Republished from Faculty of Management, Research, Research Profile
FoM Research Profile
The TAEC model of diversity for organizational effectiveness
Dr. Binod Sundararajan
The issue of managing diversity in most societies of the world, which are rapidly becoming multicultural, is an urgent one that requires prolonged deliberation and advanced implementation. Even as the rate of diversification rises, change in attitudes in society may not be keeping pace. This creates a gap for the societal unit under analysis in terms of achieving the desired level of productivity and reaping the economic benefits attributable to having diverse workforces. We conceptualize this problem at both the individual and organizational level and propose a model for diversity adoption and training that takes into consideration a combined cognitive- and affective-based attitude shift approach. We advance the TAEC model, which posits that a diverse society must shift progressively through four attitudes, starting from Tolerance to Acceptance and moving on to Embracing and Celebrating diversity. We outline the variables that will help explicate how this model can serve as a useful tool for diversity training and organizational effectiveness. Understanding these mechanisms will help us decipher how diversity may be utilized to achieve the desirable degree, as well as quality of collaboration cosmopolitanism required to achieve organizational objectives. The concept of collaboration cosmopolitanism (Bozeman and Corley in Research Policy, 33(4), 599–616, 2004) pertains to various aspects of institutional and geographic distance in collaboration. Collaboration cosmopolitanism refers to the collaboration pattern whereby individuals work with those who are socially and geographically distant from them.
People who are responsible for mass evacuations during natural disasters are confronted with significant challenges: they must allocate and coordinate limited resources in a dynamic context, often in degraded conditions, and their decisions are consequential, time-constrained and often irreversible.
I was awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant to study military women’s perception of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) as an obstacle to female retention. From a human resource management perspective, this research project addresses female underrepresentation in the CAF. The Department of National Defence (DND) and the CAF committed in the 2017 Canada’s Defence Policy to increase the proportion of women in the military by one percent annually in the next ten years. Despite efforts to increase the proportion of women through recruitment and retention strategies, the impact on the proportion of women in the CAF is barely noticeable—women still make up only 15% of CAF members. This research project explores the perception military women hold of the CAF culture and aims to identify the beliefs and perceptions that can hinder female retention. Although the project was delayed due to the pandemic, we have just completed 32 inspiring interviews with former military personnel who shared their experiences as women in the CAF. They spoke about the constant struggles and discrimination they faced, but despite all of this, they were still able to find a place for themselves in a male-dominated organization and were eager to make it a more inclusive organizational culture. We are now in the transcription and data analysis phase. Phase 2 of the project, a survey of more military women, will be launched this winter. This research contributes to enhancing knowledge about obstacles to women’s retention in traditionally male roles and increases understanding of the levers that could contribute to making an organizational culture more inclusive.
This study is the second part of a larger research project that aims to examine the identities, motivations, information behaviours, activities and social impacts of online zero waste (ZW) communities. The first study focused on ZW activities that members incorporate into their daily lives. The World Bank estimated that by 2050, waste generation will drastically outpace population growth by more than double. While large-scale ZW initiatives from corporations and government agencies are crucial in global efforts to manage waste, the World Bank report emphasized the importance of citizen engagement in tackling waste production. Despite the rapid growth of online ZW communities, the impact of ZW activities at a personal level has not been examined in any detail.