Cultural Diversity Essays - Politics, Discrimination,

Cultural Diversity Cultural diversity in the workplace is becoming more and more prevalent. Corporations in all industries are encouraging minorities, women, elderly workers, people with disabilities as well as foreign workers to join white males in the workplace. The following analysis will focus on these groups and how companies are encouraging them to join an ever-expanding workplace. Even if affirmative action is dismantled, diversity of the workforce is clearly here to stay. Business owners and managers, experts say, will still need to maintain or step up efforts to recruit and advance ethnic minorities in the year 2000 and beyond. Thats essentially because having a diverse work force and managing it effectively will simply be good business for various companies. One business leader who is at the forefront of implementing diversity is the Xerox Corporation. Xerox implemented their strategy for diversification through an aggressive, hard driving affirmative action plan. (Managing Diversity: Lessons from Private Sector, AOL Electric Library). The company has been successful in grasping Diversity by instilling it in its organizational culture and making it management priority. Xerox Corporation has taken on the imperative responsibility to implement plans that ensure a true representation of the community in which they are based and upholding a true picture of the globally based customers they serve. Their strategy is one that sets goals to recruit and retain minorities for previously restricted positions and hold management accountable for reaching those goals. It is an approach which has worked well for the organization. Because they are truly committed to tapping into the expanded creativity minorities bring, Xerox has moved from the mandatory focus of Affirmative action programs to the voluntary implementation of a business objective. According to John Fernandez, author of the book Managing a Diverse Work Force, white males would make up only fifteen percent of the net addi tions to the labor force between 1985 and 2000. White males were already in the minority, representing only forty-five percent of Americas 115 million workers in 1985. Other facts and figures also support the above mentioned trend. This is pointed out by The Career Exposure Network, a premier on-line career center and Through the 1990s, people ofjob placement service. According to the Network: color, women and immigrants will account for 85% of the net growth of the Over the By 2000, women will be 47% of the labor force nations labor force. next 20 years the U.S. population will grow by 42 million. Hispanics will Miami isaccount for 47% of the growth, Blacks22%, Asians18% and Whites13%. San Francisco is 1/3 Asian American. A more recent survey2/3 Hispanics. suggests that smaller businesses have been more successful than larger ones in promoting ethnic minorities into upper management. The study shows that in businesses with fewer than 500 employees, twenty percent of the senior mana gers are minorities, as compared with about 13 percent for businesses with five hundred or more employees (Thiederman, 162). The reason probably lies in the fact that the highest net increase of small businesses since the early 1990s have been minority owned. The number of Hispanic-owned business has grown 76% since the early 90s proceeded by Asians, Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and Alaskan Natives which grew 61% (Nickels, McHugh, McHugh, 4). Naturally, minority-owned businesses are more opt to promote their own into managerial positions. Either because the business is family owned or they have a limited labor pool of applicants. Managing diversity goes far beyond meeting the legal requirements of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action. Whereas Affirmative action is based on mandatory compliance regulations designed to bring the level of representation for minority groups into parity, diversity initiatives within organizations are voluntary in nature. It takes A ffirmative action a step further. Organizations that incorporate diversity initiatives as a part of their organizational objectives will be the most prepared they will be to meet the challenges of the next millenium. Whereas Affirmative Action focuses on including those on the basis of race, gender, and/or ethnicity, Diversity initiatives, when well implemented, focuses on all elements of diversity. Management must embrace the inclusion of employees not only with regard to obvious differences of race, sex, and age but also without regard to such secondary factors of diversity as marital

Challenger Explosion essays

Challenger Explosion essays At 11:38 A.M. on the morning of Tuesday, January 28, 1986, millions of Americans watched as the space shuttle Challenger lifted off. Seventy-three seconds later, millions of Americans watched in horror as the Challenger disintegrated into a huge ball of fire. It was the twenty-fifth space shuttle mission and the tenth launch of the Challenger. Unfortunately, it would also be the last launch for the Challenger. Dick Scobee was the mission commander. His crew included Mike Smith, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. The launch was already a very big deal in the United States, but the fact that a teacher would be going into space made the event even bigger. Christa McAuliffe was chosen by NASA to be the first civilian in space. Many things contributed to the Challenger disaster, but what really happened? To start off with, the launch date had been changed several times due to poor weather, additional crew training, launch of NASA space shuttle Columbia, desert dust storms, and hatch failure. Then, an unscheduled teleconference was held with Morton Thiokol Inc. engineers. The shuttles solid fuel booster rockets and their ability to perform in cold weather was the topic up for discussion, as NASA was concerned that the flexible O-rings that sealed the four rockets together would not stand up to the cold. The Morton engineers voted against the launch unanimously, but NASA ignored their recommendation. NASA eventually pressured the engineers to reverse their recommendation so that the launch would go onuninterrupted. That problem was just the beginning. Much, much more went wrong before launch time. For instance, the ships scheduled to recover the booster rocks were grounded because of high winds. Also, the launch pad was very cold and the shuttle was under a constant threat of ice formation. Other problems included a malfunctioning alarm system. Despite all ...