THE ROLE OF DIVERSITY IN RETAIL ENVIRONMENT

The Role of Diversity in Today's Retail Environment

Abstract

This paper aims to explain how female promotion can help to improve organizational performance in the French environment.

It is based on a case study of Orange Telecom, a major French retailer, which dramatically increased its percentage of female store managers through the implementation of a systematic plan with top management support. The key finding is that the factor, which led to success, was ensuring a fit between organizational features and the plan for change. This required careful attention to existing organizational features and developing trends as well as concentrated efforts to change those features that might have been stumbling-blocks. Since the study was based on a single case, future research should include longer-term and broader studies to ensure the generalizability of the findings.

This study implies that diversity management can be successfully introduced in a French context: managers cannot be allowed to argue that they are powerless to effect change. The key value-added is to move beyond arguing whether French companies should introduce diversity and point the way to how they can do so successfully.

Table of Content

CHAPTER ONE4

INTRODUCTION4

Historical background6

Motivations for self-employment12

CHAPTER TWO15

LITERATURE REVIEW15

Conceptual framework16

CHAPTER THREE25

METHODOLOGY25

Orange Telecom Co. Ltd background25

Early efforts to increase promotion of women26

A new plan for promotion management29

CHAPTER FOUR32

DISCUSSION32

The selection process32

Resource allocation33

Follow-up33

CHAPTER FIVE41

CONCLUSION41

REFERENCES47

Chapter One

Introduction

From 1979 to 1999 the total number of self-employed employees in the UK more than doubled, growing from 319,000 to 824,000 (Info.sm, 2001) and by far outstripping growth rates for self-employed males. The last 20 years have seen far ranging political, economic, social and technological changes in society, inter alia a shift from a traditionally employees dominated manufacturing base towards a retail and service sector led economy, as well as a continued trend towards employees workforce participation and greater equalization of employees and pay rates. The advent and rapid spread of potentially home-based information and communications technologies offered further flexibility in working practices and opportunities for the development of small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

These changes in society have brought about far greater equality in the make-up of the workforce. Nevertheless, in certain sectors gender differences can be seen in the number of men or employees employed and/or the type of employment they have within that sector. Retailing is one sector that employs more employees than men. Over 70 per cent of the total retail workforce is made up of employees (Distributive National Training Organisation, 2000) but the typical type of employment for employees is part-time and non-managerial. Corresponding gender differences are also apparent in self-employment in retailing. Only 6.4 per cent of employees in the sector are classed as self-employed compared to 16.4 per cent of men (Quarterly Labour Force Survey, 2000). Assuming self-employment in retailing is linked to owning and managing small and micro retail businesses (such as small shops, market stalls and craft stalls etc.), it would appear that the number of employees owned enterprises is well-below the UK national average of 24 per cent of small businesses being owned by ...