THE INFLUENCE OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE AS A CONTEXT OF MEANING ON DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT IN MULTICULTURAL ORGANISATIONS by CHARMAIN DOMBAI DISSERTATION submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS in COMMUNICATION in the FACULTY OF ARTS at the RAND AFRIKAANS UNIVERSITY SUPERVISOR : PROF S. VER WEY JANUARY 1999 INDEX PAGE LIST OF FIGURES (x) ABSTRACT (xi) OPSOMMING (xiii) CHAPTER I : ORIENTATION 1 INTRODUCTION NECESSITY OF THE STUDY 3 AIM OF THE STUDY 5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 6 CHAPTER II : THE INTERACTION BETWEEN THE 9 SOUTH AFRICAN ORGANISATION AND ITS ENVIRONMENT INTRODUCTION 9 A SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE ON ORGANISATIONS 10 2.1 Organisations as Social Systems 11 ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES ON SOUTH AFRICAN ORGANISATIONS 14 3.1 Legal-political Environment 15 3.1.1 The Reconstruction and Development Programme 15 3.1.2 Workplace Democracy 16 3.1.3 Participative Management and Decision Making 18 3.1.4 The Bill of Rights 21 11 3.2 Economic Environment 23 3.2.1 The Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) Strategy 23 3.2.2 Return to the Global Market 25 3.2.3 Privatisation 27 3.2.4 The Customer Service Challenge 28 3.3 Technological Environment 29 3.4 Socio-cultural Environment 34 3.4.1 Demographics of the South African Society 34 3.4.2 Africanisation 35 3.4.3 Covert Attitudes 37 3.4.4 Professional Life versus Personal Life 39 3.4.5 Ubuntu 41 SUMMARY 44 CHAPTER III: DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT AND THE ROLE IT PLAYS IN ORGANISATIONS 47 INTRODUCTION 47 DEFINING DIVERSITY AND DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT 49 WHY SHOULD DIVERSITY BE MANAGED? 50 3.1 Potential Benefits of Diversity 51 3.1.1 Recruiting of Human Resources 52 3.1.2 Enhanced Marketing 52 3.1.3 Creativity 53 3.1.4 Problem Solving 54 3.1.5 Organisational Flexibility 55 3.2 Potential Problems of Diversity 56 3.2.1 Diversity and Group Cohesiveness 57 3.2.2 Diversity and Communication 57 3.2.3 Diversity Stress 58 3.3 The Impact of Diversity on Organisational Effectiveness 60 iii 4. DIVERSITY AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION 62 4.1 Issues around Affirmative Action 63 4.2 What causes Affirmative Action to Fail? 66 4.2.1 People's Feelings about Affirmative Action 66 4.2.2 Organisational Barriers to Affirmative Action 67 4.3 Approaches to Affirmative Action 69 4.3.1 The Peacock 70 4.3.2 The Tortoise 70 4.3.3 The Rhinoceros 71 4.3.4 The Chameleon 72 4.4 From Affirmative Action to Diversity Management 75 5. A PERSPECTIVE ON DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT 79 5.1 The Organisation's Diversity Climate 79 5.1.1 Individual-level Factors 80 5.1.2 Group and Inter-group Factors 81 5.1.3 Organisational-level Factors 82 5.2 The Relationship between Organisational Climate and Culture 85 5.3 Diversity Management in South African Organisations Today 86 5.4 The Theory of Diversity Management 88 6. SUMMARY 92 CHAPTER IV ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE AS CONTEXT OF MEANING 95 INTRODUCTION 95 WHAT IS CORPORATE CULTURE? 97 2.1 Classifying Corporate Cultures 99 2.1.1 The Harrison and Handy Model 100 2.1.2 The Hampden-Turner Model 102 2.1.3 Lessem's Classification of Corporate Cultures 102 INSTITUTIONALISING A CORPORATE CULTURE 106 iv 3.1 Where Culture Comes From 106 3.1.1 Organisational Structures and Systems 106 3.1.2 Organisational Communication Processes 113 3.2 Dealing with Diversity 116 3.2.1 Organisational Socialisation 119 3.2.2 Acculturation 121 3.3 The Multicultural Organisation 124 3.3.1 Monolithic Organisations 125 3.3.2 Plural Organisations 125 3.3.3 Multicultural Organisations 127 ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE AND DISCOURSE SYSTEMS 128 4.1 Characteristics of a Discourse System 130 4.2 Classifying Discourse Systems 136 4.3 Discourse Systems and Organisational Power 138 SUMMARY 140 CHAPTER V : THE SHARING OF MEANING IN ORGANISATIONS 142 INTRODUCTION 142 UNDERSTANDING LANGUAGE : PSYCHOLINGUISTICS 143 2.1 The Relationship Between Language and Thought 143 2.1.1 The Whorfian Hypothesis 146 2.1.2 Where and how does Language affect Thought? 147 2.2 Psychological Functions of Language 150 LANGUAGE IN SOCIAL CONTEXTS : SOCIOLINGUISTICS 152 3.1 The Concept of Schema 153 3.1.1 Types of Schemata 153 3.1.2 Schemata and Information Processing 154 3.1.3 Schemata Model for Intercultural Encounters 154 3.2 Interpersonal Communication Strategies 156 3.2.1 Judgements Based on Speech 156 V 3.2.2 Accommodation Theory - Convergence and Divergence 157 3.2.3 Beyond Initial Interaction 159 THE ROLE OF SYMBOLISM IN THE SHARING OF MEANING 161 4.1 Symbolism in Organisations 164 4.2 Language, Meaning and Organised Action 167 SUMMARY 171 CHAPTER VI • A SCHEMATA MODEL OF INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION IN THE ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT 173 INTRODUCTION 173 THE CONCEPT OF SCHEMATA 175 THE SCHEMATA MODEL OF INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION IN THE ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT 177 3.1 The External Environment 177 3.2 The Organisational Environment 177 3.3 The Process of Sharing Meaning 180 5. SUMMARY 184 CHAPTER VII • EMPIRICAL RESEARCH DESIGN 186 INTRODUCTION 186 RESEARCH AIM 186 2.1 Research Objectives 187 vi RESEARCH DESIGN 187 3.1 Quantitative Methodology 187 . 3.3.1 The Values Questionnaire 188 3.3.2 The Semantic Differential Scale 190 3.2 Qualitative Methodology 191 3.3 The Value of Triangulation 193 THE ORGANISATION AND SAMPLE IN QUESTION 194 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 196 5.1 The External Organisational Environment 196 5.2 The Internal Organisational Environment 196 5.3 The Interpersonal Level 197 5.3.1 Observation 197 5.3.2 The Values Questionnaire 198 5.3.3 The Semantic Differential Scale 199 5.4 Data Processing 199 CONCLUSION 201 CHAPTER VIII AN APPLICATION OF THE SCHEMATA MODEL OF INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION IN THE ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT : A THICK DESCRIPTION 202 INTRODUCTION 202 EXTERNAL ORGANISATIONAL ENVIRONMENT RESULTS 202 2.1 Technological Influences 203 2.2 Economical Influences 204 2.3 Legal-political Influences 206 2.4 Socio-cultural Influences 207 INTERNAL ORGANISATIONAL ENVIRONMENT RESULTS 209 vii 3.1 Organisational ideology 209 3.1.1 Reason for Existence 209 3.1.2 History 210 3.1.3 World view 210 3.1.4 Beliefs, values, religion 211 3.1.5 Place in Culture 211 3.2 Organisational Discourse 212 3.2.1 Grammar of Context 212 3.2.2 Face Strategies 212 3.2.3 Patterns of Cohesion 213 3.2.4 Functions of Language 213 3.2.5 Non-verbal Communication 214 3.3 Organisational Culture 214 3.4 Organisational Power 216 INDIVIDUAL LEVEL RESULTS 217 4.1 Values Questionnaire 217 4.1.1 Findings in terms of Race 217 4.1.2 Findings in terms of Organisational Level 218 4.1.3 Findings in terms of Age 219 4.1.4 Findings in terms of Gender 219 4.2 Semantic Differential Scale 222 4.2.1 Findings in terms of Race 222 4.2.2 Findings in terms of Age 223 4.2.3 Findings in terms of Gender 226 4.2.4 Findings in terms of Organisational Level 227 4.3 Observation Results 228 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY's FINDINGS 230 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH RESULTS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SCHEMATA MODEL 232 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 235 CONCLUSION 236 viii BIBLIOGRAPHY 238 APPENDIX A Personal Values Questionnaire 243 APPENDIX B Semantic Differential Scale 246 ix LIST OF FIGURES PAGE FIGURE 1 Social Systems Model of Organisational Functioning 13 FIGURE 2 Participative Management Structures 20 FIGURE 3 A Comparison of Management Practices 44 FIGURE 4 An Interactional Model of the Impact of Diversity on Individual Career Outcomes and Organisational Effectiveness 60 FIGURE 5 Comparing Affirmative Action, Valuing Differences and Managing Diversity 78 FIGURE 6 Critical Managing Diversity Issues 92 FIGURE 7 Harrison and Handy's Cultural Quadrant 101 FIGURE 8 Relationship of Schemata to Actual Cultures and Communication 155 FIGURE 9 : Continuum of Symbol Functions 166 FIGURE 10 : Mechanisms for Developing Cultural Agreement from three Cultural Perspectives 168 FIGURE 11 : A Schemata Model of Interpersonal Communication in the Organisational Context 178 FIGURE 12 : Summary of Findings of Personal Values Questionnaire 200 FIGURE 12 : Summary of Semantic Differential Scale Results 200 x ABSTRACT THE INFLUENCE OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE AS A CONTEXT OF MEANING ON DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT IN MULTI-CULTURAL ORGANISATIONS by C. DOMBAI SUPERVISOR : PROF S. VERWEY DEPARTMENT : COMMUNICATION UNIVERSITY : RAND AFRIKAANS UNIVERSITY Changes in South Africa's political, socio-political and economical environments are putting pressure on local organisations to move towards a non-racial, democratic and fully representative internal organisation environment. In an attempt to accelerate the process, companies are embarking on programmes such as affirmative action and black empowerment for the employment and development of previously disadvantaged groups in order to assimilate them into the organisational culture. At present, however, the results of these efforts still leave a lot to be desired and the management of diversity in South Africa is viewed with interest as well as scepticism. The link between the success of diversity management and a supportive organisational culture has been made in the literature on the subject, but not explored extensively in terms of the elements contributing to the culture, especially language and the processes involved in sharing meaning. It has been proven that a well-planned strategic approach to diversity management should have communication as its pivotal point, making language and meaning the next logical field of study. The literature overview thus systematically explored the ways in which the process of sharing meaning can perpetuate the status quo or act as a change agent in the process of transforming an organisational culture to be receptive and supportive of diversity.