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By: A. Lorenzo Lucino Jr, M.D-Ph.Dc




Abstract:


The United States has a rather dynamic history that has witnessed landmark social revolutions that has changed the traditional American society that the original European colonists helped establish to the current and modern American society. The result in this article indicates that the employees in United States Federal Agencies still will react negatively to diversity without an active and functional diversity management, whilst employees in agencies with effective and active diversity management will react positive towards increased diversity. The fact that diversity management has an influential role indicates its importance in private and public organizational culture.




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       The United States has a rather dynamic history that has witnessed landmark social revolutions that has changed the traditional American society that the original European colonists helped establish to the current and modern American society. In the past two centuries, the United States has experienced social changes such as the independence from British suzerainty in 1776. Within a span of less than a century, the United States’ social structure changed definitely with the emancipation of the American Slaves during the American Civil War. The political and the social privileges of African-Americans remained dramatically restrained due to the proliferation of the Jim Crowe Laws that effectively limited African-American involvement in politics, in governmental positions, and interaction with other Americans in society as a whole. The land mark social revolution that manifested in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement established precedent by effectively eliminating state sponsored segregation and racial discrimination in public and private sectors.
 

   In consideration of the dynamics of American history in regards to cultural and diversity integration, one way to examine the current situation of diversity management in the United States is via an analysis of the United States Government and subsidiary Federal agencies. The article that I chose was written by Sungjoo Choi and Hal G. Rainey titled Managing Diversity in US Federal Agencies: Effects of Diversity & Diversity Management on Employee Perception of Organizational Performance. The article was published in 2010 by the Public Administration Review. Modern day theorists in support of work force diversity claim that diversity enhances organizational effectiveness and productivity. Diversity improves performance by allowing a heterogeneous work force to contribute to higher quality decisions (Chin, 2010). The heterogeneous work force is able to take advantage of broad range of alternatives and new ideas. The article also claimed that work teams in specialized organizations that are composed of people of different racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds are able to share more information, thus leading to better performance and problem-solving capability than more traditional homogenous teams (Choi and Rainey, 2010).


   The article also noted some of the current barriers to diversity in the work place. These barriers were the innate tendency of homogenous groups’ resistance towards integration, coordination and motivation and conflict management (Choi and Rainey, 2010). This may be due to some lingering prejudice and racial feelings some members of the homogenous work group might harbor towards minority populations. These said barriers are the lingering effects of racial and prejudicial perceptions of members of the majority population towards members of the minority (Bucher, 2010).


   The article acknowledges that effective diversity management will increase organizational performance. The article reiterates that diversity management in the work place will moderate the impact of diversity on organizational performance. The agencies that have more effective diversity management, higher levels of diversity will increase perceived organizational performance. In contrast, the agencies that have ineffective diversity management will experience decreased confidence of performance if diversity increases (Choi and Rainey, 2010). The article pooled thousands of federal employees with varying backgrounds and the result from the data was conclusive. The results of the data indicates that the effects of diversity management can actually enhance or even reverse the main impacts of diversity in a particular organizational culture, in this case, United States Federal Agencies. The results show that when an agency’s employees perceived that leaders managed racial diversity effectively, higher levels of diversity resulted in a dramatic improvement in perceived organizational performance. Federal agencies that had inefficient diversity management resulted in decreased perceptions of agency performance (Choi and Rainey, 2010).


   The article is didactic to me in that it provides the readers with the knowledge of how diversity management can influence employee performance and confidence. Given how there are pockets in American society that still hold on to biased generalizations, it is important that the United States Government and United States private sector implementing diversity initiatives (Bucher, 2010). The article really illustrates to me how much more the American society has to progress in order to precipitate cultural and multiethnic awareness between non-minority groups. The instances of bias, ethnocentrism and racism is probably one of the reasons why performance and reaction to diversity in a work place is met with negative reaction without the presence of a functional diversity management team


      The United States has definitely progressed since the foundation of the country in the 18th century, since the emancipation of the slaves, since the abolition of the segregation laws. The immigration of many people into the United States has definitely created a society that is a melting pot of cultures (De Vos, 1975). However, the force of prejudice and discrimination seems to be a lingering effect in society. The result in this article indicates that the employees in United States Federal Agencies still will react negatively to diversity without an active and functional diversity management, whilst employees in agencies with effective and active diversity management will react positive towards increased diversity. The fact that diversity management has an influential role indicates its importance in private and public organizational culture.

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