Discrimination - A lot lies in the ambiguity between persception and reality

With the advent of civil rights for all sections of communities, any action that is perceived as inhibiting career growth or prohibiting acceptance of individuals in an organization or society, in general, may be termed as discrimination. The various forms of media, through which people are able to assimilate information, is playing major role in adding fuel to the perception rather than reality.
It is true that “with limited resources and large populations there will always be conflicts but there is no need for these conflicts to be drawn out on racial grounds” (Guerin, 2005). An individual’s perception of an action, by the other party, creates the basis of a conflict (Robbins, Judge, & Sanghi, 2009). The remarks or actions by an individual may not be intended to abash or abhor a particular race or any other parameter on which discrimination can be called for.

A study on Denny’s restaurant (Powell, Berry, Chrosniak, Inselbuch, Moore, & Smokevitch, 1996) brings to light the ambiguity in identifying the root cause of racial discrimination charges and how organizations have to be prepared to curb unfavorable incidents or counter allegations that are based on individual perception. In present day circumstances, organizations are caught in the cross fire between civil rights requirements and discrimination allegations. While on one side, laws are set for providing equal opportunities and rights for all in organizations and society, misuse of these laws by individuals cannot be easily determined in any particular case. Even if the organizations are fully aware that incidents in question have little to do with discrimination of individuals, they end up shelling out large sums of money as compensation.


In this study, take the San Jose incident. If I were in the position of store manager, who has encountered a large number of cases where African-Americans customers resorted to “dine and ditch” policy, I will be forced to adopt the cover charge and prepay for meals strategy to avoid loses in my branch, even if I were to belong to the same race. Christina Ridgeway, my due respects to her, sure is one of those individuals who carry their self respect and identify themselves by their abilities, hence she did get offended. However, had she taken a bit of time to understand the plight of the store manager, the small store issue could not have aggravated into national issue. Though this does not mean Denny’s store manager can ignore his responsibilities towards the society. It’s the lack of proper communication between the store manager and Christina Ridgeway that caused the incident to become a national issue, based on which people who otherwise formed positive perceptions, started to take advantage of the law.


Take another example as stated by Ongori and Agolla (2007) saying “organizations that dismiss women from their jobs once they fall pregnant but men who impregnate women keep their jobs” as discriminatory organizations. My views in this accept may be viewed as discriminatory by women here as well.

Let us not look at this example from broader perspective alone. Having worked under, alongside and later supervised women workforce, I personally acknowledge the fact that women have better abilities in performing their duties towards their work, than what was perceived of them. However, during pregnancy women experience excessive tiredness and fatigue (Pregnancy, 2010), and generally these periods are up to 40 weeks. It is arguable that women have the ability to either perform effectively in their usual work or be provided with work other their normal duties, which require minimal effort, or may be provided with maternity leave during this period. In each of these solutions, there is a pitfall for certain small organizations. While providing a 40 week maternity leave, will mean transferring this woman employee’s responsibilities on to other employees in the organization, which may in turn be considered as discrimination by the other group, health and safety norms will be violated when allowing the woman employee to perform their normal duties. From this viewpoint, when a manager is forced to recommend suspension of services of the woman employee for the larger benefit of the organization, how then this can be termed as discrimination?


In the case of Denny’s restaurant (Powell, Berry, Chrosniak, Inselbuch, Moore, & Smokevitch, 1996), Jerry Richardson formed crisis team comprising top management officials to manage the crisis. As the objective of the team will be to expedite legal proceeding and put all allegations to rest (as mentioned in the case study), they formed the consent agreement with Justice Department and Fair Share Agreement with NAACP. These actions were more intended to accede to government requirements as per anti-discriminatory laws – Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Civil Rights Act, 1964, 2010), Fair Employment Act, 1941.


In both the cases, the organizations need to identify the diversity in workforce and manage the diversity to maximize the effectiveness of the organization towards society and country. By merely including the diverse workforce in order to accept equal opportunity norms, set by lawmakers, cannot turn the negotiation tables. While organizations have acknowledged that they cannot survive with homogenous work groups, thus including diversity in workforce, companies need to be more open and explicit in discussions of how difference can be used as sources of individual and organizational effectiveness, thereby carrying it to the society (Thomas & Ely, 1996). A large number of company leaders have started to adopt a new organizational culture that understands the different perspectives and approaches, recognizes learning opportunities and challenges, stimulating personal development, preaching through a well articulated mission statement and inculcating the need of egalitarian structure (Thomas & Ely, 1996) setting the right platform for introduction and smooth functioning of diverse workforce.
In the various articles that I happen to read over the past few days on racial discrimination, I find that societies across the world, be it the most developed nation (United States of America) or a 3rd world country (African nations like – Ghana, Botswana etc.) (Henry & Evans, 2007), have faced discrimination issues throughout their history, including the present times (Hurst, 2010). While discrimination is not limited to race alone, the most common forms of discrimination has been discussed in most of these articles – that of gender, age, color, physical ability, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, values, education, language, lifestyle, beliefs etc – the most prevalent method of discrimination within an ethnic group, in India, is that of caste divide.


Discrimination in any form is termed illegal by most of countries in the world, but how far this law has percolated down socio-economic groups and organizations, is of serious concern. Lawmakers and organizations can form policies against discrimination as a part of their system, but if these policies – their purpose of creating an effective and congenial atmosphere for growth – are not preached by management or understood by the workforce, discrimination is bound to exist and stay.

Reference:

1. Badaracco Jr., J. L. (1998). The Discipline of Building Character. Harward Business Review.
2. Brett, J., Behfar, K., & Kern, M. C. (2006). Managing Multicultural Teams. Harward Business Review.
3. Civil Rights Act, 1964. (2010, August 4). Retrieved August 3, 2010, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
4. Guerin, B. (2005). Combating Everyday Racial Discrimination without Assuming Racists or Racism: New Intervention Ideas for a Contextual Analysis. Behavior and Social Values , 14 (1), 46.
5. Henry, O., & Evans, A. J. (2007). Critical review of literature on workforce diversity. African Journal of Business Management , 072-076.
6. Hurst, S. R. (2010, August 2). Racism a distraction for Obama. Muscat Daily , p. 10.
7. Pregnancy. (2010, August 3). Retrieved August 5, 2010, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy
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11. Powell, E. A., Berry, J., Chrosniak, J., Inselbuch, J., Moore, J., & Smokevitch, J. (1996). Denny's Restaurant (A). Daren Business Publishing . Virgina, US: University of Virginia.