- One topic I instantly became attracted to came after reading the title of one of this weeks required readings. ‘Why diversity matters’ unlike the other readings, makes a direct claim shy of any open question or neutral position. It exploits the sum saying “We know intuitively that diversity matters.” While we can agree that there is undeniable research benefits brought by diversity, I would argue that its subject title and opening statement suggest no room for counterargument value. Throughout the entire article it implies diversity is always correspondent for the subject. What I would be interested in finding out are cases where diversity rather is not always relevant– areas where diversity might actually bring more harm then good, inside and out of business. Ofter time organizations that are tailored for minority populations such as Black and Latino communities reserve themselves from other cultures. Why is it that diversity, in this case, may implicitly or explicitly exclude Caucasian or Asian races? Equally, why or why not would it be important to celebrate only one ethnic or one gender population? Why might diversity not always matter?
- I found the article written on organizational culture rich in its elaborative ability to aggregate multiple voices (over 300) and relate them back to the value of what ‘they say’. It shifts the over-arching complicated nature of culture with smaller scale supporting claims inviting one to feel apart of an overall discussion. The question “why we should care” I would add unavoidably becomes the most important part of the article. Understanding how far one sees an organization fit requires putting yourself in the shoes of someone else. Being apart of the university-student culture, for example, required I work and continue pursuing academic studies. Being apart of the Latino community meant having this pre-determined characteristic I was born with because of my Hispanic upbringing. Being somebody who lived abroad influenced my will to learn and become apart of that areas cultural surroundings. Culture, from what I’ve come to learn, is something we are forced to accept, reject, or try and sublime into. This, I would contend, should be another another universal agreement. Regardless of whichever above positions we take, we will all fit on some side of the spectrum.
Unit 1 Question Responses
- One question that this week’s reading has raised for me is, what can we do as a society to add more diversity to different businesses? I understand that it is in a company’s best interest to hire qualified people who also have diverse backgrounds. However, I wonder if there is a way to go about diversifying without making it too difficult. In Watkins article, “What is organizational culture and why should we care?”, the author talks about culture and how it is shaped by stating that “Culture is powerfully shaped by incentives. The best predictor of what people will do is what they are incentivized to do” (p. 1). In this case, the incentive is money. According to the article, “Why Diversity Matters”, companies will gain more money if they have more diversity in their staff. So, why does it seem like there is still not enough diversity in many companies and businesses?
- In the article, “Why Diversity Matters”, there are many important and interesting statistics included. The main purpose of this article is to get readers to understand that diversity matters in business One of the statistics that struck me was “In the United States, there is a linear relationship between racial and ethnic diversity and better financial performance: for every 10 percent increase in racial and ethnic diversity on the senior executive team, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) rise 0.8 percent” (p. 2). This is important to know because it shows that without diversity, it is difficult to succeed. This statistic was interesting to me because I did not realize that this was a fact. However, it makes a lot of sense because companies need all types of life experiences and backgrounds in order to reach others with whatever they are doing. At the end of the article, the author says that achieving more diversity is not going to be easy. However, it is extremely important that we do our best to include as much diversity as possible.
Overview of Week of 5/25
Now that we’ve gotten to know each other a bit and have gotten our feet wet, so to speak, in what organizational culture and diversity are, we’re going to spend this week deepening our knowledge of those topics AND beginning to think about some writerly concerns.
In this post, I’ll lay out a little more info about the week’s assignments and point you toward some additional resources that will help you to complete those tasks. Please read on for more.
Reading assignments:
- “The impact of organizational diversity policies on minority employees’ leadership self-perceptions and goals” by Gundemir et al (you will use SUMMON on the library website to locate and download this article)
- “Neurodiversity as a competitive advantage” by Austin & Pisano (on Blackboard)
- chapter 1 “They Say” of They Say/I Say
Writing/discussion assignments:
- 100-200 word summary of Gundemir et al (working with the guidance from the handout on summary, on Bb and in the blog post linked below) [due Weds., 5/27 through Bb]
- 200-300 word comparison of Gundemir and Austin & Pisano article, focusing on how the pieces differ in author, audience, purpose, and approach [due Sunday, 5/31 through Bb]
- discussion posts in response to this week’s prompts [due Saturday, 5/30]
Check out these additional resources:
- read over the Close Reading handout on Blackboard (click on the Handouts tab there)
- read through this blog post (and check out the embedded links) for some more background on genre and summary
Discussion prompts for Week of 5/25
Everyone should respond to the 1st question and then select 1 of the other 2 to answer. Responses should be >150 words each. Please tag your responses with “unit1,” “week of 5/25,” and [your name]. Categorize as “Discussions/Homework.”
Please post your responses by 5/27, and then read through your classmates’ posts and my comments and respond where you wish.
- Graff and Birkenstein (in the opening chapter of They Say/I Say) remind us that in researched writing we are always starting from what others are saying. That means we must first be able to fairly and accurately represent the ideas of others. They suggest a number of different shapes this might take. Try out one of their approaches from chapter 1 to craft a statement about some piece of Gundemir et al’s argument. Write a sentence or two using this approach, and then explain what you’ve done and how it went. Did you find this approach to framing useful? How/why/why not?
- How do this week’s readings from Gundemir et al and Austin and Pisano add to your understanding of diversity in organizations? Draw some connections between these readings and the texts we examined last week–-how is this broad topic starting to take shape for you? Are there ways that you find yourself able to connect to your own experience to these Big Picture concepts (i.e. as a member of the SU community and/or as an employee/intern in another work setting)?
- These articles we’re reading this week have rather different purposes. Gundemir et al raise important questions about the impacts of how diversity is framed (as either valuing individual differences or as de-emphasizing individual differences). Austin and Pisano examine the opportunities and challenges that a specific type of diversity (neurodiversity) brings to workplaces. While heading in different directions, both articles ask readers to consider the social implications of workplace decisions. Explain and respond to their conclusions about the ripple effects of diverse workplaces. In other words, help us to understand how and why their ideas matter.
Thinking about summary and genre
Why summary is important
Summary is a task that you’ll encounter often in research-based writing–as an author, you’ll need to explain the essence of a text that you have worked with in developing your own ideas. Writing an effective summary means offering your reader a genuine understanding of the text, not just a list of its greatest hits. Your reader needs a little context–
- what is this text?
- what is the author doing in it?
- what are the key ideas we should take from it?
- and then what are you going to do with it?
Because you’ll need this skill regularly, we’re going to practice and use it regularly–we develop writing skills just like any other kind of competency, through examining models, trying it out, and repeating the drill.
You’ll find a handout on Blackboard that offers some more explanation of writing effective summaries. It’s also linked here: Handout on summary
Let’s think about this in terms of the Herring article you just read for last week. If you were going to explain this article to someone else, it wouldn’t be enough to say that Gundemir and her colleagues talk about some of the pros and cons of workplace diversity. We wouldn’t know anything about who Gundemir is and why we should take her word for it. We wouldn’t know whether this article was grounded in good research. We wouldn’t know whether the idea that there are more fruitful and less fruitful ways to frame diversity is central to her argument, or a kind of tertiary point that she mentions. We wouldn’t understand what the article is.
A summary like this, however, would offer us a lot more value: In his article…. from the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, Seval Gundemir, an organizational psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, examines how companies’ diversity policies affect the way that minority employees view their own leadership potential within their companies. She reports data from 2 different studies that she and her colleagues conducted. She finds that…..
Notice what that summary does–it offers a quick biographical blurb about the author (which tells us that she’s an academic), lets us know that this is a scholarly article (written by a scholar for other scholars in the field), gives us a window into her data set and methods, and then lets us know what she’s arguing. If we know all that, then anything else that you share with us from the article will be a lot more meaningful. We’ll get why it matters and what evidence there is to back it up.
Because effective summary is so essential to writing about research, we’ll be practicing this skill quite a bit in the weeks to come.
Why it’s important to think about genre
This is a term we’ll use quite a bit throughout the course, so it’s worth taking some time to discuss what it means. We often think about genre in relation to music or movies, where we’re accustomed to using it to refer to different ‘types’ of media. These genre labels communicate something to consumers, shape expectations for what that media will be like, and serve as handing sorting mechanisms for us (what we like, what we don’t, what we’re in the mood for, how we would describe something to another person, etc.)
When it comes to genres of writing, that same sort of understanding applies, but it’s worth pushing beyond this simplistic idea of ‘categories’ (as though they’re just sorting buckets) to understand how and why genres take shape.
For starters, genres tend to responses to recurring writing situations–in other words, the same kind of need keeps popping up and we can use the same sort of text to meet that need. Let’s think about applying for a job. That’s a recurring situation, right? Lots of people find themselves having to do that. And there are ways that writing can help to make that situation work. Now, job application materials–resumes and cover letters–didn’t just emerge spontaneously. They took shape because readers and writers found them to be useful ways of meeting that situational need–front-loaded documents that quickly communicate a job seeker’s qualifications, skills, and experiences. AND they’ve taken the fairly standard form that they do (consistent across many decades) because that pretty standard approach to organizing and formatting makes it possible for the reader to plow through a whole bunch of these documents pretty quickly, while still finding what they need.
Thus, we can think about genres as responsive and organic–developed to meet the needs of writers and readers and changeable depending upon circumstances. They’re not fixed, not static, and not simply interchangeable. We need to match genre to situation–thinking about our readers, about our purposes, about our publication/delivery venues.
Everything you do as a writer is a choice. And our choices are shaped by the situations in/for which we write. This rhetorical situation consists of a few key components, illustrated in the diagram below:
Understanding the rhetorical situation of texts helps us as readers understand what to expect from them and how to read them. And for us as writers, understanding our audience and purpose will help us to craft texts that work for our readers, meeting their needs and expectations and providing them a clear path to understanding.
The texts that you’re reading this week come from 2 rather different genres–Gundemir’s article is a fairly typical scholarly text, written by academics for an audience of other academics in their field and providing the sort of intensive research and analysis those readers demand. The other text by Austin & Pisano is from the Harvard Business Review, a publication with a much broader audience of professionals. They turn to HBR for quick insights into topics they might be interested in and are generally not looking for the same kind of deep-dive. When you know what you’re looking at, it’s much easier to navigate through it.
Now, because most of us are not organizational psychologists (I presume), Gundemir’s text isn’t really designed for us. We have to make our own path through it. There’s a handout on Blackboard (also linked here: Handout on Reading Scholarly Articles ) on how to wade through sometimes dense scholarly articles like this one.
responses for week of 5/18
- A researchable question that came to mind was the culture of workspaces and work areas where racism is highest. What does that say about the company? If organizational culture is driven by incentives and is adaptable to society, what does that say about society? I think it is interesting with the increasing diversity to analyze the deeper workings of companies who have employees who experience institutional racism. If organizational culture reflects the society surrounding it and adapts to culture in it, how come many are still made to feel left out. Another question it raises is why do many employers tolerate or try to excuse discrimination. Although it is clear and evident that many employees experience it, why do many workplaces fail to conduct diversity training. These are questions that I would be interested in exploring further as I am coming up on looking for jobs and internships. A moral standard that is important to me is how the workplace is conducted and if employees feel comfortable going to their employers with an issue. And if they do not feel comfortable, why is that so?
- In regards to the diversity article, there have been a few instances in my life where I have experienced a lack of ethnic diversity, but diversity in other identifications. In the past, I have worked at an assisted living home serving food to the elderly. In this job, I noticed that all of the wait staff were female while the kitchen crew was only male. For the waitstaff, majority were white females aged 16-30 while the kitchen crew ranged in age however they were predominantly white. Although each staff member came from a different economical background, we all shared the basic superficial traits. I thought this was interesting as the elderly who lived in the home were all white, creating no physical diversity in the workplace. I never had gone through a diversity training or having a job properly address workplace discrimination until I started working at the Syracuse Barnes Center as a lifeguard where the staff is more diverse. The team I am surrounded by at my job at the Barnes Center is more efficient and we are able to have an open dialogue with each other at any moment, while my other lifeguarding job at a country club yielded very little diversity and less comfortability with addressing issues. Although the lifeguarding staff at both jobs were predominately female, at my job at the country club we never had training on how to address if someone makes us uncomfortable, only if a woman was wearing a revealing bathing suit and how to address the situation. The difference in efficiency of the staff was clear to me once I started working at Barnes, which coincides with the points made in the article surrounding workplace diversity.
Unit 1 question responses, Aaron
- The article “Why diversity matters” does a good job at using graphics to grab our attention immediately and show some of the differences in company performance when they are more diverse. The first research question that I find myself looking at is the actual title of this article. I know that is a broad question to ask in terms of research, but the statistics that are cited in this article help a lot as far as pointing out why it is beneficial to have a mixed group of people in a workplace. It seems that if you are an employee of a company and you’re trying to be more productive at work, it would help to have a positive mindset and also be challenged- I feel diversity fits both of those parameters.
In the article “What is organizational culture and why should we care?” It’s instantly noticed that while there are some similarities in the contributors view on culture, there are also some differences, and that was worth looking into further for me, to ask “Is diversity of thought in the same sphere as race, gender, orientation, etc.?” I know it wasn’t anything super profound, but to see, or read other peoples views while asked the same question was something I valued. - In my professional life I have been lucky enough to have a diverse group of people that surrounded me. The bulk of my jobs have been warehouse employment, where admittedly going into them I had a preconceived idea of what kind of person would be working there (a white male), and while that may have been the majority in most cases, there certainly were other genders, races and mixes of openly gay, straight, trans people working with me. This was a godsend to me because even throughout my personal life I strive to live by that saying “diversity is the spice of life”. By this I mean that it’s boring just being around the same kind of person that you are (in my opinion), and not only that, it helps your performance, your expansion of ideas, and your attitude. With all of the political division that has been going on lately I have always tried my hardest to seek out conversation with people who may look at things differently than I do, because shutting people out who don’t look like I do or think like I do seems very destructive.
Unit 1 5/18 Isaac Haseltine
The article “Why Diversity Matters” highlighted the inequality that has plagued the human race for thousands of years. Since industrialization, the world has only seen the recent few decades where women and people of color are given an equal chance in the workplace, although we are far from a world filled with racial tension we have made large strides in the direction of a true blended diversity rather than the segmented groups we still must deal with today. The standards and stereotypes that have been assigned to women and people of color have become a generational problem, where the belief in a monochromatic workforce outways the idea of letting a new perspective be apart of the organization. There’s no question that the color of your skin plays a crucial part in your perspective of our world today, to diminish a perspective that can shed light on the opposing side of the same goal is exactly what the article is proving to be the inefficient, wrong move for an organization. Racial/gender bias is developed from a mind closed to new ideas, for any type of organization to maintain a forward-thinking initiative the doors must open to the same caliber as they would for any human, regardless of the visual characteristics that segment our population today.
Cultures are formed around sets of ideas and moral codes. When an outsider enters a culture they bring their own ideology and morals, but to fully immerse yourself you and the people who make up the culture must agree and disagree together to form a community around the unique ideology you are creating and evolving. The quote from Bruce Perron stated “Organizational culture defines a jointly shared description of an organization from within.” The organizational culture is a shared collective, without everyone’s perspectives pointed toward the same direction and proper discourse the culture can not survive at its fullest potential. The author of the article, Michael Watkins, elaborated on this idea by bringing up sense-making, and states “a shared awareness and understanding out of different individuals,”. Whether there are more disagreements than agreements, the main goal of an organizational culture is to bring people together to create a shared mindset of how the organization will operate. Therefore, the culture can not be stagnant, the world is not perfect and clashing ideas are a necessary part for an organization to grow. The people that are a part of an organizational culture can have differing perspectives, although, for the culture to thrive they have they must share the same goals and beliefs for the organization.
Intro
Hello, my names Isaac Haseltine. I’ll be heading into my junior year at SU this Fall hopefully on campus. I’ve spent my time there at the warehouse where I major in fashion design. Art and design play a very significant role in my life, I spend more time working in my studio than I do on anything else. My writing skills, on the other hand, haven’t had as much attention. I’ve only written a handful of essays in the two years I’ve been here, but its always been a skill I find to be crucial for an artist to appropriately convey their perspective, so I figured taking a summer writing class would let me focus on my writing more.