Eighteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

The theory of representative bureaucracy posits that a bureaucracy that is demographically reflective of the broader population it serves will produce better policies and outcomes for the organization and for society as a whole. In modern public bureaucracies, a bureaucracy becomes representative through the implementation of diversity policies. The better outcomes (organizational performance) can be measured through factors such as job satisfaction, cultural synergy, and person-job fit. These outcomes are important for the overall effectiveness of government as they impact a wide variety of factors like employee morale, absenteeism, turnover, or problem-solving capabilities and general work outputs. Currently, there is no consensus as to what the best diversity policy is, or which policies have the best performance outcomes. Therefore, this study will measure organizational performance outputs of different diversity policies within a similar context in order to ameliorate this discord and provide some conclusive evidence as to which diversity policy has stronger organizational performance. In this study, which will focus on the Canadian context, equal employment opportunity (EEO) and diversity management (DM) will be tested, as these are the two different types of policies that exist in Canada. This will be done quantitatively through an analysis of two public service censuses. Hence, the current study pursues the following question: how do different types of diversity policies affect organizational performance in public sector organizations? In this research, types of diversity policies are the independent variable, and organizational performance is the dependent variable.