توسعه یک نوع تجربی از شیوه های مدیریت منابع انسانی متنوع Developing an empirical typology of diversity-oriented human resource management practices

Introduction Demographic changes in the labour market have made workplaces more diverse than before. The contemporary workplaces are characterized by increasing workforce diversity in an infinite number of dimensions for e.g. gender, age, race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, functional differences, educational differences, geographic regions, tenure, physical ability and cognitive ability, language, beliefs, cultural differences, economic category etc (Krishna et al., 2004; Rogelberg, 2006). Moreover, organizations are making conscious efforts towards inclusion of minorities and people from different backgrounds as they conceive diversity as strategic priority to gain competitive advantage. Diversity Management and Human Resource Management The changing demographics and inclusion of diversity in the workforce as a business case has turned the researchers and practioners to the organization systems / practices that can add real value of diverse workforce to the organizations. Within this framework, HRM has been viewed as capable of managing diversity effectively while contributing to the organization’s overall performance. The rationale for this view is grounded in the conceptualization that workforce diversity has both benefits and challenges. Diversity brings in increase in the skills, abilities, information, experience and knowledge. Interaction among diverse individuals leads to positive outcomes. On the other hand, based on relevant features of diversity—race, gender, age and so on, individuals categorize others into ―in (inclusive) and ―out (outcast) groups. Such categorization, results in less favorable behaviour towards outgroup members, less interaction and thus being detrimental to organization outcomes. This brings in the need for creating a condition where in the interactions among the individuals are increased and social-categorization decreases. In an organization, such an environment can be created by HRM practices as they are capable of developing relationships and social ties among organization members (Ma Prieto & Perez Santana, 2013) and create social conditions that motivate employees to interact and share knowledge (Collins & Smith, 2006; Kase et al., 2009). This view supports a growing body of research (e.g. Shen et al., 2009; McMahan et al., 1998; Richard & Johnson, 2001; Kochan et al., 2003; Kossek & Lobel, 1996; Roberge et al., 2011), which posits that workforce diversity is efficiently managed by redesigning HRM practices with diversity orientation. In addition, researchers have prescribed a range of HRM practices under each HRM function to manage diversity (e.g. Mc. Mahan, 1998; Shen et al., 2009). The literature in this direction is developing rapidly, but there exist significant research needs. Of relevance to the study, Martin –Alcázar et al., (2013) noted that the efforts to develop diversity–oriented HR configurations remain unexplored. Despite the emphasis in literature on integrating a number of HRM practices together to manage diversity (e.g. Mc. Mahan, 1998; Kossek et al., 2005; Shen et al., 2009), there is lack of HRM typologies to understand different diversity management alternatives with the exception being the efforts of Martin –Alcázar et al., (2012), who proposed a typology based on generic HRM typology (control and commitment) by an empirical exploratory analysis. They argued that this traditional distinction does not fully explain the HR practices managing outcomes of diversity and called for further need for more specific typologies.