Page 171 - Essencials of Sociology

144 CHAPTER 5 Social Groups and Formal Organizations

not the wave of the future, most large companies have “diversity training” (Bennett
2010). They hold lectures and workshops so that employees can learn to work with
colleagues of diverse cultures and racial–ethnic backgrounds.
Coors Brewery is a prime example. Coors went into a financial tailspin after one of
the Coors brothers gave a racially charged speech in the 1980s. Today, Coors holds
diversity workshops, sponsors gay dances, has paid for a corporate-wide mammography
program, and has opposed an amendment to the Colorado constitution that would ban
same-sex marriage. Coors has even sent a spokesperson to gay bars to promote its beer
(Kim 2004). The company has also had rabbis certify its suds as kosher. Quite a change.
Coors even adopted the slogan “Coors cares.” Cute, but this slogan does not mean
that Coors cares about diversity. What Coors cares about is the same as other corpora-
tions, the bottom line. Blatant racism and sexism once made no difference to profit-
ability. Today, they do. To promote profitability, companies must promote diversity—or
at least give the appearance of doing so. The sincerity of corporate leaders is not what’s
important; diversity in the workplace is.
Pepsi provides a good example of a positive, effective approach to diversity training.
Managers are given the assignment of sponsoring a group of employees who are unlike
themselves. Men sponsor women, African Americans sponsor whites, and so on. The
executives are expected to try to understand the work situation from the perspective of
the people they sponsor, to identify key talent, and to personally mentor at least three
people in their group. Accountability is built in: The sponsors have to give updates to
executives even higher up (Terhune 2005).
Researchers have found that forcing workers to participate in diversity programs
or doing the minimum to prevent lawsuits produces resentment. But setting goals for
increasing diversity and making managers accountable for reaching these goals increase
the diversity of a company’s workers.

For Your Consideration
Do you think that corporations and government agencies should offer diversity training?
↑
Can you suggest practical ways to develop workplaces that overcome divisions of gender and
race–ethnicity? ■

Technology and the Control of Workers:
Summarize major issues
5.4
in the technological control Toward a Maximum-Security Society
of workers. Explain how
global competition is affecting The microchip is affecting all areas of society. One of the most ominous is the greater
corporations. potential to create a police state. It is now easier than ever before in history for governments
to monitor our behavior, eventually our every move. The Big Brother (as in Orwell’s classic
novel 1984) may turn out to be a master computer that makes servants of us all.
We should know shortly. Computers now monitor millions of workers. In some
group dynamics the ways in workplaces, cameras even analyze workers’ facial expressions (Neil 2008). Other cameras
which individuals affect groups and outside the workplace, called “little brothers” (as compared with Orwell’s “Big Brother”),
the ways in which groups influence take video images of us as we walk on the street and shop in stores. As some analysts sug-
individuals gest, we seem to be moving toward a maximum-security society (Marx 1995; Whitehead
2010). With the surveillance of even our emails and telephone calls, this seems an apt term
(Hopkins et al. 2013). As with the workers in the Sociology and the New Technology box
on the next page, few of us realize how extensively we are being monitored.
5.5 Be familiar with the effects
of group size on stability, intimacy,
attitudes, and behavior; types
and styles of leaders; the Asch Group Dynamics
experiment on peer pressure; the
Group dynamics is a fascinating area of sociology. This term refers to how groups influ-
Milgram experiment on authority;
ence us and how we influence groups. Most of the ways that groups influence us lie
and the implications of groupthink.
below our sense of awareness, however, so let’s see if we can bring some of this to the