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Cultural diversity in the workplace: the state of the field

Cultural diversity in the workplace: the state of the field

by Marlene G. Fine

The challenge posed by the increasing cultural diversity of the U.S. workforce is perhaps the most pressing challenge of our times. Scholarship on this increasing diversity has produced general overviews on diversity and related issues, essays that offer a theoretical perspective and suggest research directions for studying diversity in organizations, and few actual research studies of diversity in organizations. The research studies that have been done examine differences in organizational communication in different (particularly national) cultures, examine organizational communication in multicultural contexts, and explore cultural voices in the workplace.

Researchers of cultural diversity in organizations must look to alternative theoretical perspectives, such as feminist theories, critical theories, and sociological paradigms to identify the problematics and methodologies appropriate to future diversity studies. This research needs to document different voices in the workforce, especially those that have been marginalized.

Multicultural discourses that incorporate the diverse voices of all workers will not only transform our public and private economic organizations, they will also reinvigorate our public discourses and political institutions, strengthening our social, political, and economic well-being. There have been numerous challenges issued to academics to become more involved in the pressing social issues of the day and to demonstrate, in the public arena, the worth of their studies. The study of cultural diversity and of multicultural discourses in organizations offers an opportunity for scholars to do that.

Cultural diversity in the workplace is currently a hot topic. Only ten years ago, virtually no books were available on the topic, and journal articles were just as rare.(1) Today, hardly a day goes by that a national newspaper or magazine doesn't run a story on some aspect of the increasing diversity of the U.S. workforce, such as the changing demographics of the U.S. population, immigration policy, and the debate over affirmative action programs. Diversity also seems ubiquitous in academic circles. During the last few years, numerous books on workforce diversity have been published (see, for example, Cox, 1993; Fernandez, 1991; Fine, 1995; Loden & Rosener, 1991); the 1992 Academy of Management Annual Meeting was devoted to the topic of "the management of diversity"; video training tapes have been produced for use in college classrooms and organizational training programs; and journal articles have begun appearing in both the management and communication literatures. For example, within the last two years, in addition to this special issue of The Journal of Business Communication, the Journal of Business and Technical Communication, the Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences, the Journal of Organizational Change Management, and the Academy of Management Review have each published volumes devoted to diversity in the workplace.

Despite this spate of attention to the subject, the research literature remains sparse and our knowledge about diversity, especially in organizational life, has increased little. In a 1991 article in The Journal of Business Communication, I offered a theoretical perspective on understanding diversity and suggested possible research directions for studying diversity in the workplace. Four years later, Allen (1995) concluded, in an essay published in the Journal of Applied Communication Research, that virtually no research on diversity in the workplace has been done. In this essay, I review the current strands of research on cultural diversity in the workplace, offer an explanation for the paucity of research on the topic, and suggest topics and methods for future research.

Scholarship on Cultural Diversity in the Workplace

Scholarship on cultural diversity in the workplace falls into three broad categories: (a) general overviews of diversity and related issues, (b) essays that offer a theoretical perspective and suggest research directions for studying diversity in organizations, and (c) research studies specifically on diversity in organizations.

General Overviews

Published work in this category primarily calls attention to diversity in the workplace. The popular literature focuses on the changing demographics of the population in general and the work force in particular, and sometimes also includes a discussion of the organizational benefits of a diverse work force, such as improved problem-solving and decision-making, access to new consumer markets (Carton, 1988; Weinstein, 1994), enhanced product development, or the ability to compete in global markets (Barnum, 1992).

A number of academic journal articles and books also fall into this category. In addition to providing data on the changing demographics of the workplace and the organizational benefits of diversity, these works include definitions of key terms, such as diversity, managing diversity, and multicultural organizations, and provide suggestions for ways organizations can adapt to a diverse work force (see, for example, Cox, 1991; Cox, 1993; Cox & Blake, 1991; Fernandez, 1991; Fine, 1995; Griggs & Louw, 1995; Jackson & Associates, 1992; Jamieson & O'Mara, 1991; Loden & Rosener, 1991; Theiderman, 1991). All of these books and articles are intended primarily for students and/or practitioners; they provide an overview of key issues and include, to varying degrees, summaries of key research on diversity in the workplace.

This body of literature is important because it introduces a broad audience to issues related to diversity in the workplace and lays the groundwork for research by establishing the importance of those issues. Academic research in the social sciences is driven primarily by public acknowledgement of the significance and value of the problems researchers study. It is not a coincidence that there was a rapid flurry of interest in studying diversity in the workplace shortly after the publication of Workforce 2000: Work and Workers for the 21st Century, Johnston and Packer's (1987) widely disseminated and discussed study of the demographic trends in the U.S. work force. Workforce 2000 legitimated the study of cultural diversity in organizations by quantifying the degree to which the US. work force will increasingly comprise white women and women and men of color.

The literature is also important because it represents a shift to valuing differences in the workplace rather than suppressing and denying them. With few exceptions, earlier literature in organizational communication had either focused solely on the behaviors and concerns of white males and thereby effectively denied the existence of others in organizations, or described the ways in which women, and in a few instances African-Americans, were different -- and therefore deficient -- and suggested ways they could acquire the skills they lacked. In contrast, by demonstrating how having a diverse workforce can increase organizational effectiveness and market competitiveness, the general overviews of diversity give value to difference.

Although these works function similarly to provide an overview of key issues, they differ in their assumptions about the nature of individuals and organizations and how change in each is effected. For example, Rosener and Loden's (1991) title, Workforce America! Managing Employee Diversity as a Vital Resource, places the focus on the individual employee. The key to managing a diverse workforce is increasing individual awareness of and sensitivity to differences of race, gender, social class, sexual orientation, physical ability, and age. The locus of change is the individual and change itself is both intra- and inter-personal. This approach is consistent with the preponderance of diversity initiatives undertaken in organizations, which primarily comprise training and development efforts such as diversity awareness training, leadership training, mentoring, and personal support groups (Fine, 1995).

Rosener and Loden's title is also representative of the dominant conceptual orientation towards diversity in the workplace, which defines diversity as a resource that is available to managers for their use in enhancing organizational effectiveness. In this conception, diversity is a managerial tool that can be manipulated to achieve organizational ends.

A few writers move beyond the individual as the locus of organizational change and argue that organizations must change their structure, policies, and/or practices. Jamieson and O'Mara (1991) propose a FLEX-MANAGEMENT model, which is based on the assumption that equality does not equal sameness. They say that managers should develop policies, practices, and systems that are sufficiently flexible to respond to the unique needs of individual employees. Cox (1991) offers a definition of multicultural organizations and suggests strategies for creating them, including flexible work policies and reward systems that tie managers' compensation and promotion to their diversity efforts. Fine (1995) also argues that, to become multicultural, organizations must move beyond just providing diversity training to employees to changing organizational policies and practices.

Cox (1993) and Fine (1995) also introduce an important conceptual shift in the literature. Their discussions of diversity are not grounded in a definition of diversity as a managerial tool and their goal is not to show managers how to manage diversity. Instead, they envision the transformation of organizations. Each assumes a diverse population and workforce in the U.S. and offers ways to create multicultural organizations that embrace and incorporate that diversity.

Theoretical Perspectives and Research Directions

The work in this category includes perspectives for understanding both the organizational behavior of members of particular cultural groups and cultural diversity in organizations in general. Several important essays on African-Americans in the workplace laid the groundwork for future research efforts. Although research on African-American speech styles appeared in communication journals by the late 1970s and early 1980s (see, for example, Daniel & Smitherman, 1976; Stanback & Pearce, 1981), Foeman and Pressley (1987) were the first to hypothesize about the communication of African-Americans in the workplace based on research on African-American communication in general.

Foeman and Pressley (1987) argued that, although scholars had begun to identify differences between blacks and whites, no analyses had taken "the position that within the context of the black culture are skills and attributes which are consistent and useful in . . . the organization" (p. 294). Using the research findings of several scholars on black/white communication differences, especially Thomas Kochman (1981), Foeman and Pressley identified five African-American cultural values (assertiveness, forthrightness, ethical awareness, interpersonal responsiveness, and group identification) and two language patterns (verbal inventiveness and call/response) that they believed are beneficial in organizational interaction. They ended with a call for systematic research to document differences between blacks and whites in the workplace. By reconceptualizing black communication styles in the workplace as positive attributes rather than deficiencies in need of remediation, Foeman and Pressley (1987) redirected research away from comparing black and white communication (with white communication as the norm against which black communication was judged) toward documenting the unique contributions of black communication styles in the workplace.

Asante and Davis (1989) also relied heavily on Kochman's (1981) analysis of black and white cultural styles in advancing their theoretical perspective that interaction between blacks and whites in the workplace is essentially intercultural in nature. They posited that encounters between blacks and whites in interracial organizations are often misconstrued by both sides, and offered an intercultural perspective as a way of understanding those misconstruals. Because blacks and whites have different cultural perspectives, they approach their organizational interactions with each other with different beliefs, assumptions, and meanings, which often lead to miscommunication.

Several recent essays have offered new conceptual perspectives for understanding diversity and designing research studies (Allen, 1995; Fine, 1991, 1993; Limaye, 1994). Allen says that although few organizational communication studies focus on racial or ethnic differences, literature from other fields and her own experiences suggest that "organizational members' experiences, attitudes, and behaviors in the workplace are often influenced by race-ethnicity" (1995, p. 145). She then suggests using several alternative theoretical/conceptual perspectives from which to study diversity in organizations, all of which are grounded in critical theories, including framing issues from the standpoint of marginalized organizational members, examining organizational actors' micropractices, and assessing power dynamics in organizations. Allen (1995) also identifies several methodological issues that researchers should address, such as the relationship between the researcher's race/ethnicity and the research outcomes.

Fine (1993) identified many of the same theoretical and methodological issues in her call for a feminist revisioning of research in organizational communication. Fine argued that the predominant research perspective in organizational communication, the functionalist perspective, focuses on the experience of white males in organizations and excludes the experiences of women and people of color. When women and people of color are included in the research, they are judged against white male norms, and thus are always seen as deficient in some way. The exclusionary focus of that research tradition does not lead to framing research questions and hypotheses about diversity. Fine identified two newer research perspectives,(2) the interpretive and the critical perspectives, that are more compatible with the problematics of diversity, and called for research studies that examine the social construction of gender, race, and class, and how culturally diverse individuals in organizations create multicultural organizations.

Fine's (1993) call for research on how individuals create multicultural organizations echoed an earlier article (Fine, 1991), in which she proposed a two-part framework for understanding multicultural communication in organizations. The framework comprises two core processes: resisting privileged discourse, and creating harmonic discourse.

Limaye (1994) has also written about the lack of conceptually adequate models for understanding diversity in the workforce. He argued that individual-level cognitive and affective models have dominated the literature and that they are inadequate in effecting the organizational changes necessary to bring women and people of color fully into the workplace, primarily because they fail to address the political issues and power dynamics that enforce white, male norms in organizations and keep those who are different at bay. Limaye suggested using sociological paradigms as a heuristic framework and introduced the concept of "manifested respect," which comprises eight organizational commitments and strategies for "safeguarding minority interests and consensual decision making" (p. 366). Manifested respect includes:

* Mandating consensual decision making and empowerment of all employees

* Franchising marginalized voices

* Creating organizational structures and practices that facilitate diversity

* Matching employees' unique talents with appropriate jobs

* Easing pressure to conform to majority norms

* Changing the criteria for organizational effectiveness

* Creating networks and mentoring programs for minority employees

* Recognizing the right to one's own language.

The essays by Allen, Fine, and Limaye, while able to point out the failings of traditional conceptions of organizations and the diversity initiatives in both research and practice that emanate from them, also point to the difficulties in establishing a research literature in diversity. In her first call for research in multicultural communication, Fine (1991) suggested documenting four types of organizational discourses: different organizational discourses, discourse that asserts privilege, discourse that resists privilege, and multicultural discourse. Fine clearly establishes a research agenda, but it is an agenda that requires access to organizational discourse, preferably with audio and/or videotaped documentation. Few organizations would be willing to allow researchers such access, especially when the research perspective employs the vocabulary of privilege and resistance.

The language of critical theory also underlies Allen's (1995) suggestion that researchers use standpoint theory to shape their research on diversity; she says that "critical approaches seem particularly fitting because they would compel researchers to analyze issues of power and control that inhere racism in our society" (p. 149). Again, those with power and privilege in organizations are not likely to respond positively to researchers' requests to have access to organizational situations in which issues of power and control can be seen and documented.(3)

Limaye's (1994) suggestions point to a second problem with the research agendas that have been set for the problematics of diversity. Limaye suggests that researchers (a) more fully develop the concept of manifested respect, (b) elaborate on the interdependence of the individual and groups, (c) provide cogent arguments for why businesses should use democratic processes, (d) and generate empirically testable hypotheses. The first three suggestions yield further theorizing about diversity in organizations but no actual research studies. The last suggestion offers a starting point but no direction for designing and carrying out any actual studies.

Research Studies

The research studies that have been done on cultural diversity in organizations tend to fall into three broad categories: studies that examine differences in organizational communication in different cultures, particularly national cultures; studies that examine organizational communication in multicultural contexts; and studies that explore cultural voices in the workplace.

Intercultural Communication

By far, the largest number of diversity studies have focused on documenting differences across national cultures. The focus on global diversity rather than diversity within the U.S. results from a confluence of several political and pragmatic considerations. First, the globalization of the U.S. economy has led to a pragmatic concern in the business community about the efficacy of U.S. business practices. This concern is heightened by the economic success of several other nations, especially in Asia. U.S. business has become enamored of Japanese management techniques and academics have heeded the call to study those techniques. Economic globalization has also increased businesses' need to know information about organizational practices and cultural mores around the world.

Politically, the study of international differences is safer than the study of racial and ethnic differences in the U.S. The social sciences in the U.S., for the most part, are grounded in assumptions of objectivity and neutrality. Studies of domestic racial and ethnic differences, whether intended or not, carry political overtones and are subject to suspicions at both ends of the political spectrum -- they are "too politically correct" for those on the right and "insufficiently politically correct" for those on the left. Further, studies of racial and ethnic differences are often identified as an academic fad, especially when newer research methods are employed. Academics concerned about tenure and promotion are likely to avoid specializing in work in this area. In addition, organizations are wary of allowing researchers access to data on these issues for fear of publicly airing internal dissension.

These pragmatic and political considerations became even more powerful in setting the agenda for diversity research because they were coupled with the fact that there is a reasonably rich academic literature in intercultural communication, which includes both theory and research.

The early work in intercultural communication in the communication discipline grew out of the increasing business and government interest in training diplomats and business people for overseas assignments. That emphasis focused on cultural differences and the ways in which those differences lead to misperceptions and miscommunication between people from different cultural backgrounds. The disciplinary area of intercultural communication gained cachet in the 1960s and 1970s, and two national communication associations, the Speech Communication Association and the International Communication Association, created divisions devoted to the study of intercultural communication, a circumstance which spurred the development of both theory and research in the area.

The intercultural communication studies that are frequently cited in the literature on cultural diversity in organizations range from comparative studies of worker's cultural orientations in different countries to more focused studies of particular organizational behaviors within other national cultures. See, for example, Hofstede's (1984) large-scale questionnaire studies of the value orientations of workers in multinational organizations in 40 countries throughout the world, or Laurent's (1983) study of managerial theories in 10 Western countries. Among the particular organizational behaviors studied have been the role of "face" in perceptions of Chinese managers (Reading & Ng, 1982), the effects of decision-making style on openness and satisfaction within Japanese organizations (Stewart, Gudykunst, Ting-Toomey, & Nishida, 1986), managerial communication in Chinese factories (Krone, Garrett, & Chen, 1992), letter writing styles in Japanese business (Haneda & Shima, 1982), and the relationship between supervisory behavior and worker satisfaction in the U.S., Mexico, and Spain (Page & Wiseman, 1993). These studies serve to document cultural differences and highlight the importance of culture in organizational practice.

Operating from the same theoretical framework, other scholars have examined what happens when workers from different national cultures conduct business together. Graham and Andrews (1987) analyzed Japanese and U.S. business negotiations and concluded that cultural variations led to interactional asynchrony and decreased the quality of the negotiations for both parties. Linowes (1993) chronicled the painful entry into the U.S. of one Japanese manager and documented the cultural differences in community life, business practice, organizational dynamics, and interpersonal dealings that he encountered. Hammer and Martin (1992) studied the effectiveness of cross-cultural training in enhancing the exchange of technical information, achieving company goals, and reducing anxiety and uncertainty.

Organizational studies based on the intercultural model provide data and suggest lines of research that are useful in understanding cultural diversity in organizations. In particular, they are important because they ground the study of diversity in issues of culture and cultural difference. The intercultural model, however, is not sufficient for constructing a theoretical perspective on organizational diversity.

First, the intercultural communication model focuses on communication between individuals. Although the model identifies culture as a central construct, it is essentially an interpersonal model of communication. From the intercultural perspective, issues related to cultural diversity in organizations have to do with the problems people in organizations have in communicating with one another, with the different meanings they bring to organizational discourse. The locus of change is placed in people and their relationships with one another. That perspective glosses over organizational policies and practices that exclude people who are different, and the power differentials within the organization and the larger culture that perpetuate those policies and practices.

Second, the intercultural perspective assumes that there is a host culture to which visitors from other cultures adapt. The central assumption of intercultural preparation for business people is "when in Rome, do as the Romans do." U.S. workers who are assigned abroad are urged to learn the ways of their hosts and to assimilate into the host culture, at least on a short-term basis (Brislin, 1989; Storti, 1990).

Conceptually, assimilation into the host culture is problematic in understanding cultural diversity in the U.S. work force. The host culture in most organizations is white male culture, a culture that is not hospitable to those who are different.(4) Further, white male culture represents a shrinking proportion of the work force. As the demographics of the work force and the general population in the United States change, U.S. culture is in flux. We can no longer talk about a melting pot nation in which assimilated peoples share the same history, language, and personal and political values. It is impossible to entreat workers to "do as the Romans do" when there is no Rome.

Pragmatically, assimilation into the dominant organizational culture is a strategy that has had serious negative consequences for individuals in organizations and the organizations themselves. The woman or person of color who assimilates into white male organizational culture pays an enormous psychological price. Those who assimilate are denied the ability to express their genuine selves in the workplace; they are forced to repress significant parts of their lives within a social context that frames a large part of their daily encounters with other people (Bell, 1990). Even when people are successful in performing their jobs, the coping strategies that they adopt often lead to physical and psychological stress, "ranging from inhibition of self-expression to feelings of inadequacy and, perhaps, self-hatred" (Kanter, 1977). For some, the stress is so great that they cannot successfully do their jobs.

The organizational costs of assimilation are equally high. Beyond the opportunity costs of limiting the organizational vision, organizations suffer productivity losses. People who must spend significant amounts of energy coping with an alien environment have less energy left to do their jobs. People who are forced to keep a part of themselves hidden from others only bring a part of themselves to work each day. Workers who are angry, lack self-esteem, feel constant stress, and are socially isolated are less productive. Assimilation not only creates a situation in which people who are different are likely to fail, it also decreases the productivity of organizations.

Organizational Communication in Multicultural Contexts

A few organizational studies have examined communication among culturally diverse workers in U.S. organizations. Eastman (1991) studied information systems work groups that were culturally diverse and found that cross-cultural differences led to miscommunication in the development of information systems. After training the participants to use a planning strategy called "operational test plan scenarios," which create mutual understandings of an information systems problem by providing a concrete script, Eastman found that their productivity improved. Bantz (1993) also found that diversity affected group dynamics and suggested four strategies for managing the impact of differences in the group: gathering information; adapting to different situations, issues, and needs; building social and task cohesion; and identifying clear mutual long-term goals. Cox, Lobel, and McLeod (1991) looked more specifically at how ethnic differences affected cooperative and competitive behavior on a group task. Not surprisingly, they found that workers from collectivist cultures were more cooperative and workers from individualistic cultures were more competitive.

Studies like these confirm that diversity affects productivity, but do not move us closer to developing a conceptualization of the diversity issues that confront us in the U.S. Although each of these studies examined diverse work groups within a U.S.-based organization with a US. work force, their research questions and methods arose out of an intercultural perspective on cultural diversity in organizations. The focus was interpersonal and the strategies for dealing with the effects of differences were essentially grounded in assimilation.

Cultural Voices in the Workplace

Several recent studies call for more complex theoretical understandings of diversity in organizations. In her introduction to the special issue on diversity in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences, Walck (1995) examines different understandings of "managing" diversity. She rejects the conception of bringing diverse peoples together and assimilating them into a single organizational culture, saying that such an approach eliminates rather than manages diversity. She further rejects the conception of managing diversity as a strategy for corporate success. Walck offers, instead, a conception of managing diversity based on Webster's definition of "to manage" as "to contrive to get along." In this conception, managing diversity is understood to mean "negotiating interaction across culturally diverse groups, and contriving to get along in an environment characterized by cultural diversity" (1995, p. 120). To understand how we contrive to get along in multicultural contexts, Walck looks not to interpersonal communication theory but to culture -- specifically, anthropological conceptions of culture -- and how individuals manage the multiple cultures in which they are embedded.

On the surface, the study of cultural voices in the workplace is similar to intercultural communication studies. Each looks at the ways in which culture shapes communication. But the research literature in intercultural communication generally emerges out of a functionalist perspective, in which culture is operationally defined and manipulated as an independent variable.(5) The recent literature on culture and cultural identity offers a more complex understanding of the relationship between culture, identity, and communication. That complexity provides a more solid foundation for understanding how people from different cultural backgrounds contrive to get along with one another and offers richer directions for research on diversity in the workplace. Ferdman (1993), for example, cautions that researchers need to look at multiple components of identity and to ground discussions of culture and identity in particular contexts. Miller (1995) also calls for looking at situated encounters between members of different cultures. This work is part of a larger theoretical shift in the humanities and social sciences generally to a set of critical practices broadly identified as "cultural studies," which is "devoted to understanding the specific ways cultural practices operate in everyday life and social formations" (Grossberg & Radway, 1995, editorial statement).

Explorations of culture and identity often begin with self-analyses. Some of the most powerful, complex, and rich statements about the intersections of self and the cultures in which self is embedded are found in literature, especially the autobiographies and fiction of U.S. immigrants or their children.(6) In a similar vein, recent academic theorizing in culture and communication is often grounded in the personal identities and experiences of the authors. The 1995 winner of the best book in intercultural communication (an award given by the Speech Communication Association's Intercultural Communication Division) is a collection of essays in which academics "tell their stories" (Gonzalez, Houston, & Chen, 1994). The premise of the volume is that "the telling of experience constructs and informs about a culture and its participants" (p. xiv).

This perspective also informs research studies related to diversity in the workplace, such as interviews with Hispanic managers in an Anglo business (Ferdman & Cortes, 1992), women in male-dominated industries (Fine, Morrow, & Quaglieri, 1990), and career-oriented black women (Bell, 1990); and oral histories of male, female, black, white, and Hispanic managers (Cianni & Romberger, 1991).

A Dearth of Research Studies

I said earlier that, in general, there are few actual studies of diversity in the workplace, and I commented briefly on some of the reasons for the dearth of such studies, such as the difficulty of gaining access to organizations and the lack of theoretical concepts that can be operationally defined. The shift to a cultural studies focus further highlights the difficulties researchers face in exploring cultural diversity within organizations, for cultural studies comprises more than understanding the operation of cultural practices. As a set of critical practices, cultural studies also seeks to intervene "in the processes by which the existing techniques, institutions, and structures of power are reproduced, resisted, and transformed" (Grossberg & Radway, 1995, editorial statement).

Such intervention into and transformation of existing power structures are explicit in Limaye's (1994) and Fine's (1995) theoretical perspectives on multicultural organizations. They are also implied in a seemingly less radical call by Adler and Bartholomew (1992) for organizations to produce globally competent managers. Adler and Bartholomew attempt to push organizational thinking beyond the boundaries of traditional conceptions of global management and intercultural communication, in which managers adapt a single host culture, to what they call a transnational conception, in which managers have a global perspective in which they work with people from many cultures simultaneously and adapt to living in multiple foreign cultures. Although their analysis never invokes the language of critical theory or describes the existing power relations in multinational corporations, Adler and Bartholomew posit that a transnational perspective encompasses a "cultural synergy -- combining the many cultures into a unique organizational culture -- rather than on simply integrating foreigners into the dominant culture of the headquarters' nationality" (1992, p. 56). Creating cultural synergy requires involving hitherto unheard cultural voices in organizational planning and decision-making processes, and in so doing, alters irrevocably the existing power structures in the organization.

Most organizations are unlikely to embrace such transformations, and thus look skeptically on proposals from either academic researchers or consultants who suggest diversity studies based on theoretical conceptions that speak to power arrangements in the organization.

Future Directions for Research

Challenges tend to create opportunities, and the challenges posed by diversity research in organizations suggest numerous opportunities for further study. First, researchers need to look to alternative theoretical perspectives, such as feminist theories (Buzzanell, 1994; Fine, 1993), critical theories, or sociological paradigms (Limaye, 1994), to identity the problematics and methodologies of diversity studies. Widening the study of diversity issues across disciplinary boundaries and theoretical perspectives creates multiple ways of understanding how people come to "contrive to get along" and how organizations can encourage and nurture multiple cultural identities.

Second, research on cultural diversity in organizations must continue to document different voices in the work force, especially those that have been marginalized; the resistance strategies marginalized workers use to undermine the existing power arrangements; and multicultural discourse (Fine, 1991). To add to the documentation of voices in the workplace, researchers can supplement interviews and oral histories with their own stories; they can keep journals about their own experiences in organizations.

Although resistance strategies are sometimes difficult to examine in traditional corporate settings, other organizational contexts may offer some opportunities. For example, Fine (1992; November, 1993) studied resistance strategies employed by people of color in a non-profit agency; she gained access to the data by working with the agency on an internal anti-racism project. Combining research and consulting can open doors into organizations. The caveat, of course, is that researchers must be careful not to be coopted by the managerial agenda for intervention, and consultants must be honest with organizations about the goals of their interventions. Non-profit organizations, particularly those that serve disadvantaged constituencies, are often more willing both to examine internal power arrangements that may oppress employees who are culturally different and to engage seriously in re-visioning those arrangements.

Examples of multicultural discourse remain elusive, but can be documented. Miller (1995) taped (audio and video) conversations between Japanese and American workers at three firms in Tokyo and used a microanalysis of the conversations to identify the linguistic and conversational strategies the workers used to create personal rapport and mutual understanding of their tasks. Those of us who teach have ready made laboratories for studying how multicultural groups negotiate their work. Close conversation analyses and textual analyses of the discourse of classroom work groups have the potential to offer rich insights into how individuals create and recreate their cultural identities through discourse, and how individuals with different cultural identities can use their differences to complete their work. Although student work groups in the classroom differ in significant ways from work groups in organizations, the interaction among students of diverse cultural backgrounds can serve as a heuristic for developing models of multicultural discourse or for identifying particular linguistic and conversational strategies.

Another direction that researchers can take is to engage in evaluation research on the results of diversity initiatives in organizations. Numerous organizations, both public and private, have undertaken a variety of diversity initiatives; few, however, have provided follow-up studies of their effects. Such research could document the variety and scope of diversity initiatives, their short-term and long-term effects, and the organizational and personal prerequisites for successful diversity initiatives. This work would be especially valuable in identifying organizational policies, practices, and structures that encourage the creation of multicultural organizations.

Conclusion

In this essay, I have reviewed three broad categories of research on cultural diversity in the workplace: general overviews, theoretical perspectives, and empirical research studies. The literature in the first two categories, although sparse in contrast with other topics in business communication, is growing. The third category remains elusive. Most empirical research studies focus on intercultural communication across national boundaries and are theoretically and methodologically grounded in the assumptions of logical positivism. The problematics created by the changing demographics of the U.S. workforce appear more suited to research grounded in interpretive and critical social science perspectives. Critical theory and cultural studies in particular offer rich potential for research in cultural diversity in the workplace.

Let me end with a call to researchers to focus their attention on diversity. The challenge posed by the increasing cultural diversity of the U.S. workforce is perhaps the most pressing challenge of our times. I have read and heard innumerable times that diversity is America's greatest strength in the global economy. But it is, and will remain, an unrealized strength unless we are able to create multicultural discourses that incorporate the diverse voices of all workers. Those discourses will not only transform our public and private economic organizations, they will also reinvigorate our public discourses and political institutions, strengthening our social, political, and economic well-being. There have been numerous challenges issued to academics to become more involved in the pressing social issues of the day, to find ways to demonstrate in the public arena the worth of their studies. Those who study cultural diversity should have no difficulty meeting those challenges.

NOTES

(1) Although research on cultural diversity per se was scarce, there was a body of relevant literature on gender differences in the workplace. For the purposes of this essay, I am not including that literature. For a summary of that literature, see Powell (1993).

(2) Although scholars in humanities disciplines such as languages, linguistics, and history have always used historical and critical methods, they have only gained acceptance in the social sciences in recent years. That acceptance has been the result of increasing dissatisfaction with logical positivism and its related theoretical and methodological assumptions. The interpretive and critical perspectives that I refer to here comprise more than just historical and critical research methods; they also include ontological and epistemological assumptions that differ significantly from those of logical positivism. For a discussion of these perspectives and their differences, see Putnam (1983).

(3) There are some instances in which assertion of power and control by users of the dominant discourse is both visible and accessible. The discourse surrounding the Navy Tailhook scandal is a rich source of potential data on strategies of linguistic control by users of the dominant discourse. Organizations might also be willing to allow researchers or consultants access to situations in which white males are resisting management's efforts to diversity the workforce. Such instances, however, are rare. Rarer still is the executive willing to allow public documentation and discussion of such internal dissension.

(4) Numerous writers have described and documented the gendered nature of organizational life (see, for example, Acker, 1987; Ferguson, 1984) and the prevalence of white male culture in western organizations. For a more detailed analysis, see Fine (1995).

(5) Putnam (1983) provides a thorough description of the functionalist perspective in social science research generally and communication research in particular.

(6) The autobiographies by Hoffman (1989) and Rodriguez (1982) provide especially insightful and useful discussions about the relationship between language and identity.

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Marlene G. Fine is Dean of Graduate Studies at Emerson College and can be reached there at 100 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02116

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