In the United States, because of its diverse population, "inclusivity" is used primarily to denote the efforts to ensure the participation of different population groups (characterized along ethnic, racial, gender, age, and geographic demographics) in vocational-technical training and the workplace. This more microlevel perspective of the term "inclusivity" in America speaks to the dynamics of diversity, equity, and empowerment at the workplace, school site, and training facility.
While these macro and micro views can both be accommodated in the larger definition of "inclusivity," any discussion of vocational-technical training from a global perspective should be cognizant of the differing perspectives on this theme held by the United States and its international partners.
The reuniting of once divided countries, the unification of trade policies across nations, the ease of international travel, the instantaneous reality of worldwide communication, the flow of information, and the movement of goods across the globe are some of today's realities.
Countries and companies are challenged by ever increasing competition, international quality standards, and narrower profit margins, and they are confronted by a potential customer or client who wants "it" done quickly, economically, without error, and on time. There is the demand to constantly produce the "next generation" of a product, to provide a new "breakthrough," to "add value."
To government leaders and business owners, the imperatives are clear: They must move a country or company to be more competitive, more creative, more efficient, and more capable of managing the marketplace.
Within a country, the locus of competitiveness, creativity, and efficiency is its citizens. For a company, clearly it is its work force.
In the world of business, the work force is the force behind staying in business or going out of business. The people who make up an organization represent the blocks that either build up a company or create the walls that insulate it from success.
And today, more than ever, the imperative for every business--of any size and from any country--is to nurture a work force that is equally driven to the goal of success and stability for the company. The imperative for every country is to nurture an economy that provides the equal opportunity for its citizens to contribute to its success and stability.
And here is where the imperative of inclusivity enters the equation.
At minimum, then, "inclusivity" involves the access by and involvement of all of our citizens and workers. It is the inclusion of people diversified by demographics, geography, gender, culture, and nationality.
On its own, the term "inclusivity" has been undergoing examination and considerable extrapolation. Roosevelt Thomas (1990) likens inclusivity with "diversity" and defines that term as "the enabling of people" in order to get from a "heterogeneous work force the same productivity, commitment, quality, and profit that we got from the old homogeneous work force" (p. 109).
Researcher Patrick Dawson (1994) argues for a national perspective on "inclusivity" by challenging countries to "develop programs which are able to accommodate multi-ethnic work groups and cultural pluralism" (p. 55). And, in an article on global companies, Maddy Janssens and Jeanne Brett (1994) suggest that the corporations of today must commit to a "truly multi-cultural managerial workforce" (p. 62), supplemented with human resource policies that emphasize fairness and the co-existence of differences.
The 1990s are a different environment economically. Entire economies are stagnant at best. Job creation has been replaced by downsizing. A "lock on the market" has been replaced by global competition. The practice of expanding the work team to get more done has been replaced with requiring the existing team to be more and do more. Today, many countries and companies are not thinking about slicing and sharing the pie, they are thinking about economic survival and renewal.
This backdrop produces some important challenges for those who are proponents of cultural diversity, of inclusivity, and of the empowerment of workers and citizens. For those who believe in the need to include diverse demographics in educational programs, in the schools, in companies, and in their respective governments, their goal must be to strategize to get others to think as inclusivity proponents do.
In light of contemporary economic realities, the 1980s' arguments for inclusivity, diversity, and multicultural programs because they are the "socially correct thing to do" are no longer persuasive. Now, the challenge for inclusivity proponents is to show economic benefits and argue inclusivity and diversity purely and exclusively from an economic perspective.
Governments, schools, and businesses can be inspired to embrace diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusivity, but they must be shown and convinced of the economic benefits and business consequences of inclusivity or the lack thereof.
The more timid proponents may tend to assume that "business minded" entrepreneurs and governments may view "diversity" as an unnecessary expense and an encroachment on capitalism. If argued with reason, such does not need to be the outcome. For as David Rieff (1993) concludes in his review of "inclusivity" (read multiculturalism) around the world, "The mistake the multiculturalists made is in imagining that their efforts . . . undermine the fundamental interests of capitalism. The contrary is surely closer to the truth: the multiculturalist mode is what any smart businessman would prefer" (p. 64).
Purely from an economic perspective, a strategy must be to demonstrate to business an improved "bottom line" once they embrace inclusivity and cultural diversity among their work force. Today, the diversity argument must present example after example of businesses using inclusivity to create a more efficient, competitive, creative, and quality work force that produces better output, creates new products, and opens up new marketplaces.
Last year, Pacific Bell of California, one of America's largest telephone systems and a multibillion dollar company, concluded the efforts of a two-year external task force charged with developing the processes and procedures to implement diversity into the corporate culture. Pacific Bell intuitively felt that diversifying its work force, management team, and vendors would strengthen it as a company (Pacific Bell Consumer Advisory Council XII, 1992). By hiring and listening to its culturally diverse work force, Pacific Bell has instituted new services to Hispanics, Asians, seniors, and others. These efforts are referred to as "Special Markets" and they are among the fastest growing client bases of the company. More importantly, by celebrating the diversity of its work force, the company has reduced the discord among staff. The results have been astounding. More system "up time," improved quality, higher customer satisfaction ratings, and more output per staff member have been just some of the results.
In 1992, the Eugene, Oregon, water and electric utility department was headed on a course likened to the HMS Titanic. The head of the department lamented that the "department was in shambles. We were plagued by low morale, high absenteeism, a feeling of no purpose, and no connection to the organization" (West, 1994). Vowing to retool the organization, management turned its attention to its gender, ethnic, and age-diverse work force. Listening to the suggestions of employees, the department instituted team-based work to foster a sense of ownership; gave employees the authority to solve problems and directly resolve customer complaints; and provided training programs on self-motivation, self-supervision, and decisionmaking. The results went directly to the bottom line. Customer complaints are down 90 percent, the use of sick leave has been reduced by 43 percent, and, on a collective annual basis, the employee team now takes 2,000 hours less to perform certain functions than before the program was instituted.
The Boston, Massachusetts, assembly plant of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was having a difficult time with quality control and meeting its goal of zero defects in the keyboards it was manufacturing. Its 350-member work force came from 44 different countries and spoke 19 different languages. By empowering its workers, by focusing on team-building, by embracing the value of each worker, and by acknowledging cultural diversity via printing company announcements in seven different languages, DEC turned that factory into a showcase of efficiency and quality production. To the point, DEC says "the program has improved the productivity of both manufacturing and field sales groups" (Dreyft, 1990, p. 167).
The implementation of a diversity enrichment program at Corning, Incorporated is one of the classic case studies of American business. Long a world leader in glass manufacturing and consumer products, Corning implemented affirmative action programs in the 1970s as did many other companies. In 1983, a relatively new CEO, James Houghton, made a diverse work force one of three top corporate priorities (along with total quality management [TQM] and increased profits). He believed that the quality of Corning's work force directly affected and contributed to TQM and higher profits. The CEO reasoned that higher attrition rates among ethnic and female workers simply resulted in more recruitment costs and wasted training and orientation resources. Higher turnover resulted in less productivity, more manufacturing errors, and less profits.
Corning implemented internal quality improvement teams to focus on ethnic and gender diversity. All salaried employees (over 7,000) were required to participate in multi-day diversity awareness and training sessions. Culturally and gender diverse work teams were promoted and given the authority to change processes in order to improve quality and productivity. Career planning and staff training programs were introduced for all employees. Articles celebrating worker diversity and empowerment were regularly featured in company in-house publications. These and other strategies paid off. Corning grew, and profits and the quality of its products increased. Responding to a question of the value and return on investment of work force diversity, CEO Houghton stated, "It simply makes good business sense" (Thomas, 1990, p. 110).
The celebration of diversity and public-private partnerships works in our schools as well. At the predominantly minority George Westinghouse Vocational and Technical High School in Brooklyn, New York, IBM and Xerox and others have joined with school administrators to give these ethnic students a sense of participation, of decisionmaking, and of creative empowerment in their work to build computer circuit boards. By including them in the opportunity, these students have been able to blossom. Since the schoolwide adoption of this program in 1990, the dropout rate of students has fallen from 12.9 percent to 2.1 percent (Del Valle, 1994, p. 72). Just envision the savings of both human and fiscal capital.
Business owners say they need a work force that is computer literate, possesses a well-rounded and basic education, knows how to communicate, knows how to solve problems, can work in a team setting, and is motivated. Present the business owner with a work force possessing these qualities and that business will flourish. It will be competitive and have a team with the right tools to be creative, efficient, and effective in today's marketplace. The key term in all of this is "team." By definition, a team implies the collective energy and commitment of all individuals in that environment, or in this case, in that company.
And the reality of today's workplace and potential work force (nearly anywhere on the globe) is that the environment is filled with people who are different from one another, who come from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. These culturally and demographically different people can either be included as part of the team and their ingenuity and individuality celebrated or they can be kept away, isolated, out of the decisionmaking loop, and out of the mainstream of workplace creativity and enterprise.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs argues, in part, that individuals need their ego satisfied, they need to feel wanted and loved, and they need a sense of belonging. When they feel wanted and valued and part of a team, then they are more apt to open up and contribute what they can . . . to themselves, their families, and their jobs.
The smart company or country recognizes that economic survival requires practicing inclusivity and that it include its diverse individuals in the team. The company's survival requires work force empowerment, individual decisionmaking, and the nurturance of individual creativity.
If there is an Achilles' heel in the inclusivity imperative, it rests with the ability of education to deliver culturally diverse labor pool participants who can communicate, who can solve problems, and who can exercise creativity.
Many business and government leaders are not convinced that education can point to a very successful track record in this area. Around the world, researchers have documented that there is not equal access to education, that there is a class system, and that some students have less of a chance at a decent education because of their socioeconomic status or cultural background. In California, the site of the U.S.-EU conference, education has not achieved singular success in attracting, educating, retaining, or graduating culturally diverse student bodies over the past decade. And this has been during a time when student bodies were 25-30 percent ethnic minority. The challenge only heightens over the next ten years as student bodies become 50-60 percent culturally diverse.
If entrepreneurs are challenged to truly exercise inclusivity in a company, then so must educators be challenged to do so on a campus. If an industry and social goal is to have a student capable of contributing to the world of work, then businesspeople must be afforded an invitation into the vocational and academic education world to help shape the programs that shape the students that will be their work force of tomorrow.
To have a creative, competitive, and diverse work force requires a culturally diverse group of workers who are educationally prepared and skilled. With sufficient education and skill preparation, worker empowerment and creativity are like "cause and effect." Give everyone an education, the skills, the opportunity, and the self-esteem to achieve, and the perfect environment for creativity and efficiency has been achieved.
For example, in this world of downsizing, countries and companies will have to depend on more and more from fewer and fewer employees. Germany, Great Britain, and Australia are but a few countries where painful lessons are being learned (Templeman, 1994). The very nature of downsizing requires the remaining work force to be as or even more industrious, creative, and productive. Arguably, the shift to inclusivity and worker empowerment may nurture that productivity.
The changing relationships between countries now argues for partnerships based on trade rather than military advantage. And trade is based on the creation and marketing of goods and services--products and energies that rely on workers! To underscore this point, look at the Philippines and its relationship to the United States. Since having the U.S. depart from Subic Bay and Clark Air Base in 1991, Philippine President Fidel Ramos has repeatedly stated his goal in public of "wanting to forge a more mature relationship built on trade rather than military security" (Albor & Barnathan, 1994, p. 64). To accomplish this, Ramos is challenging Filipino companies to improve customer service, create jobs, and become globally competitive. Central to these objectives is the culturally rich labor pool. The involvement of that work force in the improvement of customer service, job creation, and the creativity that spawns competitiveness may well serve as the ultimate foundation for Ramos' economic platform.
Recently, various press accounts have reported that Canada is nearly broke because of its welfare, unemployment, and social programs. And Business Week has reported that Germany's unemployed are straining the resources of that country. If citizens are deprived an education because of some demographic characteristic, this practice has surely contributed to the country's unskilled and unemployed masses (Templeman, 1994, p. 60). If equal opportunity and recognition in the workplace is not provided, the result may be friction, little or no creativity, and an inefficient and noncompetitive work force. The end results of this are layoffs, business shutdowns, and a stagnant economy.
The pressure of performance and output are even impacting the seemingly sacred cow of the lifetime employment stereotype of Japanese companies. The manufacturing giant, Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, headed by President Yoichi Morishita, now offers five-year or less employment contracts for key positions and its president has stated that "one of our biggest challenges in approaching the 21st century is improving white-collar productivity" (Neff, 1994, p. 108). Matsushita pledged to accomplish this by decentralizing management, reducing layers of bureaucracy, diversifying his work force (particularly in U.S. and non-Japan manufacturing facilities), and empowering each worker to be able to make more decisions. Here, the lesson of inclusivity and its key feature of empowerment is obvious. The inclusion of all workers and the reliance on their skills and creative decisionmaking is an extraordinarily powerful strategy for increased productivity!
Educators and researchers have now done sufficient initial studies on this topic, and have a sufficient amount of initial training materials. Computer searches identify nearly 1,400 articles dealing with diversity, multicultural work force issues, and empowerment. One database lists nearly 200 articles of international case studies and research on work force diversity. At least six major U.S. universities have special institutes on this topic. And a recent article identified scores and scores of training program providers ready to enlighten the mind and lighten the budget ("Global Training Courses," 1993). It is now time to promote implementation, not more investigation.
The work force of tomorrow for many countries and companies will be comprised of demographically and culturally diverse citizen workers, coupled with an ever increasing percentage of immigrant workers. Thus, from both a local and global perspective, it is in our collective best interest to advance inclusivity at every company, campus, and country on our planet.
* President, The Resource Group, Riverside, California
Barnum, C., & Wolniansky, N. (1989, September). "Globalization": Moving a step beyond the international firm. Management Review, 78(9), 30-34.
Carnevale, A., & Stone, S. (1994, October). Diversity: Beyond the golden rule. Training and Development, pp. 22-39.
Caudron, S. (1994, September). Diversity ignites effective work teams. Personnel Journal, 48(10), 54-63.
Copeland, L. (1988, July). Valuing diversity, Part 2: Pioneers and champions of change. Personnel, pp. 44-49.
Cortes, C. (1994, January). Different strokes. Fiat Lux (University of California, Riverside), IV(2), 62-65.
Cultivating work force diversity. (1994, November-December). Business Digest, Pacific Telesis, p. 1.
Dawson, P. (1994). Quality management: Beyond the Japanese model. Asia Pacific Journal of Quality Management, 3(2), 55-63.
Del Valle, C. (1994, October 31). Total Quality Management: Now, it's a class act. Business Week, 3396, pp. 72-75.
Dreyft, J. (1990, April 23). Get ready for the new work force. Fortune Magazine, pp. 167- 181.
Global training courses. (1993, July). Training & Development, 47(7), 24-29.
Goski, K., & Belfry, M. (1991, Summer). Achieving competitive advantage through employee empowerment. Employment Relations Today, 18(2), 213-220.
Hanke, E. (1994, August). In perfect harmony. Credit Union Management, 17(8), 9-10.
Janssens, M., & Brett, J. (1994). Coordinating global companies: The effects of electronic communication, organizational commitment, and a multi-cultural workforce. Journal of Organizational Behavior Trends in Organizational Behavior Supplement, 1, 31-46.
Neff, R. (1994, October 31). Tradition be damned: Matsushita's radical restructuring has it well on the way to a turnaround. Business Week, 3396, pp. 108-110.
Pacific Bell Consumer Advisory Council XII, Diversity Task Force. (1992, June). Diversity.
Rieff, D. (1993, August). Multiculturalism's silent partner: It's the newly globalized consumer economy, stupid. Harper's Magazine, 287(1719), 62-72.
Rubin, B. L. (1991, January). Europeans value diversity. HR Magazine, 36(1), 38-41.
Special report--The new world of work. (1994, October 17). Business Week, pp. 76-93.
Sullivan, P. (1992, September). Six traits of global managers. Executive Excellence, 9(9), 8-9.
Templeman, J. (1994, October 31). Not what the doctor ordered: Kohl's slim majority means his economic plan may get scrapped. Business Week, 3396, p. 60.
The Resource Group. (1993, June). Inland empire east region business: Today and tomorrow: A report on the 1993 Economic Advancement Project, pp. 3.10-3.12 and 3.31-3.34.
The Resource Group. (1994, March). 1993 survey of California manufacturers: Today and tomorrow, pp. 1-3, 14-16.
The Resource Group. (1995, April). North central coast region business retention and economic advancement: A report on 1995 findings, pp. 67-82.
Thomas, Jr., R. R. (1990, March-April). From affirmative action to affirming diversity. Harvard Business Review, 68(2), 107-117.
West, R. (1994, September-October). Meter readers embrace the future: They're reorganizing, retraining, retooling. Public Power, pp. 15-20.
