1.1 Explain the concept of affirmative action and provide reasons for why affirmative action programmes often fail.
The concept of affirmative action often refers only to the workplace; however in reality it is much broader than only the workplace. Other examples are for instance, land distribution, the reformation of the education system, the awarding of government tenders and also subsidies to organisations and previously disadvantaged people.
Affirmative action refers to the specific steps that we or an organisation take to promote equal opportunities and to ensure that discrimination does not occur. These steps are generally designed with three goals in mind, the first is to eliminate discrimination against minority groups and women, the second is to remedy the effects from past discrimination and lastly to prevent future discrimination. It is thus a temporary intervention designed to achieve equal employment opportunities without having to lower the organisations standards.
Why then does it sometimes fail?
Several issues can be attributed to the fact that affirmative programmes often fail.
• Employment equity programs are slow and inconsistent at management level across different departments and organisations.
• There is a low commitment from top management regarding employment equity, which results sometimes only in lip service from said management about the need thereof but in reality nothing happens.
• Ineffective consultation and communication regarding Employment equity progress and implementation.
• Lack of cultural sensitivity – it is often expected of new employees to adapt to their new environment without proper orientation towards the current organisational culture
• A lack of cultural awareness programmes and of an...
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... process essentially entails functions such as planning, organising, leading or directing and controlling the resources of an organisation. Strategic management is the application of this management process at the top level of the organisation. At this level the focus is on the resources, capabilities and core competencies or the company as a whole and on the ways to achieve success over the long term within the context of changing and ever-competitive environments. According to Johnson et al, strategies do no happen by themselves. Strategies involve people, especially the managers who decide and implement. Strategic management consists of 3 elements, understanding the strategic position of an organisation, making strategic choices for the future and managing strategy in action. Strategic management thus entails two tasks, strategy making and making strategy work.
Top management is spending too much time on employee development and not enough on the overall strategy of the business.
3.The term Affirmative action has played a huge role in the past one hundred years of American politics. It is simply defined as an action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer. Civil Rights of American citizens have drastically changed because of Affirmative action. With almost anything in politics, there is a debate for and against Affirmative action. Supporters of this say that this helps encourage e...
Affirmative action refers to policies established to benefit the under-represented minorities in the fields of education, employment and culture. This is meant to avert the historical discrimination on the basis of religion, color, national origin or sex during hiring process. Implementation of these policies may encompass preferential selection in the job market. This results in mixed reactions and opinions from the public generating a lot of controversies.
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, affirmative action is “an active effort to improve employment or educational opportunities for members of minority groups and women.” However, despite its well-intentioned policies, it has been the source of much controversy over the years. Barbara Scott and Mary Ann Schwartz mention that “proponents of affirmative action argue that given that racism and discrimination are systemic problems, their solutions require institutional remedies such as those offered by affirmative action legislation” (298). Also, even though racism is no longer direct, indirect forms still exist in society and affirmative action helps direct. On the other hand, opponents to affirm...
Affirmative action or positive discrimination can be defined as providing advantages for people of a minority group who are seen to have traditionally been discriminated against. This consists of preferential access to education, employment, health care, or social welfare. In employment, affirmative action may also be known as employment equity. Affirmative action requires that institutions increase hiring and promotion of candidates of mandated groups. (Rubenfeld, 1997, p. 429)
Affirmative action is a much debated topic based on the efforts of our government to overcome prejudicial treatment through inclusion. Affirmative action is a way of helping minorities in our country get jobs and avoid racial injustice. Many large companies have increased their employment of minorities after adopting these policies (Plous).
Affirmative Action, policies used in the United States to increase opportunities for minorities by favoring them in hiring and promotion, college admissions, and the awarding of government contracts. Depending upon the situation, “minorities” might include any underrepresented group, especially one defined by race, ethnicity, or gender. Generally, affirmative action has been undertaken by governments, businesses, or educational institutions to remedy the effects of past discrimination against a group, whether by a specific entity, such as a corporation, or by society as a whole.
Affirmative action is an effort to develop a systematic way of opening doors of education, employment and business opportunities to qualified individuals. Programs about reaching out to affirmative action are built on the American dream that there is enough education, employment and respect for everyone in this country. The programs are not about reverse discrimination or hiring unqualified applicants (Colonnese 197).
Affirmative Action in the United States is a government program that tries to help overcome the effects of past societal discrimination by allocating jobs and resources to members of specific minority groups (The Columbia 1). The policy was set up to assist every single minority group, which includes women, minority races, handicapped people, and war veterans, especially those of the Vietnam War. Affirmative Action was set up to help these minority groups by giving them strategic advantages when those individuals apply for jobs and higher levels of education. In the Washington Post, it said that, "In its modern form, Affirmative Action can call for an admissions officer faced with two similarly qualified applicants to choose the minority over the white, or for a manager to recruit and hire a qualified woman for a job instead of a man" (Froom...
Pursuing this further, in the beginning, from the sociological perspective, affirmative action was approved in order to reprimand the African Americans who have suffered from discrimination through the years. Now this policy has spread to all minorities and are now seen as quotas where one minority has an advantage over another. That is why there are many people who do not agree with affirmative action. Certain groups can create an opportunity for themselves and only gain advantages that the p...
• Strategic management involves both strategy formation, called it content) and also strategy implementation, called it process.
Affirmative action is a program that serves to redress historical discrimination of the minority groups, particularly the blacks and the Latinos, by means such as preferential treatment, minority scholarships, and in order to break down segregation in work places and university admissions. Since its introduction in the nineteen sixties, affirmative action has had dramatic effects in the selection of applicants, narrowing the alley for the race-majority students. What servers originally to rectify past racial injustices has become a way of reverse discrimination. With its erroneous assumption that all minority students are disadvantaged, affirmative action has not helped the actual disadvantaged, ignoring other more prominent factors that
The need for affirmative action was a concept noticed in 1865 during the passages of the Civil War amendments. During those years our country was still practicing in slavery and wrongful treatment of the black race. While blacks were being forced to comply to the rules of slavery, many individuals were denied their rights to food, clothing, shelter, employment, education and many other wants and/or needs. Similar acts such as these over time lead the law of affirmative action. Over the years, affirmative action plans and policies continue to merge to further in the efforts of benefiting the equality among historically disadvantaged ethnic groups as well as women. From our past to our present many people who are equally qualified and in need of jobs, services, assistance and/or necessities are denied due to their gender, race, religion, and/or ethnicity. Acts of discrimination are not just associated with employment but extend to educational opportunities, housing needs, contracting for small and large business and other public services.
The effective Human Resource Management in an organization requires an exceptional standard set for motivation, job design, reward system and equity. Nowadays, people are more willing to avoid unfair treatment in the workplace than any other aspect. The fundamental concept behind Equity is an attempt to balance what has been put in and taken out at the workplace with a feeling of justice being served. Unconsciously, values are assigned to many various contributions made to the organization, hence causing an air of misbalance in the environment. There has always been a disparity in the view on the desirability or the cost effectiveness of policy measures. The importance of equity or reducing discrimination has gained a lot of attention in the labour market (Milkovich, Newman & Ratnam, 2009).
Affirmative Action was created by the United States government to overcome the effects of past social discrimination by assigning jobs and resources to members of specific groups, such as minorities and women.¹ Now first things first, minority must be defined, a minority is not just the stereotypical African-American or Latino, it is actually a group ...