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Enjoying Your Work Richard Brislin |
The power to challenge
stereotypes rests with
executivesExecutives can improve intergroup relations in their organizations if they are willing to put time and effort into the task.
The executive may decide poor relations due to ethnicity, gender, age or other reasons behind the formation of ingroups and outgroups are draining energy from the organization's mission. Over the last few weeks, I have given advice based on the best research available. Executives must communicate that the task of improved intergroup relations is essential to the organization, and they must be models of desired behaviors.
There has to be equal status in the organization, with all employees having equal access to rewards such as promotions, pay increases and travel. Executives and employees should set goals that everyone accepts as important and that demand the cooperative efforts of all people in the organization.
Another intervention likely to lead to improvements is that contact among people should break existing stereotypes. Whenever people from different groups come together and interact, there are always generalizations about the groups that ignore individual differences and that may be very unfair. The unfairness is due to the imposition of perceived limits. If people are stereotyped, they may not be given opportunities in areas beyond the limits of the stereotype. For example, if there is the stereotype that women are not good at tasks involving complex mathematics, a highly skilled woman may be overlooked when executives assign tasks. Generalizations about people are too often used in organizational decision making and in people's decisions concerning whom they will interact with in an organization.
Executives can combat the impact of stereotypes by making sure that facile generalizations about groups of people are challenged. At company meetings, for example, they can ask people to make different kinds of contributions.
If the stereotype exists that locals in Hawaii are slow to speak up in meetings, executives can ask locals to present a set of recommendations for company action.
If recent arrivals from the mainland United States have the reputation for telling people in Hawaii what they should do, executives can ask the mainlanders to facilitate a group discussion where everyone is expected to contribute. If a certain group has the reputation of producing good athletes, individuals can be asked to make contributions that demand high-level conceptual skills relevant to the organizations mission.
Everyone is extremely busy with day to day activities in their workplaces, homes, churches, and community activities. People do not have time to think carefully about all decisions facing them and instead rely on shortcuts such as stereotypes. But when people break a stereotypical label though their actions and contributions, this forces others to think about what has happened. They are encouraged to move beyond their everyday casual thinking and to consider reasons for the unexpected behaviors they have observed. Since they have put mental energy into these considerations, they are likely to remember the exceptions to the stereotypes. Over time, people will hopefully see so many exceptions that the original stereotypes are discarded.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
The purpose of this column is to increase understanding of human behavior as it has an impact on the workplace. Given the amount of time people spend at work, job satisfaction should ideally be high and it should contribute to general life happiness. Enjoyment can increase as people learn more about workplace psychology, communication, and group influences.
Richard Brislin is a professor in the College of Business Administration, University of Hawaii. He can be reached through the College Relations Office: cro@cba.hawaii.edu