Page 140 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

5. ORGANIZATIONAL-LEVEL DISCRIMINATION
109
Moving beyond domestic boundaries presents a number of cultural and
legal complexities in dealing with discrimination. For example, we previ­
ously discussed the importance of building an organizational climate and
culture that is intolerant of discrimination, of designing HR systems to re­
flect values for inclusiveness, and of the importance of top management
support for a zero-tolerance policy on discrimination. Yet a key question
is how organizations can create and sustain such processes and structures
when operating on foreign soil where there may be different cultural prac­
tices, values, and norms regarding discrimination that conflict with those
in the United States. As noted by Cava and Mayer (1993), multinational
organizations often feel pressure to follow local norms in the host coun­
try in which they are operating, in order to gain a competitive advantage.
Many companies may simply "take the line of least resistance" (Hutchings,
1998), causing multinationals to be reluctant to transfer their own practices
regarding discrimination to the host country. A critical question, then, is
how U.S. companies that are attempting to create a global organizational
culture attempt to "negotiate" the culture for intolerance of discrimination
that is derived from Westerns practices, values, and laws, with those of
other cultures. In some countries, legal restrictions prevent women in the
local context from occupying particular jobs (Cava & Mayer, 1993)—and, in
effect, contrary to the U.S. civil rights act, gender can be considered a bona
fide occupational qualificiation (BFOQ). Relatedly, whereas U.S.-based em­
ployees operating on foreign soil are still technically protected by the Civil
Rights Act (Caligiuri & Cascio, 1998), women and minorities may still face
overt and covert discrimination in other cultures. Research has shown that
U.S. female expatriates, for example, experience overt prejudice and dis­
crimination from host nationals (Izraeli, Banai, & Zeira, 1980; Stone, 1991).
At the same time, it is also important to examine how cultural constructions
of what constitutes discriminatory behavior may vary across cultures. For
example, perceptions of what is considered sexual harassment can vary
across cultural boundaries (Pryer et al., 1997), as can cultural norms for
coping with harassment (Wasti & Cortina, 2002). A critical agenda for dis­
crimination research, therefore, is to understand how to best protect diverse
employees operating in discriminatory environments abroad, while at the
same time, being culturally sensitive to local definitions and practices.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, we have argued that discrimination in organizations is
a complex, multi-determined phenomenon. We emphasized that orga­
nizations need to critically analyze how organizational structures, pro­
cesses, and practices separately and collectively serve to perpetuate