Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Diversity, Quality,
Technology, International
Learning Goals
• Understand why the U.S. Workforce will
increase in diversity well into the next
century
• Describe the direction in which many
organizations are headed in managing for
quality
Learning Goals (Cont.)
• Explain how technological changes will
affect modern organizations and their
management
• Discuss some issues and implications of
managing organizations in an increasingly
global environment
Chapter Overview
• Workforce Diversity
• Quality Management
• Technology, Organizations, and
Management
• The Global Environment of Organizations
Introduction
Workforce Quality
diversity Management
Emerging
issues
Technology,
Global
Organizations,
environment
and Management
Workforce Diversity
• Differences in workforce composition
based on personal and background factors
of people
• Some dimensions of workforce diversity
– Age
– Race
– Physical ability
– Family status
See text book Figure 2.1 for a more complete listing
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Projections show more women, more
minorities, and older workers in the work
force
• Expect strong regional differences
• For example, California's population in 2005
will have 50 percent white and 50 percent
people of color, speaking 80 languages
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Differences in people also present different
worldviews to an organization
• They see the world through different
perceptual lenses
• Issue: harnessing these differences as
opportunities to pursue the organization’s
mission
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Challenges to personnel and work policies
– Working parents: work schedules and on-site
day care
– Single parent: time off to tend to sick child
– Native Americans: work schedules and their
culture’s celebration periods
– Disabled: special access to building and work
area design
– Part-time: job sharing
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
Three views
Valuing Managing
Workforce
diversity
Managing for
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Valuing diversity
– Aggressively embrace diversity
– Goes beyond managing existing diversity
– Recognizes the essential character of a diverse
workforce
– Actively builds a diverse workforce
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Managing diversity
– Harness the potential of all sources of difference
within an organization's workforce
– Tap diverse perspectives and rethink approaches to
tasks and markets
– Example: after hiring its first Hispanic female
attorney, a small northeastern law firm discovered
a new market: pursue English-only employment
policies in cases involving immigrants. Previously
all-white legal staff never thought of that market
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Managing diversity (cont.)
– Not affirmative action in disguise
– Get the greatest contributions from increasingly
diverse people
– A variety of views enriches organizational life
– Does not ask people to give up their
individuality
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Managing diversity (cont.)
– Honors differences among people, but asks
everyone to accept the core values of the
organization
– Core values come from organization's mission:
"An unending pursuit of excellence in customer
service.”
– People reach the goal in many different ways
because of their diversity
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Managing diversity (cont.)
– No choice about managing for diversity
• Note the labor force statistics discussed earlier
• Likely have a diverse labor force in the future,
especially as an organization pursues scarce skilled
labor
• Organizations that have followed affirmative action
and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)
guidelines now have diverse workforces
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Managing diversity (cont.)
– Good business strategy
• Increasingly diverse customer base
• Think and compete globally to remain competitive
• A diverse workforce helps managers attract
customers from diverse backgrounds
• Example: Pizza Hut has found that the presence of
Muslim workers attracts more Muslim customers
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Managing diversity (cont.)
– Global environment adds another layer of
complexity
– Many U.S. organizations sell in foreign
markets, operate in foreign countries, or have
joint ventures with foreign organizations
– Need to understand local customs to meet
customer expectations in foreign markets
– Diverse workforce helps U.S. organizations
meet these global challenges
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Managing for diversity
– Aggressively recruit and hire people of diverse
backgrounds
– Challenges
• Unleash the potential of a diverse workforce
• Channel it toward organizational goals
• Provide vision so everyone understands the goals
• Preserve a diversity of viewpoints
• Help employees get the satisfaction they want from their
work experiences
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Managing for diversity (cont.)
– Policy changes
• Work schedules
• Personal leave
• Language training in English or other languages
• Other basic skills
– Fairness in policies: day-care policy applies to
all employees
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Managing for diversity (cont.)
– Managers will need to learn new skills
• Accepting differences
• Appreciating language differences
• Learning new languages. Includes sign language to
communicate with hearing-impaired employees
Workforce Diversity (Cont.)
• Managing for diversity (cont.)
– Other changes touch the heart of an
organization's culture
– Values suitable to a homogeneous white-male
culture need to yield to the heterogeneous
values of diverse groups
– Social activities
• Rituals in male cultures will need to change to allow
ready access by females
• Rotate activities to meet the desires of both groups
• Example: if social gatherings include only male-
oriented sports, add other activities
Quality Management
• Managing all parts of an organization to ensure
quality products or services
• Can trace its roots to the 1920s
• Ignored by American managers until forced to
focus on it by competitive forces
• Many names: Total Quality Control,
Leadership through Quality, Total Quality
Management, Robust Design, six-sigma quality
• Quality Management (QM) covers them all
Quality Management (Cont.)
• Quality Management
– A philosophy and system of management
– Philosophy: values of quality, continuous
improvement, and “getting it right the first time”
– System of management: tools and techniques that
help manage for quality and continuous
improvement
– Has its roots in manufacturing but applies to all
organizations
Quality Management (Cont.)
• History
– An American invention, not Japanese
– Some significant contributors: W. Edwards
Deming, Walter A. Shewhart, Armand V.
Feigenbaum, Joseph M. Juran, and Philip B.
Crosby
– Taught to the Japanese after WW II. They
understood what it meant from the beginning
Quality Management (Cont.)
• Requires a total system's view of the
organization. Reaches beyond its boundaries
• Interdependence of outside people, outside
organizations, and groups within the
organization to manage for quality
– Employees
– Suppliers
– Clients, customers
Quality Management (Cont.)
• Interdependence (cont.)
– Community
– Coalitions to which the organization belongs
– Professional or trade associations
– Competitors
Quality Management (Cont.)
• View organizations as a system of
processes, not as a vertical chain-of-
command view
– Emphasizes processes, customers,
interdependence with suppliers, and the role of
feedback in continuous quality improvement
– Ask customers and suppliers: discover shifts in
expectations and quality requirements
Quality Management (Cont.)
• Supporting tools and techniques
– Let people watch work processes to ensure a
quality product or service
– Train employees in the use of the tools
– Most QM tools and techniques let organizations
analyze processes
Quality Management (Cont.)
• Supporting tools and techniques (cont.)
– Typically done by teams of people drawn from all
parts of the organization affected by the process
– Deliberately diverse teams bring different views to
the analysis and improvement of a work process
– Example: analysis team examining an
organization's hiring process includes members
from the Human Resources Department, hiring
departments, newly hired employees, labor union
representatives
Quality Management (Cont.)
• Benefits
– Increased employee commitment to continuous
quality improvement
– Cost of providing a service or manufacturing a
product drops
– More dependable service processes. More
reliable products
Quality Management (Cont.)
• QM differs from other ways of managing
– Emphasizes a long-term commitment to
continuous quality improvement
– Quality is everyone's job, not the job of a quality-
control department
– Intensely customer focused: demands that all
organization members share that focus
– Emphasizes high involvement in the work process
Quality Management (Cont.)
• QM differs from other ways of managing
(cont.)
– Communication in all directions--top-down,
bottom-up, laterally
– A long-term orientation: commitment to the future
– Decisions made with a view of the future
– Continuous improvement lets people do more with
the same resources
Quality Management (Cont.)
• QM differs from other ways of managing
(cont.)
– Involving everyone in continuous improvement
can add challenge to employees' jobs
– Long-run result: a committed corps of people
with an impassioned focus on mission,
customers, and continuous quality improvement
Quality Management (Cont.)
• Moving toward QM presents massive
change to an organization
• Requires people to reframe the way they
think about their organization
• Difficult transformations might account for
some QM failures
Quality Management (Cont.)
• Results
– Continuous improvement increases process
efficiency and reduces costs
– Quality can attract new customers and increase
the retention of old ones. Costs five times more to
get new customers than to keep present ones
– High quality can make a product or service so
attractive that an organization can charge higher
prices than competitors
Quality Management (Cont.)
• Results (cont.)
– QM efforts produced poor results when
managers did not target improvements to areas
that had the greatest long-term positive effect
on profits
– Some significant positive financial effects
– Some major failures: The Wallace Co. and
Florida Power and Light
Technology, Organizations,
and Management
• Computing power and computer features
– Desktop computers with CD-Rom drives, high-speed
processors, and large memory capacity: create
business presentations using three-dimensional
animated technology
– Laptop and palmtop computers: Internet connections
using ports in airport telephones, aircraft telephones, or
cybercafés
– Tracking appointments and staying connected will
continue to get easier in the future
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Communications technology
– Note: the first transatlantic telephone cable
carried only 89 simultaneous calls!
– Digital satellite systems: allows handheld
digital cellular communication anywhere in the
world
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Communications technology (cont.)
– Lucent Technology's Bell Labs' wave division
multiplexing
• Splits a single beam of light into multiple colors
• Each color is a separate communication channel
within an optical fiber
– Handheld communicators: send and receive
e-mail, talk to a person by telephone, and surf
the Web--from anywhere
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Other technologies
– Electronically based measurement systems:
monitor manufacturing processes and collect sales
data at store checkout stands
– Future computer technologies: digitize
information from voice interaction and
handwriting on a digital tablet
– Handheld computers: track inventories and send
orders electronically
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Other technologies (cont.)
– Navigation satellites: track truck and ship fleets
– Communication satellites: managers can talk to
drivers and ship captains anywhere in the world
– E-mail, voice mail, videoconferencing,
teleconferencing
– Widely used now and will increase in use in the
future
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Other technologies (cont.)
– Videoconferencing adds a two-way video
connection to the now common teleconference
– Replace or supplement e-mail systems with
voice-mail systems. Oral messages, not written
ones, appear in a person's electronic mailbox
– Widespread use of intranets (internal networks)
and the Internet
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Materials technology and engineering
– Commonly used: carbon fiber composites and
optical fibers
– New: superpolymers, amorphous metal alloys,
and superconductors
– Innovations in product ideas and technological
solutions no longer will depend on naturally
existing materials
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Materials technology and engineering
(cont.)
– New materials: lighter cars and trucks that can
carry heavier loads
– New ceramics technology allows designing jet
engines with more thrust. Larger planes going
longer distances with more people and cargo
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Manufacturing
– Agile manufacturing processes with almost no
inventory. Direct computer links with customers
or end-users
– Cost-effective and competitive processes to
produce both custom-made items and large
production runs in the same plant
– Products moving through these processes can
differ from item to item
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Manufacturing (cont.)
– Computer-assisted manufacturing (CAM)
– Computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM)
– Modern materials
– Robotics
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Manufacturing (cont.)
– Laser cutting
– Bonding methods
– Internet technology: suppliers receive orders as
manufacturer updates its manufacturing
schedule in real time
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Managerial role changes
– People in scattered places
– Networks will act as coordinating mechanisms,
replacing face-to-face interaction
• Increase in telecommuting
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• New strategies
– Flexibility: key feature that will permeate the
design and response of manufacturing and
service operations
– Includes thorough understanding of customer
needs and variations among markets
– Latter will be especially true for multinationals
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• New strategies (cont.)
– Markets in different countries have high
diversity even between nearby countries
– Treat customers of different countries in the
way they expect. Example: insurance giant
AIG
• Local agents collect monthly premiums at each
insured's home in Taiwan
• Electronic bank transfers in Hong Kong
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Organizational design
– New strategies require decentralized
organizations
– Fast responses to meet shifting market and
customer needs
– Cross-functional teams to tightly integrate the
total business process
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Organizational design (cont.)
– Local teams with broad decision-making and
problem-solving authority will help large
organizations decentralize
– Modern information technologies will help
globally dispersed organizations decentralize
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Organizational design (cont.)
– Organization-wide self-managing teams
• Form teams around a specific customer base,
product, or service
• Makes all decisions in response to customer needs
• Conceives, designs, builds, markets
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Organizational design (cont.)
– Self-managing teams (cont.)
• Involved in all parts of the business process
affecting a customer
• Will do much of the selection and socialization of
new employees
– Virtual organizations: link to various partners
over the Internet
Technology, Organizations,
and Management (Cont.)
• Organizational design (cont.)
– Virtual organizations (cont.)
• Example: Aditi Inc.
– Customer support to software users with a twist
– Seattle and Bangalore, India based
– After American workers go home, messages transfer over
the Internet to Bangalore
– Reverse happens at the end of the Indian work day
– Almost immediate customer response, no matter what
their time zone