. The first purpose of the meeting would be to find out the importance of the diversity management to maintain market goodwill.

The second purpose of the meeting would be to educate the employees, especially the top executives about the need to practice diversity management. Since, meeting would enlighten the attendees on the various leadership theories and they significant role the top management has to play in ensuring achievement of high quality diversity management. Achievement of this purpose would in turn enable the company to achieve its first purpose of the meeting, which is achievement of high market goodwill and media publicity.

The attendees of the meeting would be the apex management body, the departmental heads and their subordinates. The case study reports chief financial officer, chief operating officer, director of technology, director of human resource management, three vice presidents lading three business units and director of shared services. Thus, one can assume that the departments of the company are finance department, operations department, department of technology, HR department, three business units and shared services department under the leadership of these officers respectively.  The organisational development officer would lead the meeting on diversity management.

The above discussion makes it clear that the apex management of ABC Company require strengthening diversity management within the company. This would require involvement of the middle and lower level employees. The upper level management would form strategies on diversity management, which the lower level employees would implement. This discussion clearly throw light on the important role the upper, middle and lower level employees have play at ABC Company to enforce diversity management. The attendees of the meeting would be divided into groups based on the departments, which would be led by the departmental heads. For example, the CFO would function as the leader of the finance team and his subordinates would be his follower.

Purpose of the meeting

The following are the schedule, proposed location and setting of the meeting on diversity management:

The schedule of the meeting would span over five days and would involve the apex management, the middle level managers and the lower level employees. The schedule of the meeting is elaborated below:

Days	Date	Activity
Day 1	January 8, 2018	Apex management meet to discuss and review the diversity situation at ABC Company
Day 2	January 9, 2018	Chief financial officer and finance department (1st half) Director of technology and technological department(2nd half)
Day 3	January 10, 2018	Chief operations officer and operations department(1st half) Director, HR department and HR department staffs (2nd half)
Day 4	January 11, 2018	Vice presidents and three business units (1st half) Director of shared services and shared service department   staff (2nd half)
Day 5	January 12, 2017	Office lunch, games, employee entertainment

The management of ABC Company can consider the following locations for holding the meeting and then choose the best option that would deem fit for the company. The following are options of locations, which are open to the company:

Location(Venue options)	Advantages	Disadvantages
Conference room	1. Cost effective since, the company does not need to book external venue. 2. The apex management does not need to share the employee details with third party organisations like management of external venues while booking spaces. Hence, it is secure and does not involve sharing of company data. 3. It saves cost because the company does not have to make arrange to transport its employees to external venues. 4. The employees not attending the meeting can continue their regular work which ensures the productivity of the company is not a affected totally	1. The conference room cannot accommodate large number of attendees, which prolongs the duration of the meetings. 2. The employees often not share their feelings about diversity management due to the formal environment of conference rooms. This impedes open discussions about departmental heads and their subordinates.
External venue	1. The external venues encourage the employees to interact more freely during the meeting sessions. 2. The external venues like resorts can accommodate more employees at the given point of time, which helps the departmental heads or the leaders to curtail the duration of meetings and avoid unnecessary prolongation. 3. The employees of different departments can interact with each other more freely owing to the informal ambience of the external venue. This mixing of employees of different origins like country of origin and religion enforce stronger diversity management.	1. Booking of external venues, arranging of seating arrangements, fooding and transportation of employees add to the cost of the company. 2. The company while booking the resort are often required to share employee details with the management of the venues, which are external parties. This exposes the company to threats of misuse of its data by employees of the venues. 3.
Combination of both internal and external venue	1. ABC Company can save cost by holding the meeting in the conference room and the office lunch in the resort.	1. The management of the both internal and external venue is complex.

The discussion of the comparison of the internal and external venue shows that both of them have advantages and disadvantages. The best option for the company to hold the meeting would be a combination of the formal setting of the conference room and a semiformal setting of the external venue. Holding the diversity management meeting in the conference room would save the cost of the company. Again, holding the office lunch and entertainment in a resort would enable the employees of different departments to mix freely. This would enable them to understand the cultural background and perception of each other. This would evidently enforce stronger diversity management in the company.

The attendees including the departmental heads and their subordinates would require to develop the basic understanding about diversity management which would necessitate consulting pre-reading materials. The following are the pre-reading materials, which the employees are suggested to read:

Magazines and newspaper articles: The Forbes Magazine (forbes.com, 2017), The Economic Times (economictimes.indiatimes.com, 2017)

Books on leadership: Leadership: A critical text.by Western.(Western (2017))

Talent management: Current theories and future research directions. by Al Ariss, A., Cascio, W. F., & Paauwe, J. (2014).

1: The following recommendations can be made in the light of the diversity management issue at ABC Company particularly pertaining to gender equality issues.

II: Recommendations:

A: Restructure the policies of entertainment:

ABC Company should restructure its employment policies and stress on establishing gender equality in the company. The policy of diversity management and gender equality should be applied to all the department include the management board.

A:  This will ensure that both male and female employees get equal job opportunities. This would result in motivation of the groups of employees, which would ultimately encourage them to perform better. Thus, adoption of employment policy, which guarantee equal opportunity to employees would ultimately contribute towards high performance of the employees.

B: Career planning:

The management of ABC Company should take initiative in promoting career development of the employees irrespective of their gender.. They should conduct appraisal of all the employees and offer the eligible employees with promotion. The eligible employees irrespective of their gender should be allowed to occupy the higher vacant positions. This encouraging initiative would encourage the employees to perform highly to get promotion.

The following section would throw light on the historical development of leadership from 1920 to present era (Western, 2013).

The Trait theory of leadership evolved towards the end of 1920s when people believed that leadership qualities are passed down through generations. The theorists supporting this theory believed that leaders either are born with leadership qualities or inherit them from their parents. Northouse (2015), states that trait theory stressed on the mental, social and physical characteristics or a combination of these attributes among the leaders. The studies in support of the trait theories take the example of leaders from royal families as examples. Dinh  et al. (2014) contradict the opinion of Northouse  and state that the theory is not applicable under every situation. The trait theory takes into concepts like ‘good’ and ‘successful’ leaders, which do not have any real base. The theory stresses on physical attributes like height and weight as leadership qualities, which do not apply in all situations. For example, the minimum height and weight may be applicable in leading armies but not applicable for corporate world (Forbes.com. 2017).

Attendees and roles

The behavioural theory evolved around 1950s and stressed on the behaviour of leaders like their capability of determining the goals, ability to motivate the followers and establish a smooth communication system. The behavioural theory unlike the trait theory which emphasised on the family background of the leaders, emphasises on the leadership qualities of the leaders.

Figure 1. Graphical element showing trait theory

(Source: Author)

Leadership is an important aspect of every organization. A leader is the one who leads the whole team towards progress. There are different forms of leadership. It is a necessary to have good leaders in every organization. The leadership includes the transformation of the vision and to find ways to attain the organizational goals. The effective modern leadership can be stated as a skill of having many traits that would lead the entire team towards the attainment of the goal. The major qualities that the leaders must have are the ability to establish right values in the employees. They should have the ability to teach the team members the art of commitment. Every successful leader should be committed towards the team and they should be committed towards the entire team. They should solicit the commitment of the entire team to achieve the established goals. Moreover a leader must know the art of motivating others. A leader must be able to motivate others and they must be able to encourage their team members in order to increase their production (Tyson, 2014).

There are different forms of modern leadership. The forms of leadership are different in different centuries. The twenty first century leadership is different from other from traditional form of leadership.

• Servant leadership- A leader following the servant leadership style understand the needs of the team members. He cares about the requirements of his employees. The biggest example of servant leaders is Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. They take care of both personal and professional interest. The leaders following this form of leadership they make efforts to become perfect mentors of their team mates (Sutherland & Böhm, 2014).
• Innovative- the innovative leaders are those leaders who thinks in innovative style. The innovative leaders believe in shaking things in order to achieve the desired outcome. The leaders following this style would prefer some innovative and creative ideas. They like to try new things and adapt innovative styles to increase the production of the employees and help them to achieve their goals (Slocum, 2015).
• Pace-setting- The leaders of pace-setting style are visionaries. They focus on the development of the people. They act as pace settlers and are often demand more from the team and they end up in pushing the entire team towards the attainment of the goal. They expect their team members to work under tremendous pressure. The team members in this case are self-motivated and they have the habit to work under pressure. The team mates in this case requires little help or supervision from their leaders only in the case of any execution of big picture ideas (Priest & Gass, 2017).
• Charismatic- In this form of leadership the leaders are inspires the people around them to large amount of greatness. The leaders following this form of leadership know the way to communicate their vision and they prefer to give their teams. They know the way to tackle the problems of the teammates. They believe in entire teamwork and they believe in doing the work collectively. They believe in teamwork and they are having an attitude of completing the work together and they are having a let’s do it attitude and an attitude of not giving up and complete the work on time. These leaders usually require the support of others in order to execute an idea of big deal and get the things done (Li & Shao, 2015).
• The Laisse Faire- The leaders who follow this style usually are good at delegating. They are aware of the way of communicating their vision and they prefer in giving their team mates the tools and they provide the space they require to accomplish their task. They believe in surrounding themselves with a high-skilled and self-motivated team. They believe that their team members are capable enough to do what they say. They make efforts in providing grounds for new leaders (Kemmis, McTaggart & Nixon, 2013).

Figure 2. Graphical element showing modern theory of leadership

(Source: Author)

Authoress Ruchika Tulshyan in her book ‘The Diversity Advantage: Fixing Gender Inequality in the workplace’ speaks about the diversity management in the organisations. She stresses on the fact that the business organisations should train and empower their female employees. The book opens with the mention of the founder and chairman of video platform Joyous who acquired a job in a technology company in the Silicon Valley. The company instead of treating her as a strategic partner of equal importance along with the male employees, treated her as an employee who was only given the responsibility of rewriting marketing collaterals. The male of employees in the company got promotions to higher posts on the grounds of their gender while she was denied promotion. Then the authoress goes on to speak about a women in the Singapore who fears losing her job due to pregnancy. The aim of the authoress is to stress on the injustice and ill-treatment which female employees receive in the workplaces both in the western as well as eastern markets.

The book stresses that employee equality is very important for to bring about developments in the labour conditions and economic development all over the world.  She points out that in many developed markets like Japan women leave jobs due to unequal treatment and shortage of job opportunities for female employees. This affects the productivity of the companies. Thus, the business organisations should provide equal opportunities to male and female employees. This would ensure that the companies are able to retain their employees and use them strategically in the long run.

Schedule, location, setting

The book ‘The Diversity Advantage: Fixing Gender Inequality in the workplace’ then stresses on the important roles which the HR departments of the companies play to ensure that they follow diversity management. The HR departments of the companies should advertise the vacancies keeping both men and women employees in mind. They should participate in women conferences. The human departments should stress on advocating environment of cultural and diversity tolerance in the workplaces.

The book has a generalistic approach towards the concept of diversity management. It appears as if all the companies around the world lack diversity management and deprive their female employees from benefits like promotions. The authoress could have mentioned names of companies which advocate diversity management by providing equal opportunities to their employees. The book does not stress on the role which the co-employees should play to ensure that their female counterparts get equal opportunities. Thus, the book though deals with a very important area of concern in workplaces, diversity management, lacks a specific approach.

The facilitation questions include a discussion with a group of individuals on the topic of leadership and to know the fact whether they are aware of the role of leaders.

The first question would be on the point whether the individuals are aware of the objectives and desired outcomes of the discussion which is based on leadership (Bozkurt & Goral, 2014).

The second discussion should be on the role of the leaders. A discussion should be held on the duties that an individual should perform as a leader. This should be one of the key topics. This should include the personal creditability of every individual.

The third area of discussion should include the ways of managing the conflicts which is an essential skill of being a leader. The individuals present in the discussion should be asked to rationale the point of view and the pros and cones of their personal reason. It should include the individuals to share their opinions and reactions on every aspect of discussion (Ayee, 2014).

The final step would include the summarization of the decision of the entire group and finally check the agreement and round up the discussion by analysing the next plan of action of the group and the following the process of conveying the results of the discussion to the team and the rest employees (Al Ariss, Cascio & Paauwe, 2014).

References

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Ayee, J. R. (2014). Traditional and modern leadership in Africa. Africa in Contemporary Perspective: A Textbook for Undergraduate Students, 181.

Bozkurt, O., & Goral, M. (2014). The assesment of modern leadership styles in relation with demographic factors. Research Journal of Business and Management, 1(3), 169-179.

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Dinh, J.E., Lord, R.G., Gardner, W.L., Meuser, J.D., Liden, R.C. and Hu, J., 2014. Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), pp.36-62.

Forbes.com. (2017). Forbes Welcome. [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2011/06/13/diversity-management-is-the-key-to-growth-make-it-authentic/#70ff321b66f3 [Accessed 20 Dec. 2017].

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Intercultural awareness, a must for the success of MNCs in India. (2017). The Economic Times. Retrieved 20 December 2017, from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/between-the-lines/intercultural-awareness-a-must-for-the-success-of-mncs-in-india/articleshow/59218790.cms

Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2013). The action research planner: Doing critical participatory action research. Springer Science & Business Media.

Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2014). Introducing Critical Participatory Action Research. In The Action Research Planner (pp. 1-31). Springer Singapore.

Li, J., & Shao, J. (2015, February). Literature review on increasing association of modern-day leadership with charisma and inspiration. In Industrial Engineering and Manufacturing Technology: Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Manufacturing Technology (ICIEMT 2014), July 10-11, 2014, Shanghai, China (Vol. 4, p. 131). CRC Press.

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Slocum, D. (2015). The rise of creativity as a key quality in modern leadership. Forbes. Retrieved May 30, 2015.

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