Equal Opportunities Practices Research Articles

Practices of equality in racial diversity at manufacturing industries: Exploring influence on employees’ job performance at the workplace

This research study explores the employees’ perception of equality in racial diversity at manufacturing organizations. The total number of sample size is 10, including five number of participants and five different manufacturing firms situated at Kailali district of Nepal with “purposeful sampling technique” and information was gained from interview guide. The key findings showed that organizational change in terms of fair staff recruitment and practice of equal opportunity to all employees assist to meet career goals. Furthermore, positive influence on job performance is possible through increased work commitment, job satisfaction and motivation at work (Susanto et al., 2022). Findings have brought forward the negative influence of job performance from the lack of equality in racially diverse firms in regards to lack of team work and work commitment (HBR, 2020). The implication of effective cross-cultural communication at work would be productive for task execution, ensuring employee engagement and motivation. Along with the practice of equal opportunity for all employees, it is recommended to implement extrinsic and intrinsic motivation pathways to enhance job performance in the long term.

Creating the conditions for human division and structural inequality

Abstract While Singapore’s education system claims to implement meritocratic ideals, official statistics indicate that Malay students in Singapore have been underperforming when compared to other ethnic groups (MOE 2012). This statistical representation raises the possibility of a politically induced, systemic inequality as a point of investigation. To investigate this seeming contradiction between the rhetoric and practice of equal educational opportunity, this paper proposes a philosophical and analytical synthesis for examining the 1979 policy report that provides the fundamental basis for Singapore’s streaming education system. In examining this policy development, the analysis draws upon a combination of Foucault’s archaeological method and Critical Discourse Analysis as a way of understanding conditions that made possible the continuous re-construction of new but unequal representation of learners. The findings suggest that complex relations between capability identification, justice, and ethics set the conditions for the appearance and transformation of subject positions necessary to legitimise unequal structural access.

An Equal Opportunity Practice in Education: Determination of Classes by Draft in Schools

An Equal Opportunity Practice in Education: Determination of Classes by Draft in Schools

A Cautionary Note to the PTAB: <i>Proppant</i>, Joinder, and PTAB’s Rulemaking-by-Adjudication — How to Avoid Brazen Defiance of the APA and a Rerun of <i>Aqua Products</i>

The Trial and Appeal Board recently requested on joinder in inter partes reviews, in Proppant Express Investments, LLC v. Oren Technologies, LLC. Proppant initiates a rulemaking to formulate new rules on joinder of parties and claims in PTAB IPR proceedings. However, Proppant purports to substitute a request for briefing for the statutorily-required Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. This article compares Proppant to last year's decision by the Federal Circuit, Aqua Products, Inc. v. Matal, 872 F.3d 1290, 124 USPQ2d 1257 (Fed. Cir. 2017). Recall that in Aqua, the en banc Federal Circuit set aside a rule that the PTAB had promulgated by decision, with none of the incidents for statutory rulemaking. Of the nine judges that reached the issue, seven agreed on a simple principle: [t]he Office cannot effect an end-run around [the APA] by conducting rulemaking through adjudication. Today's article notes several remarkable features of Proppant: • Proppant seems to be setting up near-identical facts, perhaps with an eye to setting up a challenge or rematch on the Federal Circuit's Aqua decision. • The PTAB gave no notice of Proppant, other than a nothing special order in PTABE2E—no notice in the Federal Register (as required by statute), no notice via email to those that had signed up for notice via the PTAB's email list, no mention on the PTAB's precedential and informative decisions page, no mention on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board Alerts widget on the MyUSPTO web page. The only mechanism by which the public gained any notice was the Patently-O blog. A blog is not a substitute for a statutory requirement. • The PTAB's procedural lapses could have been prevented had the PTO implemented suggestions it received in past notice-and-comment periods. Past notice-and-comment letters that could have improved PTO's regulatory process selectively disappear from the PTO's web site. Today's article shows that lapses of administrative law are not confined to Gil Hyatt, or only by low-level examiners. Rather, the PTO has an equal-opportunity practice of neglecting the administrative law for all applicants and parties before PTAB proceedings.

Role of Human Resources as Change Agent in Enabling Equal Opportunity Practices

Role of Human Resources as Change Agent in Enabling Equal Opportunity Practices

The overlooked variable in managing human resources of Iranian organizations: workforce diversity – some evidence

The primary aim of this paper is to examine the nature and extent of equality of opportunities and diversity policies in employment in the novel context of the Middle East – with a particular focus on Iran. HRM and diversity management specialists argue that equal opportunity practices help organizations capitalize on the benefits of a diverse workforce in terms of reducing turnover and absenteeism, attracting the best workers, increasing sales and marketing efforts, enhancing creativity and innovation, and improving decision making. While such benefits might be true in the context of developed countries, we are critical of their existence in the context of less developed nations. The findings, based on a qualitative study of six cases across two industries, indicate that, in contrast to existing theories, economic evaluations such as cost-minimization of the diverse work groups are the major driving forces behind adopting equal opportunity and diversity practices in employment. Specifically, mutuality of matching the needs of the worker with the needs of the manager is seen to be a major factor influencing the workers' impression towards equality of opportunities and diversity policies.

Ideals and practices in CSR identity making: the case of equal opportunities

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to report on a qualitative research illustrating how equal opportunity ideals as part of a corporate CSR identity project are practiced on the local level.Design/methodology/approachInvestigating the practice of CSR identity making, an ethnographic fieldwork methodology relying on longitudinal participant observations and semi‐structured interviews has been applied.FindingsThe authors argue that the practice of equal opportunities should be understood as a process of local interpretation of generally formulated ideals. By viewing the content of CSR identity as a socially negotiated process, it is suggested that a dynamic approach to the concept is required. The practice of equal opportunity is a continuously negotiated process of identity making and of locally relating ideals to practice in the negotiation between different stakeholders.Research limitations/implicationsThe article is based on a single case study with a limited number of informants.Practical implicationsThis paper has implications for managers who work with CSR initiatives and corporate identity. The authors suggest that policies should be developed in close interaction with the different organizational members. This is necessary in order to manage the mutual expectations. To reach the best results in terms of managing corporate identity, it is necessary to consider CSR as a participative process.Originality/valueEarlier studies on CSR have described corporate identity in static terms, independent of the local practices and interpretations. By applying a process‐oriented theoretical perspective combined with an iterative data collection, new insights into the actual practice of CSR initiatives are provided.

The impact of father\'s educational levels on the practice of female genital mutilation and equal opportunity for girl child

The impact of father\'s educational levels on the practice of female genital mutilation and equal opportunity for girl child

Building School Partnerships with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families

After many efforts to lift the achievement of its high numbers of culturally and linguistically diverse students, a district in Massachusetts realized that the missing link was parent involvement. Ms. Colombo describes a program the district created to improve relationships between teachers and families and the enormous difference it has made in each side's understanding of the other. ********** EVEN before the superintendent opened the large, thick envelope containing the standardized test results from the Massachusetts Department of Education, he knew he had a problem. Each year, his mainstream students were scoring just above the state average, but the scores for culturally and linguistically diverse learners lagged far behind. He had no reason to believe this year would be different. This was not a small problem for his district. Approximately 20% of the district's 7,000 students were culturally and linguistically diverse, the majority coming from Caribbean families. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Over the past several years the district had instituted a full-day kindergarten program, committed to a new integrated reading program, and consistently reviewed and updated the curricula for core academic subjects. The superintendent expected teachers and administrators to participate in extensive professional development for each major initiative, and the staff responded to the challenge. All of this effort had resulted in a slight increase in reading achievement for culturally and linguistically diverse children in grades K-3, yet their scores continued to fall far below those of mainstream students. Lower test scores were only part of the problem. In general, teachers reported more instructional and behavioral problems for students from culturally and linguistically diverse families. Teachers identified lack of school preparedness and insufficient family involvement as key factors that interfered with the academic achievement of these students. Though the teachers knew that parent participation was important, and mainstream parents typically attended school activities, the parents from culturally and linguistically diverse families remained conspicuously absent. A few individual teachers had created classroom programs to increase parent participation, but not much had been done system wide. Teachers wanted the children to succeed, they wanted higher test scores, and they remained frustrated with the ongoing lack of parent involvement. The parents needed to take an interest. For many years experts have touted parent/teacher relationships and the resulting shared understandings between home, community, and school as instrumental in creating school environments of acceptance, caring, and high expectations. (1) Family involvement has a powerful influence on educational success, but it's not an equal opportunity practice. Parent/teacher relationships are formed with relative ease when groups share a common culture, language, and background. Relationships that must bridge cultures and languages, however, require more effort to create and sustain. DISCONNECT BETWEEN TEACHERS AND FAMILIES The unopened envelope sat on the superintendent's desk as his mind wandered to the many conversations he'd had with the director of bilingual services. There had been many changes in the district since he had relocated to this midsize northeastern Massachusetts city to accept his position nearly 15 years ago. The population of culturally and linguistically diverse families continued to grow each year, but almost all of the teachers and administrators were from mainstream, middle-class backgrounds. The director of bilingual services had suggested that perhaps this explained the lack of involvement on the part of parents who were new to the district and often to the country. Though the district had implemented extensive professional development, the training offered teachers little more than a cursory reference to cultural and linguistic diversity. …

Does size matter? Gender‐based equal opportunity in UK small and medium enterprises

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the take up of gender‐based equal opportunities policies and practices in small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and explores the relationship between size and take up within the SME sector.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on detailed data generated by a European Social Fund sponsored equality audit tool (breakthrough). This is an interactive, questionnaire‐based programme incorporating 60 questions on human resources policies and practices relevant to gender‐based equal opportunity. The questionnaire was administered within a structured interview, which was recorded and transcribed. In the North West of England, 80 SMEs, across a range of sectors, participated.FindingsThe data revealed that, while there was some evidence of take up of good equality practice in SMEs, many small businesses were not active in this area and indeed a sizeable minority were perpetuating discriminatory practices. Medium‐sized organisations were more likely to have, and implement, equality policies than small ones. However, in one area, around flexibility to meet carer responsibilities, the small organisations performed better. Analysis of moderating variables suggests that it is factors related to size, rather than size per se, that explain the differences in take up between small‐ and medium‐sized firms.Originality/valueThe paper highlights the need to find ways to engage SME managers with the equality agenda. It explores the distinctive features of the small firms and their environment which may inhibit this at present and set out an agenda for future research which will deepen understanding in this area and inform policy.

Ethnic minority personnel careers

Personnel departments often have particular responsibility for equal opportunities within their organizations. This paper explores equal opportunities within personnel departments themselves, in relation to the careers of ethnic minority personnel practitioners. Through primary research, it identifies a range of criteria which can affect personnel careers, of which ethnic origin is often one. However, although being categorized as of ethnic minority origin often hinders personnel careers, the paper reveals that it is sometimes possible for individuals who are so categorized to overcome that negative effect through demonstrating some of those other criteria. Thus, the paper suggests, it is not just organizational equal opportunities practices which may provide hope for ethnic minority personnel careers but also – and perhaps more importantly – the actions of the ethnic minority individuals themselves. Ways in which personnel departments might support these actions are discussed.

Committed to (un)equal opportunities?: 'New ageism' and the older worker.

In recent years the principle of equality of opportunity in employment has been widely promoted as a means of addressing the marginalization of various groups of workers, including older workers. Evidence suggests, however, that equal opportunities have not improved prospects for older workers. The present study employs discourse analysis to examine a variety of accounts of those responsible for employment within a number of organizations. Analysis shows that these accounts are rhetorically oriented towards potential attributions of age discrimination. As evidence of a non-discriminatory stance, participants attend to possible shortcomings in written policies by making explicit their organizations' equal opportunity practices. In describing their workforces as comprising predominantly younger employees, however, they make only implicit reference to practices involving older workers. When they account for the apparent age imbalances in their workforces, they attribute these imbalances to factors outwith their control so that the organization's practices become completely 'invisible'. The contrast between this 'invisibility' and explicit claims to be committed to equal opportunities allows participants to position themselves as non-discriminating employers and at the same time justifies the marginalization of older workers.

Equal opportunities practices and enterprise performance: A comparative investigation on Australian and British data

Equal opportunities practices and enterprise performance: A comparative investigation on Australian and British data

Global aviation human resource management: contemporary recruitment and selection and diversity and equal opportunity practices

The commercial airline is an extremely competitive, safety‐sensitive, high technology service industry. People, employees and customers, not products and machines, must be the arena of an organisation’s core competence. The implications are vast and pervasive affecting no less than the organisation’s structure, strategy, culture, and numerous operational activities. Completed by 13 respondents (executives), this audit presents a series of select findings of a human resource management audit carried out in 2001‐2 and contains extensive data on airlines from nine countries from around the globe. The conclusion drawn from these three bodies of work is that, with the exception of a handful of high performing airlines, the industry as awhole continues to function as per a traditional, top‐down, highly divisionalised, industrial model of operations and governance. This model is manifestly inappropriate in such a highly knowledge‐based service market as the airline industry. HRM expertise in general and recruitment and selection as well diversity and equal opportunity in particular are required now, more than ever, to spearhead the strategic development of a customer‐centric, learning‐oriented workforce that is capable of adapting quickly to the strategic goals and change imperatives facing the airline industry.

£80,000 pay-out

CLINICAL NURSE manager Jane Addo has been awarded almost £80,000 after an industrial tribunal found her employer, Surrey Hampshire Borders NHS Trust, discriminated against her on grounds of race and dismissed her unfairly when they made her redundant three years ago. The tribunal found Ms Addo suffered severe distress. The trust has apologised to Ms Addo and has reviewed its equal opportunities practices.

Employee Participation and Equal Opportunities Practices: Productivity Effect and Potential Complementarities

The relationships between employee participation, equal opportunities practices and productivity are explored. Data from the British Workplace Employee Relations Survey of 1998 provide strong evidence that equal opportunities practices improve productivity overall, and increasingly so as the share of female and ethnic minority employees increases. However, short‐term effects may be negative in segregated workplaces. Non‐financial participation schemes are negatively associated with productivity, but in most cases the joint presence of these participatory schemes and equal opportunities practices significantly increases productivity. Interactions between participatory and equal opportunities schemes are also affected by work‐force composition and by the level of equal opportunities policies implemented.

A Case for Incorporating Aboriginal Perspectives in Education

In general, education in Australia is dominated by an out-of-date worldview that encourages fragmentation and actively excludes the philosophical views of its Aboriginal Australian students. Despite growing support for the principles and practice of equal opportunity and multi-culturalism, for Aboriginal Australians to benefit from education they are left with little choice but to participate in teaching programs that devalue or ignore their cultural identity. To meet the needs of students, education must undergo a philosophical transformation that makes the structure and content of academic programs more culturally sensitive and flexible. All students need to develop cross-cultural skills, including ways of thinking in terms of interconnectedness and cultural relativity within the dominant culture. Students need to be prepared to work within differing cultural paradigms and to have an understanding of the philosophical diversity of Australia's cultural context.

On what ‘ought’ to be: The flaw in employment equality practice for minorities

One of the most commonly used indicators of ethnic or racial inequality in employment is disparities in minority representation in certain occupations or job types. Under‐representation in desired occupations is taken as prima facie evidence of discrimination in most affirmative action programmes. Affirmative action policy then requires that discrimination be eliminated and minority representation be increased until it matches the availability in labour draw areas. The ethnic, racial or religious composition of the availability pool then becomes the template against which employers must match their workforce composition and, in so doing, it comes to occupy a moral dimension: the structure of the availability pool ‘ought’ to be replicated because it represents the morally desirable situation that would exist in workforces were there not employer‐discrimination. This is common equal opportunity and affirmative action practice (illustrated here with examples from America and Northern Ireland) and it is seriously flawed in so far as it gives morally prescriptive force to a distribution that itself carries the legacy of past discrimination. To replicate availability pools in workforces is to legitimate the consequences of past discrimination. This, and other factors such as group differences in occupational choices, make the setting of ‘desirable’ equal opportunity targets very hazardous.

Career progression of female managers in retailing

Women in UK retail management are well represented at the recruitment stage and at middle‐management level, but in spite of the provision of equal opportunities policies, are not well represented at senior levels (the so‐called “glass ceiling” effect). Reports recent research findings about the experience of female managers in the UK retail industry. Researchers sought to explore possible reasons for women′s under‐representation at senior management levels, including: varying emphasis on commitment; equal opportunities practices; and factors influencing career progression. Questionnaires were distributed to a sample of 34 female managers awaiting promotion to the senior position of store/general manager and data yielded significant results. The majority of female managers in the sample were highly committed and ambitious for promotion; criteria for promotion may not always reflect equal opportunities policies; and results suggest that women are disadvantaged by different career planning, a lack of politic...

Equal Opportunities and University Practice; Race, Gender and Disability: A Comparative Perspective

Summary This paper provides a comparative analysis of data arising from three recent surveys of equal opportunity practice in relation to race, gender and disability. The surveys gathered information from a range of university departments and included questions about departmental structures and organisation as well as curriculum development. Instances of good practice are described, and some implications explored for the further development of equal opportunities in higher education.