The workplace is affected by various contemporary social problems which continue to impact and influence the behavior and productivity of workers. Social issues affect both employers and employees as they struggle to strike a balance by performing their duties with diligence and maintain their production levels as well as gaining an understanding on the various issues that they face and have to deal with in their day to day living. The workplace has dealt with pertinent social issues like religion, age sexual orientation race, and gender as the differentiation factors that set apart the workplace.
One of the most widespread problem in workplaces and has left the workplace desolate and miserable is the discrimination of workers based on their gender and race (Combs & Milosevic, 2016). Sexism and racism impact has been experienced in the significant loss of productivity as different management systems in firms and institution put in place discriminatory systems. Opportunities are awarded and handed using particular measures which by eliminating individuals on the basis race and gender.
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Summary of the Scenario: Discrimination
Statement of the problem.
The analysis of social issues in discrimination based on gender and race can be well summarized using the current disputes in the Uber firm undergoing investigations on allegations and complaints made by employees on gender and racial discrimination. Discrimination on race and gender has been a consistent issue in the workplace over the years and for Uber investigation by the unites states authorities have been conducted putting the firm under scrutiny since August 2017 (Gibbs, 2018) and leading to loss of jobs and resignation over discriminatory remarks, handling of issues and general conduct and treatment of workers. The firm has consistently been highlighted for rigidity in diversity and its exercises such as hiring, promotions, payments, and matters concerning gender. Under the leadership of its former executive Travis Kalanick, Uber faced extensive charges of sexual harassment of workers and discrimination based on gender which led to a summon of the former US attorney general Eric Holder whose reports and finding led to Kalanick’s resignation (Gibbs, 2018). The recent departure of the human resource officer Liane Hornsey who was the firm’s chief people officer continuous to fuel and taint the image of the company as its gained popularity through the constant submission of claims of gender discrimination and sexual harassment (Krishna, et al., 2018).
Stakeholders.
The directly affected stakeholders are employees who have lodged complaints on lack of diversity and the prevalence of discriminatory issues on the firm. Uber firm employees highlight various cases of internal scandals and occurrences amounting to discrimination which have been ignored by the management allowing the persistent of the toxic workplace culture in the firm (Krishna, et al., 2018).The formation of an anonymous group to push for employee’s rights and freedoms under the “Uber employees of color” umbrella displays the deep discriminatory and social issues existing in the firm (Gibbs, 2018). The management, on the other hand, maintains continual improvement in enhancing diversity in promotion, payment, employment and address of complaints rising in the firm. Other stakeholders such as their customers, competitors and the community have responded to the allegations with distaste and condemnation of the actions which are illegal according to the law.
Root problem.
The discrimination problem in the workplace stems from the lack of measures and actions to deal with sexism and racism in the workplace environment (Marchiondo, et al., 2015). The chief executive officers and board of the directors of the firm should immediately put in place affirmative action goals as measures to address discrimination on sex and gender. Affirmative actions are meaningful action goals and timetable whose aim is to bring equality and uniformity in the workplace by creating equal opportunities for advancement and promotion, especially to women (Krishna, et al., 2018).
The problem in the Uber firm can be addressed by dealing with internal issues of hiring, promotions and firing procedures, payment, and classification of jobs or the award of company benefits. In hiring the company should adhere to the set guidelines and consideration of skills (Marchiondo, et al., 2015). The hiring of new employees should be based on the evaluation of factors such as experience, ability, education, and training received enabling the employee to perform the job (Combs & Milosevic, 2016). Promotions and firings should be fair and just after essential consideration to avoid such allegations. The directors should also take the necessary action in payment by upholding the favorable remuneration system that takes into account both women and men to enhance equalized pay.
Opportunities and challenges.
Uber firm is experiencing sexism and racial discrimination due to failure to substantiate allegations and carry out proper investigations (Gibbs, 2018). The firm lacks an elaborate system of reporting, examining and investigating that can produce unbiased results and credibly handle arising issues and address them according to and appropriately (Krishna, et al., 2018). Their opportunities include provision of benefits such as health insurance to employees and the maintenance of equality in job classification and payment to avoid illegal discrimination and tainting of the company’s name.
Conclusion
The workplace environment is continuous being contaminated with social issues that facilitate the decline in production as they directly affect workers physically, emotionally and psychological limitation of their capabilities. It is essential to put in place affirmative measures in the workplace to safeguard and enhance the safety of workers and maintain the functionality of firms by providing a quiet and favorable environment. Uber firm needs to capitalize on its opportunities to address the challenges it faces in hiring, payment, promotions, and performance and reduce discrimination allegations against them whose effects trickle down to their stakeholders.
Milestone Two: Application of Sociological Theories and Concepts
Introduction
The evaluation of the workplace and the presence of social problems revealed the presence of a widespread social issue of discrimination in gender and race in organizations. Common in small and large firms’ sexism and racism continue to affect productivity, management, and opportunities for workers in the organization. The focus on Uber Company experiences, allegations and investigation on gender and race discrimination revealed the diverse nature of the social problem leading to loss of jobs and positions (BBC News, 2018). In this paper, an evaluation of the sociological perspective of discrimination on gender and race is conducted outlining the major organizational factors contributing to the problem at both the micro and macro levels. Consequently applying a sociological theory that assesses the different social structures and social constructions of the stakeholders as well as the impact of different cultural perspectives is crucial to understanding the problem.
The Sociological Perspective on Gender and Race Discrimination
On gender, a sociological analysis of Uber Firm shows a bias of women through the firm processes in hiring, compensation, and equity in roles performance and remunerations. Uber Company sociologically indicates the classification of gender roles as where women roles are viewed as more inferior (Gibbs, 2018). Men in the firm seek to maintain power and status through discrimination. Race discrimination within uber takes a sociological perspective fueled by competition and contact and the need for accommodation of other races in the workplace and their assimilation (Turner, 2013). Thus the gender and racial discrimination and conflicts are present due to social aspect that drive men to maintain power and status over the women while different races compete for resources which equip them for strength and class in the organization.
Major Organizational Factors Contributing to Gender and Race Discrimination
The organization has to nurture various factors which contribute to the persistence of gender and racial discrimination. The company management lacks an established system of resolution of social conflicts and in particular those related to gender and race. The firm has been reluctant on taking action on accusations and claims of sexual harassment and racial discrimination that has led to the resignation of management officials (BBC News, 2018). The established human resource management system fails to cater to the needs of workers and employs biased practices in hiring, equality and compensational procedures. Lack of diversified leadership, knowledge, and skills are some of the significant factors contributing to gender and racial discrimination in the Uber Company (Cohn, 2000).
Discrimination at Micro and Macro Levels
In the analysis of the micro level in Uber firm, norms beliefs and cultures that influence the productivity and functionality of individuals in the company are neglected. Internally, the company faces managerial problems and constraints such as lack of leadership skills and knowledge in handling a diversified workforce (Gibbs, 2018). In this level, the stakeholders affected are the employees. The decisions made in treating individual cases and allegation in gender and race discrimination issues are primarily biased and arise from personal as opposed to a professional approach. At the macro level, external problems are raised by the society affecting stakeholders like the customers and community as well as the competitors aggravating complaints of irresponsibility.
Symbolic Interactionism Theory on Discrimination
The Uber Company can be best described using the symbolic interaction sociological theory. The symbolic interactionism perspective explains gender and race discrimination based on the creation of symbols and daily interactions which are reinforced to produce meanings (Turner, 2013). According to the theorists, gender discrimination rise due to the reinforcement of everyday human interactions and symbols that perceive women and create meanings of women as inferior. Thus, men reactions towards women in the workplace are influenced by the meanings they have created towards women creating a toxic and discriminatory work environment.
Racial discrimination in symbolic interaction theory is derived from meanings, symbols significance, and interpretation of other people’s action (Turner, 2013). Discrimination on color seems form meanings derived on intelligence, performance, and capabilities wherein the Uber company some members in the management are skeptical on skills of people of color leading to discriminatory remarks and ideas on people of different races.
Different Social Structures and Social Constructions
Different social structures are displayed in the Uber company symbolic interaction, which include the creation of social classes, relationships, values, norms, and roles. The primary stakeholders affected by the social structures in the firm affect employees who are subordinate in positions and therefore they hold the lowest social class and functions. Consequently, this trend produces gender and race divisions and inequalities (Gibbs, 2018). The results are social constructions of diversity which are taken for granted by the management. The social structures lead to social constructions of power and dominance which are implemented and interpreted by the management to the identified groups mainly women and people of color (Cohn, 2000).
In the process, the difference in cultural perspective is also reflected and works together with the social structures and constructions in the firm. For example, the investigations showed that in March uber paid $10m as a settlement to class action lawsuit which claimed discrimination of over 400 women and minorities in discrimination based on their gender and race (BBC News, 2018). The revelation of the investigation that employees were neglected and discriminated and the filed case were often left unresolved, dismissed and swept under especially those on race and sexism.
Conclusion
The Uber company from a sociological perspective and sociological theories show the presence of social issues in gender and race discrimination resulting from organizational factors. Poor leadership and lack of knowledge in the proper implementation of diversity can be sociologically assessed as a significant contributing factor to the prejudices in the company. The company has over the years created a toxic culture through ignorance of sexism and racism and reinforced the beliefs and practices through social structures of values and social classes as well as social constructions viewing women and minorities as inferior.
Milestone 3: Research Methodology and Data Collection
The best method to use is a survey using a questionnaire which comprises of a set of standardized questions that are set to collect data about one or more specific topics. This method is the best to use in a work environment as it allow for anonymity of the respondent and minimizes the researcher’s bias as they do not know who has filled the form ( Dudovskiy, n.d.) . This is particularly important because the issues that it seeks to discover are sensitive and no one was to be outright accused of discrimination. Nonetheless, it is important to conduct this research because the problem needs to be solved. Technology in today’s work place would also make it easier to use a questionnaire because it can be created, distributed, and filled online ( Dudovskiy, n.d.) . Another advantage of a questionnaire survey is that is usually standardized fashion, so that all respondents are exposed to the same stimulus, thus minimizing participant bias.
Questionnaires can be used both qualitatively and quantitatively even within the same research depending on how the questions are created. Closed-ended questions that either provide a scale or multiple choice answers are can be analyzed statistically and represented using percentages, pie-charts or graphs ( Dudovskiy, n.d.) . Open-ended questions are more qualitative as they provide specific insight through discussion and critical analysis without using numbers and calculations ( Dudovskiy, n.d.) . For maximum efficiency, this questionnaire survey will include both qualitative and quantitative questions.
In the first part where there are open ended questions, respondents will be required to answer questions such as, their age, gender, position in the company among others so that there can be statistical base to found the research on. The second part of the questionnaire will have questions fashioned with a likert scale and they will ask the respondent to choose an option out of five between, strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, and strongly agree. The last part of the survey will be qualitative and will include questions that require the respondent to give their personal opinion regarding what they believe the problem is, its causes, and probable solutions.
The kind of information that this questionnaire should generate include the age range of respondents, their genders, race, and positions in the company. This will help show information such as whether people who are in lower positions, women or minority races get discriminated against more and who the perpetrators are. The second and third parts will provide insight into how discrimination is propagated in the company and possible solutions from the perspectives of those who experience or hand it out. Implementing solutions that have been suggested by the workers themselves helps them feel like they are a part of the decision making process. Furthermore, these workers understand their issues better than anyone else and they should be allowed to express them.
Identify potential challenges in collecting reliable and valid data
Potential challenges in collecting data with a questionnaire are related to the reliability and validity of the method. Validity is the ability of an instrument to measure what it is meant to measure while reliability is the ability for the instrument to produce results that can be reproduced such that each time it is used it gives a similar outcome (Price, Jhangiani, & Chiang, 2015). For a questionnaire, the greatest threats to validity and reliability lie with the respondents and the structure of the questionnaire. For instance, when respondents do not read the questions well and they respond randomly just so that they can finish, the questionnaire will be both unreliable and invalid as it does not present the true opinions of the respondents (Price, Jhangiani, & Chiang, 2015). Another challenge would be in the interpretation of the data where a researcher is biased because of their preconceived notions about the topic. This can lead them to ignore data that does not confirm their beliefs (Price, Jhangiani, & Chiang, 2015).
Reflect on how you will account for your personal biases and preconceived notions to arrive at a value-neutral assessment
There are several steps that can be taken to ensure that the research is not skewed due to personal bias. The first is to allow multiple people to assess the data and then compare the results, where the outcomes of each assessment should be similar (Pannucci & Wilkins, 2010). Another solution could be to allow participants to review the results of an assessment. Since they know the answers they gave, by checking the percentage of participants that agree with the findings, a researcher can tell whether they represent the true beliefs of the sample group or whether they are influenced by their own biases.
A researcher can confirm the results of their findings with other data sources that are based on the same research hypothesis. This is reasonable because if data external but reliable data sources support the results, then they can be trusted (Pannucci & Wilkins, 2010). Another solution would be to determine an alternative reason why the findings of a research are different from those of other sources, other researchers or the participants’ beliefs (Pannucci & Wilkins, 2010). It could be that a researcher made an error when analyzing data and that it has nothing to do with their bias. In such a case, all that should be done is to correct the error and the findings will align.
Picking the right method to do a research is important and one has to consider their sample and hypothesis to determine the best method. For this research which seeks to assess racial and gender discrimination in the workplace, the best method to use is an electronic questionnaire. This method is cheap, provides anonymity and saves time. However, it also prone to validity and reliability bias and the researcher should take specific precautions as listed above to avoid this.
Milestone 4: Gender and Racial Discrimination at the Workplace: A Literature Review
Gender and race prejudice in a workplace is a detrimental aspect that afflicts not only the internal environment of the organization but also extends to the society. Gender and race discrimination is as old as the world itself and continues to be a plight despite the evolution of the 21st century. Therefore, it is rather unfortunate that gender and race inequalities continue to plague workplaces increasing the rate of inefficiency, turnovers, and conflicts (Perry, Harp, & Oser, 2013). Regardless of the government’s concerted efforts at curbing the nationwide practice of the iniquity, the workplace remains to be one of the most notorious places propagating the vice. Hence, there is still admittedly a long way to accomplishing prejudice-free working environments. Gender and race bigotry in the workplace is the causal agent of presumably every other harmful conduct found within organizations such as employee turnover, misunderstandings, and tensions.
Literature Review
Triana, M. D., Jayasinghe, M., Pieper, J. R., Delgado, D. M., & Li, M. (2018). Perceived Workplace Gender Discrimination and Employee Consequences: A Meta-Analysis and Complementary Studies Considering Country Context. Journal of Management, 014920631877677.
The article discusses the contribution of injustices at workplaces, specifically gender and race discrimination, to the poor performance of employees. In the case of workplace repression, it is crucial to consider the vulnerable group. Particularly in gender discrimination, the female workers are seen to be affected more than their counterparts. Women in workplaces face low pay, sexual harassment, and many more challenges such as being considered incompetent for leadership positions (Triana, Jayasinghe, Pieper, Delgado, & Li, 2018). However, the study acknowledges that men also tend to face some form of discrimination at their respective places of work but is rather trivial. The article explains that minority groups are more plausible to be victimized and as such suffer more adversely than the others. The research is amongst many others that investigate and scrutinize the relatedness of gender and race discrimination at work and psychological and physical health problems amongst workers. Triana, Jayasinghe, Pieper, Delgado, & Li (2018) assert that employees facing any form of biases at work tend to develop psychological problems which inadvertently impact their service delivery.
Additionally, the article delves into the consequences of workplace favoritism on the society. A lot of issues displayed in organizations are a mere reflection of the real happenings in the world. When such negativity spills into the environment then hate is brewed and thus may cause conflict. The extant literature elaborates in depth the disparities of allowing such obsolete immorality exist amidst humanity to this day. All individuals have equal rights and freedom and should thus be protected from any forms of harassment both at work and in the society generally (Triana, Jayasinghe, Pieper, Delgado, & Li, 2018). Institutional racism and gender bias may persist if appropriate measures are not applied at the right time. The article is conclusive and provides compelling evidence that gender and race bias is a corrosive value that should be eliminated. The study recommends a more refined approach to inhibiting the causative roles of work discrimination
Social and Societal Factors Contributing to Gender and Race Inequality in Workplaces
Gender and race prejudice is a global problem as it is seen even in the most established and developed countries worldwide. However, it is worth noting that the plight is rampant in less developed nations such as those in Asia and Africa (Okechukwu, Souza, Davis, & De Castro, 2013). One of the main reasons why the workplace has in some extreme cases been described as inhospitable is because of society’s perception of gender. In many cultures of the world, men are discerned to be more superior to women. Although the previous assertion may be contested and is non-factual, it is the sad reality. The apparent prejudice against women has led to numerous debates as various parties push for gender equality. Stamarski & Son Hing (2015) propound that workplace discrimination against women has led to the diminishing of their socio-economic status. The under-representation of women in the corporate world is a mirror image of the position of the woman in society.
Racial biases, on the other hand, were contributed by the establishment of colonies by European in the 17th century. Recently, the world has woken up to headlines of racial oppression, especially in the judiciary department. Police brutality and racial profiling have been pervasive despite the numerous efforts to educate and unite the community. At the workplaces, especially in European countries, there is a common tendency of creating affiliations and treating individuals based on the color of their skins (Bécares & Priest, 2015). During the colonial period, the European countries invaded other continents where they exercised their colonial rule. Okechukwu, Souza, Davis, & De Castro (2013) proclaim that after the colonized countries gained independence, the notion of superiority and minority was still maintained. Therefore, racial discrimination is founded on the fallacious belief that not all races are equal which stemmed from the act of colonization. What is more perturbing is that the society continues to cling on to such archaic reasoning even after the revolution.
Impact of Human Group Behavior
Gender and racial prejudice affect the relationships of individuals negatively. Collectively, people within a particular organization will be impelled to work in a hostile environment which is less probable to hearten productivity. Consequently, the conducts of individuals in the company will change depending on the intensity of the situation (Perry, Harp, & Oser, 2013). In some extreme conditions, physical conflict may arise among employees of different racial or gender affiliation. In other cases, human group behavior has been discovered to the cause of such discrimination in organizations. People tend to converge into small groups based on gender, race, or political fanatic amongst other factors. Thus, such human group behaviors further fuel the simmering fire of gender and racial intolerance within places of work.
Previously Attempted Solutions
When dealing with the pertinent issue of gender and racial discrimination within the organization, one might consider educating the employees on the relevance of equality. Many problems in society stem from ignorance and illiteracy. Hence, applying training and educational forum to explain the importance of diversity to the organization will help in restoring peace and order. Every individual stands to gain when the community embraces gender and race diversity (Bécares & Priest, 2015). Additionally, the relevant authorities are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that employees are aware of their rights and freedoms as well as social responsibilities. As a result, people will be able to protect and preserve the rights and freedoms of others.
As established in this article, the workplace is not immune to racial and gender partisanship. From the little racial comments and slurs that people often ignore the overt actions suggesting gender discrimination, the workplace is one of the affected areas. Gender and racial prejudice affect the internal, as well as, external business environment as the majority of similar issues stem from society. Nonetheless, it is not a far-fetched theory that these forms of bigotry in the workplace possess immense implications on the physical and psychological health of employees especially those targeted.
Conclusion
Gender and racial discrimination is not a new realization as it has been in existence since colonialism. In a similar manner as to how the world appears divided on matters gender and race, the workers in an organization also become divergent. Gender and racial intolerance in the workplace causes a chain reaction that leads to under productivity. Further research on the topic is therefore necessary to discover on a deeper level what causes these issues and ways that they can be solved to promote a positive work environment.
References
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Gibbs, S. (2018, July 11). Uber's head of HR resigns amid allegations of racial discrimination. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/11/ubers-head-of-hr-resigns-amid-allegations-of-racial-discrimination
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