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In today's gender role men are told they need to think like a woman (woman are more empathetic) and women need to act like a man (men are more aggressive). This stereotype floats are society and is perceive as why woman stay at home and men work. However, today they are more readily putting both the skills of a woman and men in a more diverse work culture.

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Disadvantages of Diversity in Organizations

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Disadvantages of Diversity in Organizations

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Managers must consistently change their management style in order to effectively manage different generations of employees.

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Leaders must be responsive to demographic shifts and a global marketplace.

Hemera Technologies/PhotoObjects.net/Getty Images

Business communities admire employers that strive to increase diversity throughout the workforce. However, companies that implement their strategies for increasing diversity encounter a number of challenges. The challenges related to receptiveness to training and prioritizing hiring decisions based on diversity can transform those challenges into disadvantages.

Mandatory Training

Increasing workplace diversity often includes mandatory diversity training, during which employees, supervisors and managers receive lessons on how best to interact with customers, clients and employees who represent diverse populations. Mandatory training for some employees is the equivalent of forcing employees to accept diversity at all costs, regardless of their personal exposure and experiences. Training that's forced upon employees may have unintended consequences. Employees who feel diversity training shouldn't be mandated might believe instead that the mere concept of diversity is more important than any other kind of employee training and development the employer provides to improve employees' skills and capabilities.

Hiring Manager Authority

In the name of increasing workplace diversity, employers may feel pressured to recruit applicants from diverse groups. Many hiring managers believe that employer edicts concerning increasing diversity require them to overlook more suitably qualified applicants in favor of applicants who bring diversity -- not necessarily talent -- to the organization. In these circumstances, hiring managers may begin to resent how increasing workplace diversity affects their ability to exercise independent judgment, as well as their authority in making hiring decisions.

Workplace Relationships

Employees who realize the company's goal is to increase diversity may feel they are less important if they don't represent the typical diverse populations that focus on race, sex, national origin, age and disability. In a workplace where employees don't belong to diverse populations, these employees may feel undervalued and unappreciated based purely on the fact that they don't represent diversity. They also might believe that employees from diverse groups have more opportunities for advancement, thus disrupting the working relationships they once had with colleagues and co-workers.

Myriad Accommodations

Although the premise of workplace diversity is mutual respect, making accommodations for numerous diverse groups' demands can become burdensome on employers, making diversity management difficult. Employee requests and work constraints based on religion, national origin, gender and race can become overwhelming if your workplace has so much diversity that it takes a full-time human resources staff member just to keep track of accommodating the needs of diverse groups in the workplace. Examples of accommodating numerous diverse populations include translating materials into multiple languages and having interpreters on hand for meetings with employees, accommodating employee absences due to religious practices or disabilities, as well as adjusting business hours to coincide with preferred schedules for employees with different work styles and personal obligations.

About the Author

Ruth Mayhew has been writing since the mid-1980s, and she has been an HR subject matter expert since 1995. Her work appears in "The Multi-Generational Workforce in the Health Care Industry," and she has been cited in numerous publications, including journals and textbooks that focus on human resources management practices. She holds a Master of Arts in sociology from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Ruth resides in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C.

Photo Credits

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Disadvantages in Increasing Diversity in the Workplace

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Business communities admire employers that strive to increase diversity throughout the workforce. However, companies that implement their strategies for increasing diversity encounter a number of challenges. The challenges related to receptiveness to training and prioritizing hiring decisions based on diversity can ...

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Advantages of Diversity in Organizations

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Advantages of Diversity in Organizations

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if managers can properly harness the talents of their diverse team they can obtain and sustain a competitive edge against competing organizations.

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Together the groups make up the entire social system of organization. Majority groups also don't have to be the largest groups. Most commonly the minority groups has a higher population.

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SociologyAndrew Rollings, Ph.D. Jun. 2006 MAJORITY AND MINORITY GROUP RELATIONS Along with gender, race and ethnicity create...

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Mangers are responsible for generating and maintaining workplace ethics that minimize unethical behavior and maximize ethical behavior.

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SOX promotes ethic conduct. It supports whistle-blowers in that it prohibits retaliation by employers to the whistle-blower.

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Sarbanes Oxley Act Of 2002 – SOX   Video Investopedia

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Several laws are in place to keep businesses social responsible. To name a few, there are Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

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Corporate Responsibility Magazine regularly publishes a list of the top 100 Best Corporate Citizens. Using a robust set of data, CR Magazine identifies which corporations are the most socially, environmentally, and ethically responsible, as well as which companies hold themselves accountable for being good corporate citizens. Lists at the other side of the spectrum, however, are less common. Corporate Accountability International maintains a rundown of the top corporate offenders, and so does the International Labor Rights Forum, but generally these lists receive less attention from consumers and policymakers.

It's possible that this is in part because no one wants to step on toes, or perhaps it's because "worst" is an element both highly subjective and difficult to quantify. We decided instead to rely on consumer opinion and bring you a list of the top 5 worst corporations in the U.S., according to a public poll conducted by the Consumerist.

The nominees for the original bracket were all submitted by readers - consumers just like yourself. While we've seen rankings of "worst corporations" based on reputation indexes, we thought the Consumerist rankings, though perhaps slightly less scientific, were more relevant to consumers today, since they were picked by consumers rather than researchers.

So without further ado, here are the top 5 worst corporations in the U.S. - the shadiest of the shady in American business.

5. Chase

Banks are never popular amongst consumers, but in 2013, JPMorgan Chase certainly made a name for itself. Last year, the bank was charged with two felony violations of the Bank Secrecy Act in connection with its relationship with Bernie Madoff.

Madoff, in case you've been out of the loop, conducted a $65 billion Ponzi scheme which is, to date, the largest investment scam in history. The bank since agreed to pay $1.7 billion in the largest bank forfeiture in history. The forfeiture is being directed victims of Madoff's schemes, per The New York Times.

The Bank Secrecy Act is a federal law that "requires banks to alert authorities to suspicious activity," according to The New York Times.

Between aiding in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme to "rigging electricity markets to fraudulently selling more than $33 billion in toxic mortgage securities and ripping off credit card customers, JPMorgan Chase is a virtual one-bank crime spree," wrote Dennis Kelleher, President and CEO of Better Markets, a nonprofit organization that promotes public interest in financial markets, per Corporate Crime Reporter.

As if to add insult to injury, JPMorgan Chase responded to the crime, which has been called "the scandal of our time," by giving CEO Jamie Dimon a raise. JPMorgan Chase's board of directors voted at the beginning of this year to increase Dimon's compensation for 2013, though the details of Dimon's pay package were not made public, per CNBC.

4. Walmart

Oh, Walmart. This discount retailer seems to crop up wherever corporate social responsibility is concerned. Among the company's many criticisms, the discount retailer has been accused of discrimination, human rights violations, environmental crimes, and more. When it comes to Walmart, there's a veritable laundry list of accusations on the world wide web.

In the past, labor unions in particular have hammered on Walmart for the company's policies and business practices. According to ThinkProgress.com, the company is expected to spend $300 million this year on regulatory and compliance enhancements, "including dealing with a complaint against the company from the National Labor Relations Board that it illegally retaliated against its striking employees."

The company has also gotten a lot of press recently for charges of discrimination. Though it's worth noting that Walmart has since begun to change its ways; in 2011, it became one of the largest retailers to add gender identity non-discrimination protections for its employees.

More recently, Walmart has taken a lot of flack for environmental crimes as well. In May of last year, Walmart plead guilty to several different environmental crimes, and the company eventually paid $81.6 million in damages; Walmart was found liable of failing to have a program in place for dealing with hazardous waste; and additionally, the company neglected to train employees in proper hazardous waste management and disposal at the store level.

As a result of having no program in place and failing to train its own staff, Walmart employees poured hazardous waste into local sewer systems, or disposed of it in municipal trash bins. Hazardous waste was also improperly transported without adequate safety documentation to one of six different disposal sites in the U.S.

"Walmart put the public and environment at risk and gained unfair economic advantage over other companies," said Ignacia S. Moreno, the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, per Corporate Crime Reporter.

"Truckloads of hazardous products, including more than two million pounds of pesticides, were improperly handled under Walmart's contract. Today's criminal fine should send a message to companies of all sizes that they will be held accountable to follow federal environmental laws," said Tammy Dickinson, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, in a statement per the FBI.

Products Walmart carries that contain hazardous materials include pesticides, solvents, detergents, paints, aerosols and cleaners. Walmart eventually plead guilty in San Francisco to six misdemeanor counts of violating the Clean Water Act.

Walmart's recent environmental lawsuit is just one of many criticisms leveled against the corporation. Walmart and it's big box business model has come under scrutiny multiple times over the past decade.

3. SeaWorld

SeaWorld comes in at number three on the Consumerist's "worst corporation" bracket, presumably in part because of the documentary Blackfish, an exposé of the cruel treatment of orca whales at the park. But SeaWorld really ticked off consumers with its response to the documentary which was, arguably, equally shady.

To name a few of SeaWorld's sketchy blunders in the wake of Blackfish, the entertainment park manipulated a public opinion poll, flat-out lied in an ad-campaign following Blackfish's release, and failed to execute a publicity stunt in which the company planned to bring two live penguins to a New York City bar.

SeaWorld's statement in response to the documentary notes that Blackfish is "shamefully dishonest, deliberately misleading, and scientifically inaccurate." That statement was released last summer, but the company remained largely silent into the winter. The company has since released a report on their website, called " The Truth About Blackfish," in which it attempts to debunk the documentary's exposé.

2. Monsanto

Monsanto is one of those companies that people love to hate. The Organic Consumers' Association has a campaign titled " Millions Against Monsanto," opposing the company and its practices, and more specifically, the company's role in supporting and developing genetically modified (GMO) crops.

Monsanto's most infamous injustice is the company's development and dispersal of "Agent Orange," otherwise known as "Herbicide Orange" during the Vietnam War. Agent Orange was a chemical defoliant and herbicide that was part of the U.S.'s "herbicidal warfare" tactic in Vietnam; one of the two herbicides used to make Agent Orange, 2,4-D, is actually (perhaps frighteningly) still in use today.

Agent Orange was manufactured as part of a partnership between Monsanto and Dow Chemical for the U.S. Department of Defense. The two companies are considered to have been particularly neglectful because 2,4,5-T was already proven to have severe health affects (in addition to significant negative ecological affects) prior to its use on innocent civilians as well as some U.S. soldiers in Vietnam.

Worse, it was later revealed that the 2,4,5-T herbicide used in Agent Orange was contaminated by TCDD (2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin.) Even very small amounts of TCDD have been linked to various cancers, including soft-tissue sarcoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Hodgkin's lymphoma, and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Further, 2,4,5-T has also been known to cause birth defects.

The Vietnamese Red Cross has reported that more than 3 million Vietnamese people have been affected by Agent Orange, including at least 150,000 children who have been born with birth defects. Currently, it's estimated that up to 1 million people are disabled or have health problems due to contaminated Agent Orange, according to CNBC.

Today, Monsanto is perhaps most hated for its role in creating and utilizing GMO seeds and herbicides. In more recent history, Monsanto is responsible for BST (otherwise known as rGBH), a growth hormone used in dairy cows that has been linked with breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer in humans, in addition to making cows more prone to conditions like mastitis and sores. Monsanto has also been persecuted for engineering sterile seeds, called "terminator technology," a tactic used to prevent seed-saving so that farmers must buy new seeds each year.

1. Comcast

Comcast has received a lot of exposure in the past year, primarily regarding the company's proposed merger to rival Time Warner Cable, a merger which would render Comcast the largest cable company in North America. Comcast and Time Warner are the No. 1 and No. 2 cable companies in the country currently, and a merger between the two would effectively give Comcast 30 percent of the U.S. cable market in addition to 35.5 percent of the U.S. high-speed internet market.

Comcast's plan to buy Time Warner cable "set off a wave of activity in the media industry," The New York Times noted in a recent update on the merger, with AT&T (successfully) pursuing DirecTV in a 48.5 billion merger deal shortly after Comcast and Time Warner reached its own $45 billion agreement.

The frenzy of mergers between media companies - particularly cable companies - is largely a survival strategy. Comcast and AT&T both know that the bigger it is, the more leverage it has against entertainment companies when negotiating programming costs. With the rise of new services and technologies like streaming online video (think Netflix, iTV, etc.), there's a definite possibility that unless cable companies find a way to make itself more relevant, it will be witnessing its own demise soon enough. It is, perhaps, a natural reaction to attempt to become larger and larger in an effort to stay relevant, even if that means monopolizing the market.

By and large, consumer response to the Comcast/Time Warner deal has been downright visceral, and many antitrust watchdog groups have jumped on the proposal. On June 11, the American Antitrust Institute called for enforcers to block the deal, according to Corporate Crime Reporter. AAI (along with many consumers) believe that the deal could pose some very serious problems for competition, and therefore consumers as well.

"A merged Comcast-TWC could exercise buyer market power against content and video distribution markets and potentially exclude rivals," said Diane Moss of AAI.

Luckily, according to The New York Times update, there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Speaking of the Comcast-TWC merger, media analyst Craig Moffett noted in an interview with The Times that it seems "a little less inevitable than it once did." We'll just have to wait and see.

More From Business Cheat Sheet:

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5 of the Most Hated Businesses in America

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Corporate Responsibility Magazine regularly publishes a list of the top 100 Best Corporate Citizens. Using a robust set of data, CR Magazine identifies which corporations are the most socially, environmentally, and ethically responsible, as well as which companies hold themselves accountable for being good corporate citizens.

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Business are responsible for taking action that both keeps the interest of their company and society.

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We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." - Winston Churchill.
Being Socially Responsible means that people and organisations must behave ethically and with sensitivity toward social, cultural, economic and environmental issues. Striving for social responsibility helps individuals, organisations and governments have a positive impact on development, business and society with a positive contribution to bottom-line results.

Individual Social Responsibility (ISR) to achieve Corporate Social Responsibility (CSP)

ISP may appear to be a new concept in relation to CSP, but it is a concept as old as The Golden Rule - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. ISR expands on this by promoting a proactive stance tow ards positively influencing and affecting the people and environments outside your immediate circle. ISR is at the roots of CSR, because a corporate comprises of individuals and hence determines the social responsibility culture it creates. This is the intermingled relationship between CSR and ISR. Individuals are becoming more socially responsible and, in response to this Corporations and Companies need to become more socially responsible to meet consumer demand.

The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) states: "In the wake of increasing globalisation, we have become increasingly conscious not only of what we buy, but also how the goods and services we buy have been produced. Environmentally harmful production, child labor, dangerous working environments and other inhumane conditions are examples of issues being brought into the open. All companies and organisations aiming at long-term profitability and credibility are starting to realise that they must act in accordance with norms of right and wrong."

Socially responsible individuals are demanding companies and organisations to become more socially responsible.

How Does an Individual Become Socially Responsible?

The Workshop for Civic Initiatives Foundation (WCIF), Bulgaria, describes ISR in its position statement on Social Responsibility as,
"The individual social responsibility includes the engagement of each person towards the community where he lives, which can be expressed as an interest towards what's happening in the community, as well as in the active participation in the solving of some of the local problems. Under community we understand the village, the small town or the residential complex in the big city, where lives every one of us. Each community lives its own life that undergoes a process of development all the time. And everyone of us could take part in that development in different ways, for example by taking part in cleaning of the street on which he lives, by taking part in organization of an event, connected with the history of the town or the village or by rendering social services to children without parents or elderly people. The individual social responsibility also could be expressed in making donations for significant for the society causes - social, cultural or ecological. There are many ways of donating, as for example donating of goods or donating money through a bank account or online"

Social Responsibility can be "negative," in that it is a responsibility to refrain from acting (resistance stance) or it can be "positive," meaning there is a responsibility to act (proactive stance). Being socially responsible not only requires participating in socially responsible activities like recycling, volunteering and mentoring, but to actually make it a lifestyle. Only through a commitment to embrace and embed social responsibility into your personal value and belief system can you truly become socially responsible in all you do.

According to The Harris Poll ®#57 , June 18, 2007[7], when it comes to individual social responsibility, there are three types of people:

1. Two-thirds of U.S. adults have "Good Intentions" - they believe that social responsibility is a good idea, and they do what they can in terms of volunteering, but they do not sacrifice huge amounts of time or money.

2. At the top end of the spectrum, 8 percent of U.S. adults "Practice What They Preach" and for this group, individual, as well as corporate, social responsibility is extremely important.

3. One-quarter of U.S. adults, however, follow a philosophy of "To Thine Own Self Be True" and, for this group, social responsibility has little consequence in their lives.

On the other hand the trends show that the biggest growth for big charitable organisations in the world is coming through individuals and not through Corporations and Governments [8].

To take a proactive stance, ISR can start off as a simple act of philanthropic behaviour. My husband and I actually budget for giving, just like we do for living or car expenses. Add to this the campaigner, volunteer and activist in you that picks-up and supports issues affecting society. You may just start off volunteering once a month somewhere that suits your skills, abilities or interests. The other day, I asked a friend if he could teach my son guitar. We determined a tuition cost but instead of me paying him, he asked me if I could pay the charity of his choice. If you have the choice of two products and one product supports a good cause or was produced in a more ethical way, then purchase that product. You may only be one person but if everyone did their part, we could change the world!

All Social responsibility, both individual and corporate, is voluntary; it is about going above and beyond what is called for by the law(legal responsibility). It involves an idea that it is better to be proactive toward a problem rather than reactive to a problem. Social responsibility means eliminating corrupt, irresponsible or unethical behavior that might bring harm to the community, its people, or the environment before the behavior happens.
Social Responsibility Quotes:
"I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live." ~George Bernard Shaw

"The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor." ~Hubert H. Humphrey

"One is a member of a country, a profession, a civilization, a religion. One is not just a man." ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings 1939-1944, translated from French by Norah Purcell

"Each of us is a being in himself and a being in society, each of us needs to understand himself and understand others, take care of others and be taken care of himself." ~Haniel Long

"We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future." ~Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Independence"... [is] middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth." ~G.B. Shaw, Pygmalion, 1912

"A machine has value only as it produces more than it consumes - so check your value to the community." ~Martin H. Fischer

"A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's." ~Richard Whately

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men." ~Herman Melville

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We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." - Winston Churchill. ISP may appear to be a new concept in relation to CSP, but it is a concept as old as The Golden Rule - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.