Equity and Diversity in the Workplace: Article Critique

Answer

Equity and Diversity in the Workplace: Article Critique

Main Contribution of the Article and the Author

            Equity is a theory of being fair, just, equal and impartial. In the workplace, it applies among both the employing and the employed personnel, whereby justice and fairness are encouraged among them. On the other hand, diversity is a state of variation. It is also an important issue in companies since people of different sexes and backgrounds get employed in one place. It is a matter that can be managed and people need to know how to deal with it. However, few types of research have been carried out on how employers manage diversity problem which is increasing tremendously and how workers respond to the issue. The article, “The incidence and impacts of diversity management” by Houkamau and Boxall employs these concepts. Its purpose is to examine diversity management practices and policies and how they are perceived by workers in New Zealand.

Empirical and Theoretical Contribution

The article empirically contributes to the question of study through a review of various literature and direct analysis from a telephone conversation in New Zealand. As such, the authors report the responses of both employers and workers concerning the management of increasing diversity problem and how people retort to it. It involves a research study through a telephone survey of a random sample of 500 from a working population, which was conducted in 2010. As a result of the study, the authors conclude that public sectors employ more of the support activities and diversity policies than the private ones (Houkamau & Boxall, 2011). As such, these public sectors can show conducive environment that is family-friendly and a good place for diversity. Most workers, on the telephone survey, report that their workplaces practice high levels of equity. Resultantly, employees in such environments tend to enjoy their work, thus, get committed to their companies which further make them gain enough trust from their employers. Therefore, diversity management is an important aspect in all organizations and the staff members.

The article contributes to these conclusions by making a statistical analysis on various variables by use of regressions. It analyzes the diversity vision, diversity support, family-friendly employment practices, as well as the proactive EEO practices and explore with how they are linked with the workers’ attitudes. In this regard, the affective commitment was measured with an alpha of 0.88 using only essential items of the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ). However, for satisfactory purposes, the article modified and expounded on important theories and views from the other literature. For example, it presented on the question from the article by Cook and Wall (1979) “how do you feel about your job as a whole?” Besides, the authors used their 6-item scale with an alpha of 0.90 to build trust in management.

According to the regressions, the article indicates that proactive EEO practices and family-friendly environments are associated with job satisfaction, commitment to work, and trust from the employers (Houkamau & Boxall, 2011). When there are high levels of these practices and a high degree of friendliness, then employees are also likely to be hugely committed to their duties, the management is likely to have greater trust to the workers, and there might also be a higher chance of job satisfaction. In addition to that, the diversity support activities are not very much associated with the affective commitment. Aside from that, the support activities and the diversity vision are not linked to the attitudes of the employees.

Critique

            The use of computer-assisted telephone interview was appropriate since it is a flexible method of study. With the use of phones, researchers can get responses from many people all over the world. As such, it enabled the scholars to study all over New Zealand on a 500 sample of workers. From this sample, the study intended to examine the side view of gender and ethnicity in the places of work. Besides, the use of 500 samples was to enable people to compare various responses as they come from different organizations. Telephones are not selective of an area. Besides, it makes it easy for the interviewers as they do not have to travel all over New Zealand to get responses from people of different backgrounds, different companies, and dissimilar genders. The authors state that they were able to interact with an equal number of men and women which could not be the case with the typical interview in one area (Houkamau and Boxall, 2011). It also ensured an appropriate proportion of ethnic groups in the New Zealand workforce participated in the study. However, it ruled out participants of less than 18 years, the one with short tenures, and those coming from small companies. Thus, over-sampling occurred in public sectors as the study involved the New Zealand Pakeha, Maori, Pacific, and other ethnic groups; of whom worked in the private and public sectors, voluntary institutions and some unknown.

Nevertheless, the authors do not critically analyze how to manage diversity. For example, according to (Ravazzani, 2016), the most common way of addressing the issue of diversity in companies is addressing social expectations that seem to be shaped by the isomorphic pressures and the requirement to secure the environment’s legitimacy. Houkamau and Boxall, however, do not provide an approach of managing this issue in New Zealand. Additionally, the article “The concepts of diversity” explains the broadest perspective of this theory. It shows that diversity has three main dimensions: the tertiary, secondary and primary (The Concepts of Diversity, n.d.). The tertiary one is organizational which includes the management status and work. On the other hand, secondarily is about a group, such as marital status, leadership status, and so on. Lastly, the primary one is on individual view, of age, gender, race, among others. This article would have argued its diversity management depending on these three dimensions. It lacks a clear view of how discrimination happens in workplaces. The issue of diversity management looks at inequality, and not the question of how companies employ the policies, procedures and practices to create barriers of discrimination (Agócs & Burr, 1996). However, diversity in places of work is an issue that must be managed (Popescu & Rusko, 2012). Differences in people require special understanding; whether disabled or not, male or female, among others.