Diversity Management and Affirmative Action Program in Managerial Decision Making: Global Perspective with the Context of Bangladesh

Abstract

In Bangladesh, almost every organization (financial or non-financial)has diversity among all sorts of workers like administrative and non-administrative staffs etc. who compose the human resource in an enterprise.The diversity, as is observed, exists there in respect of age (younger-older), social class, ethnicity, gender, physical and mental ability, race and culture (oriental and occidental) etc. Simply, diversity means variety but in a greater aspect it considers age, gender, race and ethnicity, education level, physical appearance and ability, culture, problem-solving ability, critical thinking ability, team building ability, communication ability, language proficiency, capability for empathy, ability to be kind, ability to motivate people, ability to work with others, job description, skill and knowledge level, listening ability, conflict resolution ability, level of self-awareness and so on. Out of all the above only genderdiversity (surface level), and skill and knowledgediversity (deep level) acquired by receiving training by the workforce are mainly dealt in the study. InBangladesh perspectivegender diversity is the most important aspect in Banking Industry.With a view to having a realistic finding, tribal people are not taken into consideration as their appearance is few and far between in the banking industry.The practice and implementation of Affirmative Action Program help to ensure effective diversified workplace/environment. The objective of the study is to know/identify the benefits, constraints, ways that can handle the obstacles of diversity management. And some policies with crucial institutional interventions for effective diversity management are also discussed. It is hypothesized in this study whetherdiversity management and associated activities are related to the business performance of the organization in terms of innovation, productivity, profitability and the image of the organization. A conceptual framework has been developed through literature review about the impacts of diversity management on business performance. To test the relationship, two explanatory variables: percentage of female employees and percentage of trained up employees and five response variables:innovation - no. of service delivery channels, per employee productivity, profitability - return on assets, profitability - return on equity, image of the organization due to competitive advantage (bank’s clients interview and discussion) are considered. 33 banks (Opinion survey) and 26 banks (Quantitative analysis; Seven banks’ annual reports are not available at the time of secondary data processing via SPSS version 20.0) are targeted (via Purposive Sampling) from whole banking industry of Bangladesh. 33 banks with 385 respondents agreed to participate. Because of missing data regarding respondents, the sample for this study is reduced to 336 respondents. A research methodology has been designed to conduct the study that includes nature and sources of data, sample design: selection of study area, population size and selection of respondents, justification for the selection, determination of sample size of the respondents, selection of sampling units; tools for data collection and presentation: development of questionnaire, tools used in presenting data; development of measurement instruments: explanatory variables, response variables; data validity, data analysis and interpretation. For primary data collection, survey method has been used to conduct opinion survey using questionnaire. From secondary data, descriptive analysis and linear regression analysis are to be usedto analyze the data. Based on type of variables, Poisson model and Linear model are used to data. Nature of distribution of data is shown by Histogram. Heteroscedasticity is also checked as well. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimation or Weighted Least Squares (WLS) estimation is to be used depending on the presence of heteroscedasticity. Clients’ views and observations are also taken into consideration and qualitative analysis (factual analysis)is also made to view best practices. Based on collected primary data and opinion survey of respondents, it is found that diversified workforce and associated policies contribute to create innovative and problem solving environment, promotes business productivity, create synergy e.g. cost effectiveness of business activities. Again they also opine that diversified organizations get competitive advantages over homogenous organizations. From the view point of quantitative analysis, innovation in terms of service delivery channels, per employee productivity, per employee profitability - return on asset and return on equity, business image are significantly affected by percentage of female employees and percentage of trained employees. While return on equity is not significantly affected by the percentage of female employees as well as percentage of employees trained. Diversity at all levels should be made as priority not only because it is the precise thing to do, but also it is one of the superior business decisions for the sustainable growth of the organization.