The Purpose Of Affirmative Action

A key focus of organisations in a dynamic and uncertain environment is to maintain a competitive advantage. Academic literature emphasises the importance of maintaining a diverse work force in the quest for that advantage. Affirmative action is the creation of upward mobility for both minority groups and women (Schermerhorn et al., 2014) – the purpose of affirmative action programs is to provide and promote diversity. Holistically developed and appropriately executed affirmative action plans will successfully traverse the cultural, social, and legal structures of companies across the world, amplifying the positivity associated with workplace diversity (Combs et al., 2005). And thus, many organisations implement the programs in order to achieve

Through the example of Canada and United States policy makers setting affirmative actions goals in companies, Ng and Burke (2005) have found that both the majority groups and women and minority groups – the intended beneficiaries – have profusely rejected the notion. President Lyndon B. Johnson's view about affirmative action was "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say you are free to compete, with all the others, and still just believe that you have been completely fair”. It is argued that affirmative action is about fulfilling quotas (Davidson, 2012). The objective behind affirmative action is for the organizational workforce to reflect the percentage of targeted groups represented labour force, the process involving a cultivation of results-oriented efforts (Combs et al., 2005). White males, who are perceived as the majority, are opposed to affirmative action because they regard the practice as “abandoning the principle of merit in

Heilman, 1997 and Heilman et al., 1997 (as cited in Ng and Burke, 2005) found that the women who were hired under the required quota stipulated by affirmateive action felt diminished as they were often perceived by their coworkers to be less adequate and less qualified for the job. Hence, affirmative action policies can potentially create a stigma that minorities and women obtain positions in a company based on gender, race or ethnicity, rather than through achievement and qualifications. In the workplace, this stigma can translate into questioning the competence of minority and women employees to do their