Diversity and Public Administration

Theory, Issues, and Perspectives

Mitchell F. Rice

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317472964
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Theory
• Index: Economics

Featuring all original chapters, this book presents a balanced, comprehensive overview of the policies and practices for achieving racial and ethnic diversity in public organizations, with a strong orientation toward improving diversity management in the public sector. The book can be used both as a main text and a supplementary text in classes that focus on diversity, diversity management, public administration and multiculturalism, diversity and public productivity, public service delivery and diverse populations, and public policy and changing demographics. This completely revised and updated edition includes six brand new chapters, expanding the book's coverage to include: Diversity Ideology in the United States; Managing Diversity in Communities, Workplaces, and Society; Managing Diversity: Moving Beyond Organizational Conflict; Institutional Racism, Diversity and Public Administration; Cultural Competency, Public Administration, and Public Service Delivery; Diversity Management and Cultural Competencies.

1

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The Multiple Dimensions of Diversity and Culture

Harvey L. White and Mitchell F. Rice

Current considerations for the provision of public services must include how to respond effectively to the principal challenges of the twenty-first century. Many of these challenges will emanate from changing demographics that are impacting the demand for and the delivery and provision of public goods and services. For instance, the U.S. Census Bureau (2000) notes that Hispanics are officially the largest minority group in the United States; African-Americans are the second. There are also increasing numbers of individuals of other nationalities who represent a mosaic of colors, languages, cultural values, and ethnic traditions. This situation will pose tremendous challenges that require the creation of a diverse and more efficient public service workforce. Some of the challenges that changing demographics will pose are discussed in the Workforce 2000 report published by the Hudson Institute (Johnston and Packer 1987). The report indicated that there would be major changes in the workforce by the twenty-first century. For example, 84 percent of new entrants into the workforce would be women and men of color, white women, and foreign nationals. Workforce 2020, the sequel to Workforce 2000, further substantiates the changing demographics of the American workforce (Judy and D’Amico 1997). In a subsequent report, Futurework: Trends and Challenges for Work in the 21st Century, the U.S. Department of Labor reinforces the Hudson Institute’s predictions for a changing workforce. This report states:

By 2050, the U.S. population is expected to increase by 50 percent and minority groups will make up nearly half of the population. Immigration will account for almost two-thirds of the nation’s population growth. The population of older Americans is expected to more than double. One-quarter of all Americans will be of Hispanic origin. Almost one in ten Americans will be of Asian or Pacific Islander descent. And more women and people with disabilities will be on the job. (1999, xx)

These workplace changes will affect employees’ expectations about the implied contract between employees and employer, the numbers of dual career and nontraditional families, and the overall diversity of the workforce.

The demographic and workplace changes discussed above suggest that public sector organizations must be prepared to develop more inclusive work cultures that have a better understanding of the many ways people are different from one another and/or different from the organizations’ traditional employees. Public service organizations must give renewed (or new) attention to such defining characteristics as race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, and religion. However, attention is also required for other diversity factors such as the college one graduated from, varied communication and management styles, and problem-solving approaches (Jensen and Katz 1996). Diversity has the potential of becoming the most important consideration for public service organizations in the twenty-first century. However, this consideration is not confined merely to the workforce. Diversity also includes the production and provision of public services. In other words, it is not just a question of knowing who will be the public servants. Other important questions will need equal consideration: What populations will be served? What goods and services will be provided? How will these goods and services be produced? For example, due to the changing demographics in Texas, where the Hispanic population is growing quite rapidly, the state’s demographer implicitly notes that in the not too distant future a disproportionately older Anglo population will be served by a public service workforce that is more and more minority (Murdock et al. 2002). The Texas demographer also points out that the state’s economic future will be tied to the future socioeconomic status of the growing minority populations. In fact, Texas, along with California, Hawaii, and New Mexico, is now a majority-minority state—a state where minorities make up a majority of the population (see Wikipedia 2009).

Further, other factors that will help determine the answers to these questions include: (1) the increasingly ethnic, racial, and gerontological diversity of society; (2) an increasingly gender-diverse workforce; (3) the growing interdependence of the global community, which calls for greater knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of human diversity; and (4) the increasing technological diversity behind the production and provision of goods and services. As these factors suggest, public service organizations will be confronted with a multiplicity of needs and interests that will require a workforce that has a broad knowledge base and a variety of skills and talents. Addressing these needs and interests will require the application of innovative technologies and management-diversity practices if public goods and services are to be delivered efficiently. What follows is an examination of diversity factors that will influence the future of public service.

Racial Diversity: Toward a Representative Bureaucracy

Many terms have been used to express the need for a diverse workforce in the public sector. Multiculturalism, affirmative action, and equal opportunity are the most recent. Implicit in each of these concepts is the premise that enhanced efficiency can be derived through a more diverse workforce. This premise is also an intricate part of the concept of representative democracy (see Kranz 1976; Long 1952; Mosher 1968; Van Riper 1958; Warner et al. 1963). Norton Long (1952) described the linkage between diversity and a representative democracy more than fifty years ago. According to Long, it is of critical importance that bureaucracy be both representative and democratic in composition and ethos. To be truly representative, he insists that public service must be inclusive of diverse “races, nationalities, and religions” (816–817). This inclusiveness is to be achieved through a recruitment process designed to create a workforce of individuals representative of the pluralism that exists in society. The concept of a representative bureaucracy was also used by Frederick Mosher to emphasize the need for a diverse public service. Mosher argues that “representativeness concerns the origin of individuals and the degree to which, collectively, they mirror the whole society.… A public service, and more importantly the leadership personnel of that service, which is broadly representative of all categories of the population in these respects, may be thought of as satisfying Lincoln’s prescription of government by the people” (1968, 15).

Similar to Long, Mosher views diversity as a requisite for both democracy and representative bureaucracy. Mosher correctly points out that it is crucial for good policy and management decision-making as well. “Persons drawn from diverse groups … will bring to bear upon decisions and activities different perspectives, knowledge, values, and abilities. And the products of their interaction will very likely differ from the products were they all of a single genre” (16). Building on the foundation laid by Long, Mosher, and others, Harry Kranz spells out the specific benefits that he believes can be achieved through a representative bureaucracy. Kranz argues that a representative bureaucracy would lead to more democratic decision-making, resulting in better decisions, because it would expand the number and diversity of views brought to bear on policy-making. Kranz also notes that representative bureaucracy improves bureaucratic operations and outputs by ensuring that the decisions and services are responsive to the needs of agency clientele and potential consumers, particularly members of minority groups; by using the country’s human resources efficiently; by increasing, both symbolically and actually, the legitimacy of public service institutions; and by elevating social equity and justice to prime political values at least as important as the prevailing paradigm of “economy and efficiency” and its fellow traveler “stability” (1976, 110–116).

Race is one component of the diversity that Long, Mosher, and Kranz advocate. As these scholars have come to realize, Europeans, Africans, Native Americans, Asians, and other racial groups possess unique cultural norms and values that affect their decisions. Numerous studies have confirmed racially differentiated perspectives on a variety of issues and events. Differences have been found to persist in areas such as political alienation, childbearing, school choice, and the environment (Henig 1990; Herring et al. 1991; Kahn and Mason 1987; Lipset and Schneider 1983; Mohai 1990; St. John and Rowe 1990). Despite these findings, most racial groups continue to be underrepresented in public service organizations at all levels of government.

As Kim and Lewis (1994) found in their research that Asian Americans are significantly underrepresented in state and local governments. Several studies have found that African-Americans are underrepresented at all levels of government and that their representation is severely restricted at middle and upper management levels (Cornwell and Kellough 1994; Kellough 1990; Murray et al. 1994). Meier (1975) found in his study of the federal civil service that minority representation decreases as rank (or grade) increases. Guajardo (1996) found that minority under-representation in federal agencies remained constant between 1982 and 1990: agencies with representative workforces in 1982 continued to have integrated staffs in 1990, while underrepresented agencies continued to have workforces that were predominantly white. Hence, even after nearly fifty years of effort that began with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, achieving racial diversity remains one of the greatest challenges facing contemporary public service.

Diversity as Differences in Ethnic Norms and Behaviors

Ethnic differences within racial groups are an aspect of diversity that has been almost completely overlooked in an attempt to create a more representative bureaucracy. All Europeans, all Africans, all Asians, and all Hispanics are frequently considered homogeneous groups. As is becoming increasingly clear, however, the various European communities have distinguishing cultural and religious differences that are a source of continual conflict among them. European interethnic conflicts are found in Irish religious differences, the conflict between the Basques and Castile, and the war crisis in the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia. Europeans speak different languages and may be Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, or Muslim. They have various customs and social mores. As exhibited in subnational politics and employment practices in state and local government, these differences may be minimized but not abandoned when Europeans move abroad.

African-Americans can be similarly differentiated. They come from different ethnic and language groups in Africa and have different religious beliefs. African-Americans can also be divided into those who are descendants of slaves and those who are more recent arrivals from Africa and the Caribbean islands. Each group has norms and values that affect its demand for, participation in, and perception of public service. Asians, like other groups, are a single race in U.S. statistics. However, as Kim and Lewis note, “they vary widely in culture, language, and recency of immigration” (1994, 286). A 1990 report by the General Accounting Office identifies seventeen nationalities that make up the Asian population in the United States. In 1990, nearly two-thirds of the Asian-American community was foreign-born. In 2000 China had the largest foreign population with nearly 1.4 million, followed by India, vietnam, and Korea (“The Foreign-Born Population …” 2000). As a reflection of the growing populations of minority groups, the 2000 census form included fourteen racial categories and four ethnic classifications for Hispanics/Latinos for self-identification (Rosenblum and Travis 2003). Nobles notes that the importance of census results is that they produce entitlements including political power, economic power, social power, and public goods (2003, 52).

As mentioned above, the Census Bureau sees ethnic differences among Hispanics/Latinos. Gómez (1994) points out that Hispanics are a highly heterogeneous group with major variations in terms of race, socioeconomic status, native region, and immigration status. For instance, Hispanics can be any combination of European, African, Asian, and Native American ancestry, yet be officially classified as white. In terms of religion, most are Catholic, many are Protestant, and some are Jewish. Hispanic ethnic groups also vary by nationality. They may be from one of several Caribbean islands, Mexico, Central America, Spain, or South America. Some Mexican-American families have lived in the southwest United States since before the arrival of the Mayflower. Ethnic diversity is real and should be appreciated by the public manager. Like race, it can expand the organization’s capacity to understand and address the needs of the individuals it serves.

Gender and Public Service: The Glass Ceiling Dilemma

In the aggregate, increases in employment opportunities for women in public service seem impressive. For instance, female employees hold nearly half of all federal white-collar jobs (Naff 1994), they hold nearly 20 percent of top administrative posts in state governments (Bullard and Wright 1993), and they are nearly half of the new hires in state and local governments (Guy 1993). However, gender biases and discriminatory policies still limit the upward mobility of women. As Johnston and Packer report in Workforce 2000, “Despite the huge increases in the number of women in the workforce, many of the policies and institutions that cover pay, fringe benefits, time away from work, pensions, welfare, and other issues have not yet been adjusted to the new realities” (1987, 105). The public sector is no exception. Barriers have been found between women and an equitable consideration for advancement in public service at all levels of government (Bullard and Wright 1993; Guy 1993; Naff 1994). These barriers constitute what is described as a “glass ceiling” (also referred to as a “sticky floor”) that relegates most women to lower management and clerical positions. As Naff points out, even though women make up nearly half of the federal civil service, they are only 18 percent of top-grade-level groups (GS/GM 13–15) and only 11 percent of the Senior Executive Service. In contrast, they hold nearly 75 percent of positions in the lowest six grades of the federal civil service.

While the glass ceiling is denying women the opportunity to hold top-level administrative positions, other gender-based workplace practices are limiting their influence in public service. Two of the most notable practices are pay distinctions across grades (comparable worth) and disparities within grades. The pay distinction issue emerged in 1983, when U.S. District Judge Jack E. Tanner ruled that the state of Washington had illegally discriminated against thousands of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Multiple Dimensions of Diversity and Culture
• 2. Diversity Ideology in the United States: Historical, Contemporary, and Sociological Perspectives
• 3. Managing Diversity in Communities, Workplaces, and Society
• 4. Managing Diversity: Moving Beyond Organizational Conflict
• 5. Institutional Racism, Diversity and Public Administration
• 6. Workforce Diversity in Business and Governmental Organizations
• 7. Teaching Public Administration Education in the Postmodern Era: Connecting Organizational Culture to Diversity to Social Equity
• 8. The Challenge of Balancing Organizational Expectations Revisited: A Perspective on the Challenges of Assuming Professional Responsibility for Diversity
• 9. Networking, Career Management, and Diversity in the Public Sector
• 10. Cultural Competency and the Practice of Public Administration
• 11. Cultural Competency, Public Administration, and Public Service Delivery in an Era of Diversity
• 12. Diversity Management and Cultural Competency
• 13. Cultural Diversity and Productivity
• 14. Embracing Workplace Diversity in Public Organizations: Some Further Considerations
• About the Editor and Contributors
• Index