From MANAGEMENT to Leadership in Diverse Workplaces: Theoretical Proposals

Abstract

Organizational researchers need to show managers that there is a wide network of values and interests that can contribute to the organization's goals, but they have tried to show only one ‘truth’ based primarily on the management's perspective. The focuses of organization theories need to keep step with demographic changes in workplaces since demography is an essential variable in those theories. This essay discusses how those theories need to be changed along with increasing cultural and ethnic diversity in workplaces. In sum, control-oriented management and outcome-oriented leadership theories by themselves have limited implications for cultural and ethnic diversity in workplaces. This is because those theories were conceived on the assumption that workforces are homogeneous and can be integrated in terms of culture and ethnicity. Cultural and ethnic diversity runs counter to conventional wisdom that managers can directly control employees through predesigned patterns and structure. The negative effects of such diversity are produced through the psychological process of identity formation. However, due to the complexity and subjectivity of the process, managers have a limited capability of controlling the process directly. Hence, control-oriented management theories need to be supplemented by leadership theories focusing on motivation and indirect influences. To draw better leadership, leadership theorists also need to put more emphasis on energizing organizational members to share organizational values and visions through social architecture than to peruse self-interested rational rewards. The essay suggests implications for two kinds of research: descriptive and prescriptive research. The first section discusses what perspectives researchers need to have in order to describe cultural and ethnic diversity, and the second section examines what theories researchers need to employ in order to prescribe the solution of diversity problems.