Discussion: Rate your Organizational Culture

In this two-part discussion, you first have the opportunity to increase your awareness of the feeling of being different (diverse) through the completion of a short five-question surveya tool used to measure the diversity of cultures in organizations. In the second part of the discussion you will reflect on your thoughts about inclusivity of all employees voices in company-wide decisions. You can use your current or past employer or an organization whose culture you know a lot about to address this part of the assignment.

Part 1

Being Different Survey

Think back to a recent situation in which you experienced being different and address the following questions:

Describe the situation in which you experienced being different and explain how you felt.
What did you do as a result of being different? (In what ways did your behavior change due to the feeling of being different?)
As a result of that experience, how will you behave differently in the future when put in a similar situation or when you see others in the situation?
What is the overall characterization of the organizational culture profile where you work or where you have worked in the past? (See Chapter 15 in Organizational Behavior)
How is a culture of diversity measured at your workplace? (This is an opportunity to talk with your HR Manager.)
Part 2

Respond with your thoughts as you relate the following statements to your own experiences:

Diverse and balanced teams produce better results; but how? When groups are formed, the teams are not usually a complete representation of a companys employee base, especially when it comes to visible demographic diversity, such as gender and race. When employees feel that perspectives like theirs are included in decision-making, they often feel a strong sense of inclusion which, in turn, results in higher engagement and retention.

Healthy debates about options to move forward occur when team members are from different backgrounds. When team members of varying backgrounds fear voicing their concerns, however, debates and discussions are not reflective of the true culture of a company. Diversity works only when team members are comfortable with sharing their opinions without fear of negative consequences.

I can voice a contrary opinion without fear of negative consequences. Perspectives like mine are included in decision-making.

Additional Key Elements of the Assignment:

Your Initial Post should occur in a timely manner (by the third day of the module for full timeliness points). Include the original questions along with your initial, informative post. Support your post with information from at least one high-quality peer-reviewed academic reference and provide the complete source information (so that your peers can find the article if they wish).  Refer to your own personal experiences, as applicable.

Your Subsequent Posts: Read through responses by peers and post responses to at least two classmates posts. Introduce ideas/comments and/or research not mentioned yet. In your response, please underline the ideas/comments and/or research new to the discussion.

Remember: To receive full credit in this forum, you need to post a minimum of three quality posts (your own initial post, and responses to two classmates). Only one outside source is needed (in the initial post). But in any post, if you borrow ideas/information from other authors, give them credit for their work.

Note: A URL (website address) is NOT a reference. A reference always contains four parts: author, publication date, article title, and the source of the article. Sometimes there is no author, but the APA manual tells you what you can put in that spot instead, such as the first few words of the article title. The source for a high-quality peer-reviewed journal article is the journal you found it in.

Be sure to also complete the Reflective Discussion that follows. It is also graded.

*****

Now that you have completed the three assignments in this module, do you agree with the statement, “Yes, I can meet the three Module 4 learning objectives”?