Problems Facing Minorities in Achieving Executive Positions (Essay Sample)

Problems Facing Minorities in Achieving Executive Positions
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Problems Facing Minorities in Achieving Executive Positions
Over the last decades and in the contemporary working world, minorities encounter several issues that prevent them from attaining careers as leaders and executives in many organizations. According to Johns (2013), there were almost no minorities in top management positions in the period between the 1970s and 1990s. However, information from Wilson (2014) and Murray (2016) demonstrates a dramatic increase of minorities in executive leadership roles. Impediments to minority advancement have been broadly attributed to various factors like business drivers, life in a straight jacket, managing relationships, work and life balance, and navigating a governance presence.
Business Drivers
The contemporary job market is majorly focused on short-term monetary returns. This creates incentives that inhibit long- term corporate performance (Miller & Tucker 2013). The prevailing short-term drives impact on corporate culture, business operations, and the kind of leadership qualities that are sought and remunerated. These short term drives inhibit the optimization of minorities’ contribution to organizational outcomes. According to Van Wart (2013), this predominant profile of good leaders are based on the stereotypical qualities of majority rather than the minority group. For instance, preoccupation with instant financial performance supports a left brain bias that tends to favor relatively hard skills like expediency, rationality, and numeracy, over soft skills like relationship building. These hard skills can hardly be found in the minority group such as females (Van Wart, 2013). Also, this culture is characterized by a greater tolerance tor control communication and bullish command.
The present job market is also dominated by a culture of competition that crates a winner psyche. People strive to follow success and tend to fear marginality (Ragins, Townsend & Mattis, 1998). They tend to avoid critique and do not accommodate difference. To fit in, the needs of individuals, particularly those of the minority, are suppressed. The alliance of numeric competency with brainpower, combined with a gender-based assumption that females are arithmetically less competent, supports the notion that the minority such as women innately lack leadership expertise. Moreover, Ragins, Townsend & Mattis (1998) add that the decision making and communication styles attributed to the disadvantaged, for instance, being collegial and inclusive, are perceived as incompatible with the preferred leadership traits of expediency and decisiveness. The reluctance of the minorities to take part in a game of aggressive personal policies and strategic survival is viewed as a weakness or lack of ambition on their part.
Life in a Straight Jacket
Most minorities face several cultural dilemmas in an attempt to follow success. The market environment is preoccupied with a limiting minority archetype that places the disadvantaged in a cultural pit (Cook & Glass, 2013). As a result, only a few manage to flawlessly traverse organizational life. Women for instance, are exposed to intense scrutiny that surpasses performance. They are constantly judged on their communication style and appearance. In such a case, highly talented but disadvantaged individuals can be excluded and shelved from top leadership positions on the basis of poor cultural fit. In the view of Cook & Glass (2013), most of these minorities try to adjust to the aspects of the narrow cultural setting, accept the challenge, and assume the responsibility for their perceived poor cultural fit. Such individuals become sensitive to their perceived marginality at an executive level and to their lack of social accommodation. It is hence their visibility that renders them very vulnerable. Consequently, they demonstrate the anxiety of the disadvantaged in penetrating and maintaining the top positions.
A number of minorities display secrecy and guilt and fear any association with certain programs they deem unfit for the marginalized individuals. A high degree of compromise and personal adaptation interferes with the performance potential of the minorities and never demonstrate a successful strategy (Connolly, Marino & Lucio, 2014). While marginalized groups such as women face implicit cultural barriers to show their true value, their act of accommodating the masculine archetype of authority breeds derision, suspicion, and cultural isolation. The insistent level of scrutiny for some women, makes them exist organizations, leading to loss of valuable pool of talent.
Managing Relationships
Relationship management is key to organizational life. This is because good relationships are vital to career advancement and sustainability (Al Ariss, et. al., 2013). Since it is majorly men who assume positions of power, the minorities group like women who aspire to succeed have to develop good relationships with them. For instance, they have to be conversant with the tacit rules and behavior codes that nurture this dynamic of strategic relationship. The minority, in this case women, do not usually fit in a culture of mastership. They often absent themselves from networking occasions like games of golf or drinks at the pub. They lack men’s inborn ability to create strategic alliances in hierarchical settings. This deficiency of socialization ability among the minorities denies them the capacity to discuss hierarchy. This is because the experience of friendship and safety in the group offers a powerful remedy to the loss of autonomy necessitated in hierarchy. Al Ariss, et. al., (2013) argue that the failure of the less fortunate to gain the whole strategic advantage from work relationships leads to their exclusion from the prospects afforded by these relationships. While they may recognize the potentials of these informal alliances and networks, such individuals are often not aware of the mechanisms of informal profession pathways. The implication is that the strategy that can open leadership doors is elusive to most of the minorities.
Work/Life Balance
Increasing numbers of minorities are struggling to balance the demands of work and those of family life. According to research findings, there is a close relationship between reduced flexibility and loss of management talent. According to Thomas (2004), though highly skilled minorities in full-time employment have a more likelihood of accessing flexible work opportunities, the level of flexibility decreases as we approach the topmost end of the administrative hierarchy. Nonetheless, the inclusion of diversity into workplace remains a major challenge to the minorities (Thomas, 2004). Choosing flexibility for instance, means having a lesser commitment among the workforce. The aspect of flexibility may hence fail to meet the demands of senior minority talent. Generally, it is women, perceived as a minority group, who are in a better position to manage the work and life balance.
According to Johns (2013), women naturally bear a larger amount of responsibility for family and home. This implies that in an organization whose work ethic is driven by a 24/7 strategy, women can hardly survive since there is little or no cultural tolerance for balancing domestic and commercial worlds. Wilson (2014) and Murray (2016) argue that in most of the contemporary organizations, time spent in the workplace is considered a powerful pointer of work commitment. This assumption is disadvantageous to women who are responsible for the family life as well. Some women may hence be reluctant to hold executive positions for the reason that they would not effectively accommodate both workplace and domestic demands.
Navigating a Governance Presence
Research findin...