Tag: expanding the canon

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Expanding the Canon

The Changing Definition of Workplace Diversity

by William G. Shackelford

Summary

In The Changing Definition of Workplace Diversity, Shackelford discusses today’s changing definition of diversity, while considering the diversity philosophies of several corporations and authors. Employers have broadened their concept of what diversity is. The case for broadening the definition is built on the changing labor force demographics. The majority of workers entering the workforce this decade will be women, minorities and foreign nationals. The labor shortage that began in the 1990’s will continue to grow and is projected to reach 10 million workers by 2010.

Employers have moved diversity from a “nice thing to do” to a business necessity, says Donna Brazile. It’s recommended to use your cover letter to highlight your diversity status, to include on your resume your fraternity or sorority membership, to mention any affiliation with prominent minority or diversity organizations, to include military service on your resume, to state any community service or other volunteer work, or to stress your willingness to apply your degree in non-traditional ways. Discrimination in hiring has taken a back seat to issues of homeland security, terrorism, war and economic security. These changing times present a window of opportunity for “equal opportunity” for diverse candidates.

For one example, Merck as a company takes extra care to attract, hire, develop and retain highly capable and motivated students. Merck provides strong foundations for their development (scholarships and workshops) and welcomes diversity. Because of this, students look at Merck as an “Employer of Choice”after college. These types of programs are becoming more and more common to not only seek diversity, but welcome it.

Analysis

In William G. Shackelford’s, The Changing Definition of Workplace Diversity, he explains the changing scope of workplace diversity in America. He uses the definitions of multiple corporations with direct quotes to show how the definition differs based on the intention of the diversity. By using sources from different time periods he’s able to show the actual change in not only diversity’s definition, but its place in the workplace.

He begins by introducing the first company to have crowned diversity as  important within the workplace. His introduction pulls the audience in with the phrase, “it’s been almost 20 years since,” as it pulls the reader into a timeline. This, as an introduction, sets the tone for the rest of the article. At this point, once he goes into the companies and their mission statements and diversity definitions, they come one after the other. Their comparisons are apparent, and he makes it easy to see the transition in importance companies have put on diversity and how it changed over time.

This text is important for our class’s discussion on organizational diversity, because it not only shows opinions of diversity within corporations, but also how different environments foster this diversity. Certain circumstances welcome diversity better than others. Knowing diversity is helpful in the workplace is one thing, but creating an environment that welcomes and is desirable for those diverse employees is another. This particular conversation is something our texts so far haven’t focused on as much.

Link

https://go-gale-com.libezproxy2.syr.edu/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T003&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=2&docId=GALE%7CA108966746&docType=Article&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=ZAHW&prodId=PPDS&contentSet=GALE%7CA108966746&searchId=R1&userGroupName=nysl_ce_syr&inPS=true&ps=1&cp=2

 

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Unit 1 Assignment: Expanding the Canon

 

The article titled “Employee Assistance Program Services for Alcohol and Other Drug Problems: Implications for Increased Identification and Engagement in Treatment” written by Jodi M Jacobson and Paul Sacco follows the study they conducted regarding the use of Employee Assistance Programs, or EAP’s, in the workplace and the further effects that it had on the company and individual. The article originally published on The American Journal on Addictions can be found on the website EBSCOhost, which provides scholarly articles and similar published works.

The central argument the researchers focused on was to determine whether or not EAP services were significantly beneficial for those with AOD, also known as Alcohol and Other Drug addiction. Furthermore, their study was directed to show employers how individuals with AOD can benefit in an environment where their needs can be met in a judgment free workplace. In order to gather data, the researchers drew from the pool of individuals associated with the National Epidemiologic Survey of Alcohol and Related conditions, or NESARC, from different backgrounds in all 50 states. To narrow the data, the researchers then separated participants into those who had access to EAP’s in their workplace and those who looked elsewhere for help. The researchers concluded that those who had used EAP’s in their workplace were less likely to foster feelings of negativity in the workplace for fear of being stigmatized compared to those who did not have access to an EAP. 

Jacobson and Sacco elaborate on individuals in their study who had previously had experience with EAP’s and the demographics of those individuals. The study emphasizes how the use of EAP’s has varied across co occurring disorders and those who struggle with addiction, but they reported that the EAP gave them an outlet to receive help while simultaneously being able to live a normal life. 

The influence of EAP’s on the vulnerable portion of the workforce reflected individuals who felt more comfortable reaching out for help, and did not feel they were outcasts. Individuals who suffer from an AOD addiction struggle to reach out and receive the help they need. However with the help of Employee Assistance Programs, those who are struggling have improved performance in the workplace. 

The linked article below is published by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration , or SAMSHA, which elaborates on the use of EAP’s and how to use them within a company. SAMSHA is an agency that promotes receiving help for addiction while simultaneously educating the public of addiction in hopes of reducing substance abuse. The organization breaks down what an EAP is, the different types (i.e. internal programs and external programs) that can be adapted in the workplace, how to select one, the costs and benefits of choosing an EAP and lastly the costs and services of adapting an EAP. SAMSHA shares this knowledge with the public in hopes of encompassing diversity and promoting a work environment that is suitable for peoples of all abilities and disabilities. As promoted by SAMSHA, Employee Assistance Programs target the needs of the individual in order to provide them a way of healing while continuing a healthy lifestyle. 

Those who struggle with substance abuse often find the process of healing difficult, especially in the work force where they often feel like an outcast and carry a specific stigma. EAP’s work to break down the barriers to promote a work environment where individuals of all race, gender and socioeconomic backgrounds can receive the help that they need. In terms of diversity inclusion, those looking to promote an equal workplace should expand their thinking to ailments that burden individuals on a daily basis. Addiction is found in individuals of all ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds and is something we should further expand our minds to include when thinking about a more tailored workplace.

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Wrapping up Unit 1

Let’s start pulling some things together. Here are a few lessons from our first unit of the course that I hope you will carry forward in our next projects:

  • We need to understand a text’s rhetorical situation before we can work with it—over the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at some sets of texts that talk around some of the same issues but from different angles. Looking closely, we can trace many of these differences to facets of their writing situation: i.e. different audiences, different purposes, different credentials/experiences of the authors, different contexts. In order to figure out how much stock to put in folks’ ideas, what ideas of our own we might build upon them, or how to use these sources to help explain ideas to other people, we MUST first understand the texts themselves and where they’re coming from.
  • Understanding a text’s rhetorical situation also gives us a window in to whether and how it works, and what we might learn from its example as writers—we can see how writers try to appeal to their readers (using 2nd person, anticipating and responding to their concerns, styling their text to be visually engaging). We can see how writers build their arguments (linking evidence to claims, providing the reader with opportunities to follow their chain of thought back through hyperlinks to sources or citations). We can see writers drawing on their personal experiences to tell us stories about how they came to wonder about something and how they developed their understanding of it. By watching how other people do this work, we prepare ourselves to do it, too.
  • We need a variety of tools—we’ve examined how-to texts (from Harris and TSIS) and content-focused ones; we’ve watched videos; we’ve discussed. We’re coming to appreciate the complexity of our big topic area and to see how we’re only really going to make progress toward our understanding by engaging with a variety of resources and voices. That’s not just an academic exercise for us in this course; that’s a core guideline for research. As researchers and writers, we will also need that multi-faceted set of perspectives if we’re ever going to make progress toward understanding. AND we need to use a multitude of tools in presenting our ideas to our readers—whether that’s templates, graphic representations of data, varying levels of formality, etc. Furthermore, this sort of diversity of perspectives and approaches is a core value for organizations–an essential component of fair and effective collaboration.

So let’s continue. We’re growing our body of knowledge this week through accretion—each of you is adding something to it with the article you’re going to explain to the rest of us, and reviewing your classmates’ posts will be an important part of this week’s work. As we move forward, we’ll continue to learn from each other even as we head down individual research paths.

One final point, summary isn’t just a hoop for you to jump through. It’s how you test yourself to ensure that you’re conversant enough with the text to work with it in your own writing. If you can’t effectively summarize it, you probably shouldn’t be working with it in a project, because you can’t be sure you’ll fairly characterize its perspective and utilize its full value. A careful definition and description of a source (as part of a summary that also details its main take-away points) is a necessary precondition to be able to work further with that material.

Ready to move on? The unit 2 assignment sheet is available here and on Blackboard. Take a look, and let’s get ready to go.

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DRAFT – Expanding the Canon, Unit 1, Toni

To begin my research on the how the social mission of Ben & Jerry’s has survived and lives in their workforce, I have had trouble finding scholarly articles that delineate this aspect of the business.  There are a lot of scholarly articles that speak about some of the challenges Ben & Jerry’s have had, but no conclusive scholarly articles, currently, about their successes, despite their earlier difficulties.

For the sake of finally getting something posted I went with this article, which  has good introductory information but I am aware the source is not strong enough. Alas…

Matthew Lam, a writer and intern at Cornell SC Johnson College of business, who writes for the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise News, presents Ben & Jerry’s as a company that is committed to it’s cause: valuing social justice and remaining unabashedly progressive in their politics. Ben & Jerry’s has a three-part mission, which aims to create linked prosperity for everyone that’s connected to their business and as Lam discovers, their three prongs of their  mission are lined up next to one another in the company graphic; with the belief that displaying them in another way would lead employees to subconsciously rank them in importance. Through speaking with Rob Michalak, Global Director of Social Mission @benandjerrys, Lam learns that Ben & Jerry’s makes deliberate and tangible choices, incentivizing suppliers to make more environmentally sustainable and animal-friendly choices, and was one of the first companies to pay a living wage, now boasting one of the lowest wage compression ratios its workforce in the country. Even though Ben & Jerry’s was acquired by a multinational consumer goods giant in 2000, this atypical acquisition provided for an independent board of directors composed of Ben & Jerry’s original leadership, and experts in the fields of environmental sustainability, human rights, and other social issues. Ben & Jerry’s employees remain just as enthusiastic about their ice cream as they are about progressive political and social causes, and as a so-called “activist company,” Ben & Jerry’s leadership and culture, the holistic choices it has made, and the socially responsible reputation it has built, is not just PR it’s Philanthropy.

Ben & Jerry’s: Committed to the cause

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Draft of Expanding the Canon

Providing equal representation for minorities has always been a growing concern the world has faced much discriminiction and hesitancy over providing opportunities to all races. However, a different form of racial exclusion comes to the surface when we read an article titled “Gifted Ethnic Minority Students and Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis”. This article boils down the prejudice encountered in day to day life and centers on discrimination encountereed in the classroom. A study was conducted in order to investigate racial bias against minorities being chosen for gifted education programs. It has been a constant theme of teachers overlooking educated minority students and not being able to depict them from other students. With a general disregard for these students and a lack of representation in these programs, once they reach college, they find themselves falling behind tremendously and taking extra classes to keep up. This article’s main purpose is to highlight the academic differences between minority and regular students and explore the rates of academic success for those involved in the programs. With a school as big and diverse as Syracuse University it is important to allow minorities to take rigorous classes and to be encouraged to join leadership programs. The authors of this article attempted to convey how classroom and educational program diversity can help students with less opportunities excel and be allowed to flourish in these restricting environments. It is important to bring conversations like these to light and help spread awareness on making classrooms more welcoming spaces.

https://journals-sagepub-com.libezproxy2.syr.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/0016986216674556

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Unit 1 Assignment Draft, Benjamin Fisch

To expand the canon and add to the topic of organizational culture and diversity, I chose an article written by Dr. Ronit Molko called “The Benefits of Neurodiversity in the Work Place.” This article addresses neurodiversity within the work place. First, the article addresses how individuals with neurological disorders such as autism, ADHD, and dyslexia are under represented in the work place. Following that, Dr. Ronit Molko, makes the argument that hiring more individuals who suffer from neurological disorders would actually significantly benefit an organization and it’s goals. Using the example of people who are autistic, one could easily fixate on the set backs that having multiple people who are autistic in a company could bring. However, if one could shift their perspective, he or she would realize that people who suffer from autism possess many qualities that are strengths and could potentially benefit a company significantly. Molko adds value for a broad audience of anyone in the work place, but especially those who are in higher up positions, that would be able to make decisions on hiring. He does this by explaining both the strengths and weaknesses of those with autism, and how they can benefit a company. This article is coming from a website called “Forbes Books.” This website is operated and owned by the well known publisher, Forbes. The intended audience of this article is anyone in business, but especially those with hiring privileges. The purpose of this article is to educated individuals in the work place about how individuals with neurological disorders could benefit a company significantly. This is done by Dr. Ronit Molko, by explains who people with neurological issues are under represented and then explaining how big companies are starting to take advantage of people with autism for example, that have advanced skills in some areas. In conclusion, this article supports people with neurological disorders, a group of individuals who are under represented, and their voices are hardly heard. In this course, we have been analyzing the topic of minorities within the workplace. This issue is less of a problem today, because action has been taken, in the form of laws being passed, that require a certain number of minorities to be employed at a company. Minorities voices on the topic of under representation in the work place have been heard, but much more work should be done and could be done\. People who suffer from neurological disorders are similar to people of minorities, because they both have been under represented in the work place. Yet, people with neurological disorders have yet to be heard for the most part. To support my argument and the purpose of the article I have chosen, I am including media. I have chosen a video by the company HSBC. The video is connected to my claims, because it interviews people who suffer form neurological disorders that work at HSBC. The employees with neurological disorders come off to be very bright, and they prove their brilliance, and make it clear that they can benefit a company.