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Diversity in the Workforce: Current Issues and Emerging Trends
Test Bank Essay Questions
Chapter 1
1. Explain how Brown versus the Board of Education has influenced the current state of
education as we know it today.
2. If you were President Kennedy, what strategies would you have used to address issues of
inequality (racism, sexism, segregation, lack of access to employment, education, and
voting) affecting African Americans, women, and people of color in the workplace and
society in the 1960s and 1970s?
3. Provide four examples for each of the three categories below highlighting how human
diversity issues have improved, remained the same, and become worse in the workplace
and society since the 1960’s Civil Rights movement. What three recommendations do
you offer to improve the last category?
4. Provide five detailed reasons why it is important to study current and emerging
workforce diversity issues today.
5. What are six differences between a monolithic organization (two examples), a plural
organization (two examples), and a multicultural organization (two examples)?
6. As demographics continue to shift in the United States and globally, what impact will this
growing trend have in the workplace and on diversity education and training in the
future? Provide four examples.
7. From your perspective, what impact has the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 had on
improving today’s work environment as it relates to leveraging workforce diversity?
Provide five examples.
8. In what way has affirmative action been effective in promoting diversity and inclusion in
organizations and society?
9. Explain what diversity in the workforce represents.
10. Explain what diversity in the workforce does not represent.
11. In your opinion, why is diversity in the workforce so important in the 21st century?
12. Explain the meanings of diversity management, strategic management, and world class
diversity management.
Chapter 2
1. Describe three ways that theories, models, and frameworks are useful in supporting
workforce diversity efforts. You should have a total of nine examples.
2. Describe six ways the Critical Racism Pedagogy Model (Byrd & Scott, 2010) and the
Social Justice Critical Reflection Model (Ingram &Walters, 2007) are similar.
3. Describe the vision for creating multicultural organizations (Cox, 1993).
4. Describe the four components of the Model for Creating Diversity by Allen and
Montgomery (2001).
5. Describe the ways the Embedded Intergroup Relations Theory supports Wagley and
Harris’s (1964) description of diverse groups.
6. Describe goals and value of the Diverse Voices Conference Model by Scott (2005; 2011).
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7. Describe six central characteristics and values of Sheared’s (1999) Polyrhythmic
Realities Model.
Chapter 3
1. Discuss and give examples of the three forms of organizational culture described by
Spataro (2005).
Chapter 4
1. Why has the Black/White binary been central to the discussion of race?
2. Compare and contrast the constructionist and structural approaches to studying race.
Chapter 5
1. How does the social role theory contribute to explaining gender and diversity in the
workforce?
Chapter 6
1. What is meant be the term ethnicity?
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Chapter 7
1. How might an individual’s level of sexual identity development relate to their level of job
satisfaction?
Chapter 8
1. Define classism. Discuss how classism is evidenced at the individual, institutional, and
cultural levels.
Chapter 9
1. Discuss the varying definitions and perspectives of spirituality presented in this chapter.
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Chapter 10
1. Define intergenerational conflict. Give specific ways that this phenomenon could occur in
the workplace.
Chapter 11
1. In what way(s) is organizational culture impacted by linguistic profiling in the
workplace?
2. If communication is the thread that links people together within and across organizations,
how is communication impacted by linguistic profiling in the workplace?
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Chapter 12
1. Explain why personal/physical appearance stigmatizing is an emerging diversity issue.
Chapter 13
1. Define the term disability.
2. Describe the focus of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990.
Chapter 14
1. Compare and contrast racial discrimination and racial harassment.
2. Discuss the historical significance of racial hate symbols. How have these symbols re-
emerged?
Chapter 15
1. When considering the definition of globalization, what has been the role of globalization
in the modern business environment? Discuss the challenges and opportunities that
globalization has presented to the individual worker in an organization that is just
beginning to forge business relationships in a diverse market?
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Chapter 16
1. Discuss how the term diversity has evolved.
2. Discuss how the chapters of this textbook have established a foundation for a social
justice paradigm. Give specific examples discussed by the authors that support the need
for social justice.