Chapter Three

1. Chapter Three Managing Diversity And Individual Differences Thomson South-Western Wagner & Hollenbeck 5e

2. Chapter Overview • This chapter examines the following topics: • Capitalizing on Diversity • Selection • Training • Reengineering • Diversity in Personality: Five Critical Factors • The Big Five Framework • Making Personality Tests More Effective • Diversity in Cognitive Abilities: Four Critical Factors • General and Specific Aspects of Cognitive Ability • Validity of Cognitive Ability Tests • Diversity in Physical Abilities: Three Critical Factors • Diversity in Experience: Two Critical Factors • Broadening Demographic Experience: Political Aspects • Broadening Demographic Experience: Competitive Aspects • Broadening Cultural Experience • Adaptability: Flexibility in the Face of Diversity

3. Introduction • When it comes to building and leading organizations, inexperienced managers often make one of two critical mistakes: • Mirror image fallacy • Prejudicial stereotypes • Managers need to treat each person as a unique configuration of ten characteristics rather than simply categorizing workers by surface characteristics such as race, sex, age, or culture

4. Capitalizing on Diversity • Even the most tolerant managers might sometimes wish that individual differences might go away; however, such homogeneity is highly unlikely to happen • Successful organizations must try to capitalize on differences in a way that advances their competitiveness • Benefits can be derived from individual differences in organizational behaviorthrough three ways

5. Selection and placement programs enable managers to assess people and jobs and then try to match up the two in a way that maximizes the fit between the abilities and traits of the individual and the abilities and traits required for the job Effective selection is critical for carrying out certain business strategies Training compensates for any job-related deficiencies in their current profile of traits and abilities Training can also be directed at changing people’s personality styles Reengineering is a different approach to respond to a mismatch between person and job; it requires changing the job or work processes Successful managers strive to put each worker in a position that best taps his or her own talents Selection, Training, and Reengineering

6. Diversity in Personality: Five Critical Factors • Given the vast number of personality characteristics, some type of classification scheme is needed before understanding both the characteristics and their interrelationships • Current personality literature tends to focus on a consensus group of five dimensions of personality known as the “Big Five”

7. The Big Five Framework • The Big Five personality characteristics home in on a person’s social reputation in the sense that they describe what the person is like when viewed by other people also the five characteristics can be used to comprehensively capture what people are like • The Big Five traits include: • Extroversion • Emotional stability • Agreeableness • Conscientiousness • Openness to experience • Many companies rely heavily on personality assessment programs to evaluate and promote employees while many other firms use such programs as screens for initial hiring • Despite their widespread adoption by industry, the usefulness of such personality measures in explaining and predicting human behavior has been criticized on several counts with the most significant criticism dealing with the validity of these measures for actually predicting future job success

8. Making Personality Tests More Effective • Although the validity of personality tests may never exceed that of ability tests, organizations can nevertheless take concrete steps to more successfully capitalize on individual differences in personality • First, the effects of some trait on performance are revealed only when the person is also high in ability • Second, any one trait by itself may not be as important as how the trait interacts with other traits • Third, the relationship between the trait and performance could be a function of the specific demands of the job • Fourth, the relationship between the trait and performance may be a function of whether the job is stable or unstable • Finally, obtaining information about the job applicant’s personality is also an area where one can take steps to improve the predictive validity of such tests

9. Diversity in Cognitive Abilities: Four Critical Factors • Although mental abilities are not one-dimensional, we do generally find positive relationships between people’s performances on different kinds of mental tests

10. General and Specific Aspects of Cognitive Ability • Specialists tend to prefer the term general cognitive ability to intelligence because the former term is more precise and conjures up less controversy over issues such as the role of genetic factors in mental ability • Four facets of of cognitive or mental ability that stand out in terms of their generality and their usefulness as predictors of performance in the real world include: • Verbal ability: reflects the degree to which a person can understand and use written and spoken language • Quantitative ability: reflects a person’s ability to perform all kinds of arithmetic problems • Reasoning ability: the ability to invent solutions to many different types of problems • Spatial ability: reflects a person’s ability to imagine how an object would look if its position in space were changed

11. Validity of Cognitive Ability Tests • The usefulness of cognitive ability tests in predicting task performance has been investigated in both academic and organizational contexts • A great deal of evidence suggests that general cognitive ability is also predictive of success in the work world • For certain jobs, tests of specific mental ability can add significantly to the predictive power of tests of general intelligence • General cognitive ability influences both how quickly a person can learn a job and how readily he or she can adapt to changing circumstances when on the job

12. Diversity in Physical Abilities: Three Critical Factors • A great deal of the early research in the area of organizational behavior examined physical abilities • Edwin Fleishman • Physical ability consists of three major dimensions: • Muscle strength: tension, power and endurance • Endurance • Movement quality: flexibility, balance, and coordination

13. Diversity in Experience: Two Critical Factors • Recent trends related to the labor supply have heightened managers’ awareness of individual differences found among workers • Most of the awareness has focused less on differences in physical abilities, cognitive abilities,and personality traits and more on diversity related to demographic and cultural characteristics • The term demographic experience refers to the variability between people in terms of how much exposure they have had in working with people from different demographic groups • The term cultural experience describes the variability between people in terms of how much exposure they have had in working with people from different nations and cultures

14. Broadening Demographic Experience: Political Aspects • In the past, political forces drove integration of the workforce • These political forces are still alive today , but have waned for several reasons • Many of the affirmative action programs have achieved some measure of success • Existing affirmative action programs no longer target groups who need the most support • Backlash against affirmative action and other remedial programs aimed at minorities

15. Broadening Demographic Experience: Competitive Aspects • Hiring Issues: • Rather than being motivated by a sense of social injustice or fear of litigation, affirmative action programs in the 21st century are part of a larger strategy that seeks to leverage diverse experience into competitive advantage • Successfully creating a diverse workforce can enhance a firm’s bottom line and hence its standing in financial markets

16. Broadening Demographic Experience: Competitive Aspects • Retention Issues: • Firms that value diversity also need to ensure that they can retain the services of members of these groups • To help with this problem, companies can: • Provide training programs • Establish programs that promote mentoring relationships • Provide top managerial support

17. Broadening Cultural Experience • Creating a workforce with diverse international and cultural experience can help firms move into global product markets • To broaden the cultural experience of employees, organizations can: • Teach employees of the intricacies of differing cultures • Send employees on international assignments • Import the type of talent needed to be competitive both domestically and internationally • The ability to overcome problems wrought by individual differences is a critical skill for today’s managers

18. Adaptability: Flexibility in the Face of Diversity • Given the complex and dynamic nature of the environment, perhaps the most critical aspect of human variability in the 21st century will be adaptability • Highly adaptable people can handle emergencies and deal effectively with uncertain and unpredictable situations • Research has shown that both general cognitive ability and openness to experience are related to adaptability • Given the changing nature of both work and the workforce, future managers will need this trait perhaps more than any other