Managing Diversity

Understanding and Managing Diversity

Leon Hildreth

University of Phoenix

MGT 308

Managing Diversity

June 7, 2010

In summarizing the article Prejudice, Stereotypes, Discrimination, and Privilege first the management must understand what each of these terms mean. When a company hires a person to work for that particular company the hiring manager must not fall into the trap of stereotyping a new hire because of race, religion, sex, or ethnicity. Prejudice can be brought on by the media, socialization, and peer pressure. Although some types of prejudices can be positive, they also can be negative. The negative prejudices are the one’s that cause stereotyping of certain groups of people that may cause problems in the workplace. In certain studies it has been proven that negative stereotyping can lead to certain groups of people thinking negatively about each other and themselves. This negative stereotyping can lead to a lack of self-confidence in these groups. Discrimination occurs when people or groups of people are treaty unfairly. Discrimination can also cause unfair behavior in performance evaluations, promotions, and hiring of personnel. Privilege is another form of discrimination only in reverse; in this form of discrimination certain individuals or groups of individuals receive unearned status or privilege because of their economic upbringing or social power. Privilege can also work against an individual or a group of individuals because of race, sex, or ethnic background. In this case privilege can be used to give one individual a promotion over another who dose not have a privilege status.

One of the most positive ways Terminix handles diversity in the workplace is that Terminix integrates everyone into different areas. What that means is that Terminix changes the routes of its employees. The reason is so that Terminix employees get the opportunity to meet all different types of people including race and ethnicity that this city has to offer.

One of...