Introduction
In areas of employment nowadays, there has been a tendency of managers to employ or promote people with whom they have common interests. Qualified people who would have helped an organization are often left out of consideration when discriminatory policies are implemented hence disqualifying them.
Managers and supervisors want to protect their status quo therefore to them the person that is employed or promoted should not pose a threat to their job security.
Complaints by employees are common in various companies because either there is a person whom they think was improperly placed in his or her current position, or they have been left out of the promotion process unfairly. Discrimination is present within organizations and efforts have to be made to eliminate it given that it has many negative effects.
Prevalence and Types of Discrimination
In recent years, campaigns against discrimination especially employment discrimination are in top gear but that has not hindered people from being discriminated. It should be noted that the number of discrimination cases reported has been increasing especially from the year 2004.
The American equal employment opportunity commission puts the figures of reported discriminatory cases at 99,947 in 2011, up from 99,922 in 2010 and 75,428 in the year 2005 (2007). This can be attributed to the campaigns which have made people aware of their rights and sthe forms that discrimination is bound to assume.
Due to the laws that have been enacted to deter discrimination, it has been noted that many organizations have resulted to more indirect and rather less pronounced forms of discriminations. These types mostly go unnoticed even by the victims themselves and therefore are not reported, which to some extent makes it difficult to eliminate discrimination from the society.
It should be noted that, discrimination takes place in many forms within the organization either directly or indirectly and includes even the very basic act of assigning one’s duties to another person because the one does not relate well with the person supposed to perform the duties.
Most prevalent of all forms of discrimination is sex discrimination, where people mostly women are treated differently from their male counterparts. In many instances especially in organizations dominated by men, women are seen to be inferior and unable to effectively execute their duties as men would do hence they are not given favorable conditions to compete with their male counterparts.
Discrimination on racial grounds is also another form that is highly practiced which has made it difficult for a person to work comfortably and rise through the ranks in an organization dominated by people of different races from his or hers.
Figures from the U.S. equal employment opportunity commission shows that discrimination on racial grounds constituted more than 35% of all the cases of discrimination reported between 2004 and 2011 while sex discrimination made up between 28% and 30% of all cases during the same period (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 2007).
Discrimination on grounds of disability and age also are highly pronounced in organizations as depicted by the US equal employment opportunity, each contributing more than 20% of all discriminatory cases.
Other forms of discrimination include those perpetrated on grounds of; religion, sexual orientation, employment status whether permanent or temporary, marital status, national origin and retaliation among others (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 2007).
Causes of discrimination
There are several causes of discrimination that range from simple excuses of non performance to more complicated issues of stereotyping. Industrialization is one of the major causes of discrimination given the fact that it has increased income and employment opportunities.
Countries with high industrial concentration mostly tend to have high income per employee which in turn attracts people from different countries.
The immigrants will pose a threat to the availability of job opportunities to the natives and this compels the natives to push for some laws within the organization that may prevent the number of immigrants that can be employed there (Bell 2007). To a certain extent this amounts to discrimination on grounds of national origin or partly what looks as racial discrimination.
Additionally, it has been discovered that stereotyping causes discrimination in many employment places. An employer may distaste people from a particular group set because of an early encounter which might not have been encouraging.
If somebody from this group comes to seek for employment or the name of a member from the group is forwarded for promotion, chances are high that the person will not qualify.
Furthermore, it is possible for employers to have a mind set that people who have certain given qualifications or people from certain institutions are less likely to perform well and hence these employers become unwilling to employ the said people (Rodgers 2006).
Stereotyping is also more pronounced in cases where people from one race consider themselves as being superior to any other race and if the name of a person from any other race than theirs is presented for employment or promotion they cannot be considered.
In conjunction with that, stereotyping has been associated with sexism where people are known to allocate roles according to gender due to the belief that a certain gender especially women are unable to perform various duties.
Coincidentally, age has presented itself as a form of discrimination and as a cause at the same time. Young people are said to lack the experience that is required to execute certain duties and will therefore not qualify, more so, if they are competing with older people hence this becomes a cause of age discrimination (Hirsh & Kornrich 2008).
Some supervisors or companies have the notion that people exceeding a certain age limit will not have the vibrancy to perform specific duties with the expected speed and therefore people past the said age will be discriminated against, incase an opening comes up.
Age becomes a problem especially when the education system is expected to take a definite time frame and therefore, the employer can easily calculate the years of experience of a person without necessarily asking for credentials (Landy 2005).
Beside the factors mentioned above, competition as also been noted as possible cause of discrimination. In an industry where competition is not common or is not stiff, there is a tendency of laxity as far as the employment and promotion strategies are concerned therefore, the managers find a leeway of employing whoever they may want without following the laid down regulations.
Since performance is almost automatic, inclusion of an under qualified person may go unnoticed therefore possibility of discrimination based on various factors is high (Bell 2007).
Minorities in an organization are disadvantaged since they may not be evaluated fairly given that people have a tendency of favoring they have many characters in common.
If there is one man in department dominated by women and more so if the women are senior, the probability that his women colleagues will score more than him when evaluated, is high because women are bound to award high marks to other women.
In some instances though rarely, cultural beliefs have been cited as being a cause of discrimination. Some cultural beliefs make people to regard themselves as superior, thereby branding people from different cultural background as possessing given character traits which determine their performance in work places.
This makes people who are thought to possess the said superior traits to receive different treatment from the other people.
Repercussions
Having discussed the various forms of discrimination that are present in our organizations and some of their causes, it is paramount to explore the effects of discrimination in places of work and the society at large. As far as the firm is concerned, there are several negative implications that will occur if discrimination is allowed to flourish.
People are comfortable working where they feel that they are valued and their services are appreciated and under these circumstances they are bound to increase their productivity.
If employees suspect that they are being discriminated upon, their morale to work reduces therefore affecting their level of productivity since they spend most of their time focusing on which type of discrimination is applied and who might be the next victim (Byron 2010).
Besides, retention of employees becomes difficult as they keep on searching for employment opportunities in other organizations where they will be treated with dignity. On top of that, the company may be losing hard working and highly productive employees due to discrimination, because qualifications and experience might not be taken into consideration, therefore negatively affecting the output of the organization.
On the same note, customers are attracted to come back to the company if they receive appealing service from the employees. In an organization where employees are not satisfied with the treatment they receive from the management, customers will not receive satisfactory services therefore discouraging them from coming back in future (Landy 2005).
Other than impacting on the firm, discrimination has also been known to have very dire consequences on the people and the family of the victims at large. Alienating people by discriminating them, gives them a message that they may not be equal to the others or they lack some qualities that are vital for a human being.
These people in some instances withdraw from others and tend to stay alone to avoid further incidences of humiliation or develop some other antisocial behaviors. In extreme cases, people who have been victims of discrimination result to drug abuse to help them forget what they undergo while others go into depression (Hirsh & Kornrich 2008).
Some people have been known to internalize that discrimination is not a reality and that they are the cause of whatever that is befalling them, thus they try to avoid situations where they think discrimination will occur.
These people end up sometimes not searching for employment because they do not want to experience discrimination, and this causes financial constraints and economical difficulties to their families (Byron 2010).
The family members of victims of discrimination especially those who are adversely affected will not want to try anything that is thought to be associated with discrimination and this reduces their chances of gaining economically.
Furthermore, people who are always discriminated upon tend to develop tactics of coping with the situation either intentionally or unintentionally. Groups of people who think that they are being discriminated when it comes to economical factors, and mostly employment opportunities, develop retaliatory measures to protect themselves.
Groups can choose to actively campaign for equality through forums and use of media while at the same time, revolutions are in evitable if discrimination is highly pronounced (Rodgers 2006).
There is also the probability of the discriminated group or individuals to develop a stereotype of the people who discriminate them further reinforcing the forces of discrimination. In an organizational setting, lower employees develop hatred to their seniors and this is passed on to new employees hence affecting the employee manager relationships.
Solutions
Discrimination can be deterred especially direct discrimination which can easily be seen, and whose causes are known. An organization can come up with criteria to be followed during interview, whether for recruitment or promotion, and ensure that panel interview as opposed to one person interview is used to reduce the effects of stereotype by any one member of the panel.
If the composition of the panel is fair, it will ensure that each candidate is fairly treated and evaluated (Byron 2010). On top of that, the organizations should formulate rules and regulations that prohibit discrimination of any form within the organization and implement them to discourage people from discriminating others.
However, formulating of rules cannot help per se and therefore employees should be encouraged to report any form of discrimination that may take place in their presence (Bell 2007).
While each employee should stand an equal chance of promotion or recruitment and people from different cultural background should be employed in the organization, integration should be encouraged.
Ways of bonding employees who will usually have various differences should be formulated and implemented to ensure that employees are made to work as a team. Coming up with organizational culture has proofed to be very effective in enhancing togetherness among the employees, hence making them forget their differences.
It is of importance to note here that, managers are the ones who have a high prevalence of showing discrimination within various organizations as compared to juniors.
Therefore, if managers are made responsible of any actions that they take including situations where discrimination is doubted to have occurred, cases of discrimination will reduce.
Channels of communication also play a vital role in ensuring that discrimination is put under control (Hirsh & Kornrich 2008). Junior employees should not have a fixed process of forwarding their dissatisfaction, since sometimes they may be complaining against the very person they should forward their grievances to, therefore compromising the effectiveness of the information.
Conclusion
Discrimination is evident in various organizations within our society despite the efforts that have been made to mitigate its effects in the society. Racial and sex discrimination are more pronounced than any other form of discrimination though all forms of discrimination are perpetrated in one way or the other, either directly or indirectly within our society and workplaces in particular.
For equality in economical growth to all regions and to all people, discrimination should be done away with in its totality and this can be achieved through joint efforts of both the government and the private sector.
The law and the legal frame work should be made use of since it is the most important tool that can be used to fight discrimination. Unless discrimination is eliminated from our society, then more negative effects will continue streaming in and eventually it might be impossible to integrate various groups of people.
References
Bell, M. P. (2007). Diversity in Organizations. Mason: South-Western Cengage Learning.
Byron, R. A. (2010). Discrimination, Complexity, and the Public/Private Sector Question. Work and Occupations, 37(4), 435-475. Web.
Hirsh, C. E., & Kornrich, S. (2008). The context of discrimination: Workplace conditions, institutional environments, and sex and race discrimination charges. American Journal of Sociology, 113, 1394-1432.
Landy, F. J. (2005). Employment Discrimination Litigation: Behavioral, Quantitative, And Legal Perspectives. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons.
Rodgers, W. M. (2006). Handbook on the Economics of Discrimination. Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2007). Charge statistics from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission FY 1997 through FY 2007. Web.