WORKPLACE DIVERSITY

Workplace Diversity

Workplace Diversity

Personnel rights

Personnel rights are enforceable legal entitlements for employees on the basis of a contract of employment, collective agreements or statutory rights. Individual statutory rights based on laws can include the right to a minimum wage, notice of dismissal, minimum holiday pay, parental leave, equal opportunities and minimal health and safety protection. Collective statutory rights include the rights to join a union, to engage in collective bargaining, to participate in firm decision-making, and receive work-related information from employers (e.g. through works councils).

Personnel rights are often a product of political struggles about legitimate procedures at the workplace. Employee rights can also be seen as concessions from employers and a means to legitimate their use of labor power to increase profitability and improve public relations regarding recruitment and marketing. Judicial decisions related to employment disputes tend to see the employee as the weaker contractual partner in relation to the employer. Employment contracts and collective agreements can give greater rights than the law but they cannot take away statutory rights, which are a basic minimum (Gruber, 2008).

Diversity

As organizations continue to be more diverse in the sociological and psychological characteristics of their workforces, there continues to be a strong need to understand how diversity impacts individual and team processes and outcomes in the workplace. Indeed, diversity in work units has become an indisputably important topic in organizational science. Several reviews of work group research have also emphasized the relevance and importance of diversity for team effectiveness. The number of articles published has grown almost exponentially over the past two decades. Given this trend, it is obvious that diversity is commanding a great deal of research attention. That attention is one of the reasons for this handbook.

Given that diversity is an increasingly vital and pervasive topic, one would expect an increasingly consensual paradigm or set of conventions in the way it is studied. However, a close look at the literature suggests that it is not the case; even in research on work team diversity, there is no favored or dominant (set of) approach (es). This is not meant to suggest that a hegemony of a particular diversity theory or favored research strategy, such as a laboratory experiment or an ethnographic field study, would be beneficial. It is meant to suggest that some consistency in the conceptual and empirical meaning ascribed to diversity might be.

Sexual harassment

Recent research conducted by the Conference Board's Centre of Excellence for Women's Advancement found a significant gap between senior women managers' and chief executive officers' perceptions concerning the progress and advancement of women in Canadian organizations. Specifically, in both the private and public sectors, women executives perceived significantly less progress than did chief executives. Women were also more likely to look beyond the numbers—percentage of women in management positions—and cite issues related to organizational culture and attitudes that stifle change. The challenge for employers, therefore, is to address headon the perceptions of executive women that progress has been ...