《EMPLOYEES'CAREER BETWEEN DIVERSITY AND SIMILARITY WITHIN A COMPANY.doc》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《EMPLOYEES'CAREER BETWEEN DIVERSITY AND SIMILARITY WITHIN A COMPANY.doc（124页珍藏版）》请在三一办公上搜索。
1、EMPLOYEES CAREER BETWEEN DIVERSITY AND SIMILARITY WITHIN A COMPANYValentina Mihaela GHINEA, Irina BENAAcademy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, RomaniaAbstract: The changes in the labor market have led to the appearance of intelligent careers built by the companies for their employees. On the one hand
2、, companies recognize that the human resource represents their core asset and primary source of competitive advantage. On the other hand, like a stereotype, under the excuse of loyalty and developing a career, employees offer long hours, assume responsibility and tolerate change and ambiguity, where
3、as employers offer an everlasting oscillation between similarity and diversity, and above all, having a job at all. In this context, some questions arise: “To look only for people fitting within or to afford to tailor the company according to a valuable employees “shape”? How can one create unanimit
4、y and a homogeneous human capital from a diverse workforce? That is because most management systems allow only similarity even if managers declare they encourage diversity.Key words: diversity, organization culture, labor market, risk, similarity1. INTRODUCTION Our world is changing, everybody knows
5、 it. Our economical world is changing, too. Lately, we all have been discussing about a globalized world and about the collapse of time and space, meaning that geographical boundaries and distances are no longer as relevant or important as inhibitors of trade and communication. More commonly, the ph
6、rase the world is getting smaller is used to describe the tendency towards globalization (Heery and Noon, 2001). This globalization determines a small chaos helpful for some, not so advantageous for others. In such a time, when the labor market is changing, workforce demographics are changing too mo
7、st notably becoming more diverse as women, minority-group members and older workers are included in the working class. The main factors contributing to this shift are: the women emancipation, the improvement of life conditions, the evolution of information technology (the Internet in particular acts
8、 like an important catalyst in the globalization process) and the change in the nature of work, as even factory jobs or traditional manufacturing jobs are going high tech. As a result companies are starting to recognize that their core asset remain the people. Going global means increasingly doing b
9、usiness abroad. European market unification, the introduction of the Euro currency, and the rapid development of demand in Asia and other parts of the world, led even small firms to find that success depends on their ability to market and manage overseas (Dessler: 2004). Because companies nowadays c
10、an have access to each corner of the world, they have the necessity of a remarkable diversity of people, competencies and knowledge. That means that they look for highly qualified and educated employees. Dealing with global and diverse staffing pressures is quite complex. A certain organizational cu
11、lture can help companies to deal with all these potential barriers. Should it be a strong or a weak one? And if it were a strong organizational culture, would it be a culture based most of all on stereotypes and also developing stereotyped careers or, by any chance, a culture meant to emphasize the
12、power of diversity and various ways of developing careers, and creating a knowledge culture?2. WORKFORCE DIVERSITY VS. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTUREAs mentioned before, globalization assumes heterogeneity of employees, meaning that anyone, regardless of race, color, disability, sex, religion, national orig
13、in or age, has equal chances for a job based on his/her qualification. The challenge for companies lies in dealing with this heterogeneity and ensuring the necessary competencies in the right business environment. Employers use various ways in order to increase their workforce diversity. Many compan
14、ies start by adopting strong company policies advocating the benefits of a culturally, racially and sexually diverse workforce and believing that a multi-cultural employee population is essential to the companys healthcare around the world (Dessler, 2004). But, this is only one side of the coin. At
15、the same time, the multicultural dimension can be viewed like an inhibitor of communication and, more than that, like an accelerator of isolation and a decrease of social solidarity (Putnam, 2007). This means that every cultures single set of beliefs, values and attitudes will be more obvious and st
16、ronger than that of the companys environment. Further, in a multi-cultural, multi-lingual context, simple ideas are sometimes hard to communicate. On organizational level, what can help is a stronger organizational culture able to develop a general feeling of pride and belonging. The implementation
17、of a rigorous organizational culture holds also the risk of standardizing certain values, beliefs and employees expected behaviors which, in time, can become stereotypes. This is not necessary a bad thing. Generally, our world is based on lots of typologies and continuous searches for standardizatio
18、n. We make sense of reality by categorizing it into theories, methods, feelings, values and skills that we can use in a way that tradition judges to be valid. The educational system itself, even if it is a positive thing, is the most powerful factor that leads to standardization and develops similar
19、ity, more than diversity. There is a general need for rules, because a rule represents the standard for correctness. In this way, rules are tied to the result of actions. But although they are helpful, rules are also limiting because they filter new knowledge. People do not forget easily. As a resul
20、t, rules do not change easily, meaning that organizational cultures do not change easily, too (Gamble and Blackwell , 2001). As John Maynard Keynes once said: The greatest difficulty lies not in persuading people to accept new ideas, but in persuading them to abandon old ones. 3. INFORMATION TECHNOL
21、OGY AS A POSSIBLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGEAnother important change having relevant effects worldwide is definitely the development of information technology. As an obvious consequence of it, new ways of running business appeared (e-Business), new possible incomes, lower costs, faster communication etc.
22、 Accordingly, the whole business environment seems to accelerate the redesign of its processes in order to gain efficiency and efficacy within cyberspace. The final result has to be an extension of the human ability to compete within the global economy. Still, the ultimate goal of E-Business is not
23、the improvement of the relationship with customer or the internal processes; it is the perfect integration between companies. It is believed that at the highest level of an e-Business development the internal processes of the company become automatic (less paper consumption, human aid or telephone u
24、se), almost everything being replaced by the intranet. The sustainers of this tendency are also trying to persuade about the improvement of the work and informations flow (Ghinea, 2006). For instance, Hayes-Roth brings arguments in promoting the idea of the hyper-beings, which are distributed intell
25、igent systems that attain dominance in their competitive arenas through information superiority (Bratianu, Jianu et al, 2007): Hyper-beings are (.) organizations of unprecedented scale, spanning nations and continents, coordinating, working around the clock, honing their ability to think efficiently
26、 and act precisely. These organizations collect information on a real-time basis, assess their plans and expectations and modify their models as required (Hayes-Roth, 2006, p.47). Obvious or not, this new technological way of running a business has already brought a lot of changes in the economy and
27、 life, in general.In the old economy, people were able to have nice, discrete packages for what happened in their work, learning or social environment. People would tend to develop their career, much as the Japanese do even today, with one employer over their whole working life. Learning would take
28、place in a classroom environment with a teacher who explained a topic he thought the employee should learn about. Social lives were mainly geographically bounded, as was consumption. People remained loyal to their local store and shopped for the brands that store offered. The new network economy blu
29、rs these edges. We all are now in a digital economy that moves fast. Knowledge is increasing at such a rate that no one can learn all there is to know about a particular area. People attune themselves to lifelong learning in an entrepreneurial sense, updating their skills continuously as and when th
30、ey need to (Gamble and Blackwell, 2001). On the other hand, pushing the thought to the limit, the speed, access and globalization offered within this economy doesnt give a special advantage to anyone since everyone has access to it. The technology is just the tip of the iceberg and to some extent gi
31、ves an illusion of progress that may not be real. After all, what is important about the technology is how it used, what it is used for, why is it used and by who is it used. Everything that remains as a possible competitive advantage is the human factor and its knowledge. One more time, it raises t
32、he need of an organizational culture able to manage all this diversity and also to create loyalty and develop careers even in a world of labeling everything (in order to find quickly and easier the way through the world), instead of asking questions, listening and creating new knowledge.4. ORGANIZAT
33、IONAL CULTURE AND CREATIVE PEOPLEAs known, a companys world consists of an established structure (that can be influenced by the information technology), the main categories of actors (professionals or experts, managers, support staff and leaders, which actually represent some typologies and can be a
34、ffected by diversity), and the organizational culture that links it all together (it is like a thin and fragile balance between diversity and similarity). But although almost every company, small or big, seems to be aware of the changes brought by the globalization process (changes already emphasize
35、d), under the excuse of boosting loyalty and developing careers, it asks employees to offer long hours, assume responsibility, provide broader skills and tolerate change and ambiguity. In exchange the employees are offered high payment, reward for performance, lateral moves as a norm, and above all,
36、 the possibility of having a job at all. In order to deal with the differences between the variety of employees expectations and its own, some companies rely on the power of the organizational culture. A strong organizational culture is like a system of core values, traditions, symbols, rituals and
37、informal rules that spells out how people are to behave most of the time. Some companies are marked by very strong cultures, so strong that you either buy into their norms or get out. Theres no halfway house for most people in such companies (Peters and Waterman, 1982, p.47).In general, in order to
38、avoid some loss of competence (when people leave and become competitors), a company will try to recruit and select from the very beginning its staff based not only on experience but also in accordance with the organizational culture. The complete integration of each employee within the company holds
39、 it together and gives it strength in relationship with the environment. This process of cultural integration assumes stereotypes too: standardized packages of information to collect, analyze and process, competence and behavioral requirements, knowledge level, etc). Further, the same thing that see
40、ms to keep the organization focused on the strategy can become a real danger for the creativity. It might be said that globalization emphasizes the diversity and diversity boosts the creativity but creativity also means a need for experts. These experts are not easygoing and uncontroversial types; t
41、hey are strong personalities, characterized by independence of mind and artistic creativity. It is hardly their fault if they do not fit into organizational molds that were not made for them perhaps the fault lies not in them but in the molds. In this case, it can be argued that it seems to be impos
42、sible to manage companies composed of insufferably egotistical, self-assured people who do not know the meaning of word loyalty (Sveiby, 1997).5. CONCLUSIONSSumming up, the world has to deal with great changes within the workforce demographics (due to some more or less obvious factors). It has also
43、to assimilate the fast IT development. But, at the same time, it has to remember that everything on this world is the result of human creativity. The question raised here is that if it is so hard to fit a creative personality into an unavoidable and really necessary organizational culture, how can t
44、he balance between similarity and diversity be found? And how can one create unanimity and homogenous human capital from a diverse workforce? Which is the risk that can be faced when hiring a valuable employee but unfit to the organizations culture? An answer could be the development of leadership s
45、kills of managers (people appointed by superiors to lead an organization toward a defined goal within a given frame of reference and specified resources. Their role is constrained within the parameters defined by a higher authority). In order to be able to run the organization in the most appropriat
46、e way, it is essential for managers to be leaders, and at the same time, or at least, to encourage the leadership development within the organization. Otherwise, the final result of bringing experts in the companies, or boosting diversity, will definitely be only some tensions between employees, hig
47、h costs for keeping them within the organization and then high costs for losing employees. Good leaders recognize the importance of experts as a certain required doses of diversity and have the courage to invest in them. They provide experts with conditions in which they can be creative for the bene
48、fit of the entire company and yet do not let the organization become dependent on them. Good leaders look to the experts like being revenue creators: they focus more on the revenue that experts generate, not on the costs they cause. Not encouraging the leadership spirit can make the organization fac
49、e the risk of losing highly competent employees and looking only for possible good employees able to satisfy the organizations requirements and necessities and, at the same time, able to fit within. (Gamble and Blackwell, 2001). Concluding, that means to recruit and train inexpert people to do their jobs better (in order to rely on a strategy focused on organizational culture) or even to try to compensate the loss of creativity by implementing IT software. Although it seems to be a good and
