The State Department: managing diversity

The State Department: Managing Diversity

Recently, I've read several articles urging managers to look ahead and to consolidate and expand the workplace gains of equal employment opportunity. Managers, using the techniques of "post-modern" personnel management, were to create a workplace where differences in style and subculture would not just be tolerated but would be accepted and welcomed. The articles stressed that good managers should do so because it was the right and profitable thing to do. Also, they had to do so because the US work force was developing along lines very different from its present composition. Between now and the year 2000, 22% of new workers will be immigrant males and females, 22% will be native nonwhite males and females, 42% will be native white females, and only 15% native white males.

Equal Employment Opportunity In the Workplace

Clearly, if the American work force of the future is to be dynamic and productive in work settings that are efficient and fair, the so-called US business mainstream will have to develop a new, more accommodating managerial ethic. Such a new managerial ethic may be distinct from that of a Germany or a Japan, where national traditions and the makeup of the work force allow for a very high degree of discipline and regimentation. Such an ethic, in the first place, must be effective; in addition, it must be consistent with our own national aptitudes and traditions.

Can we do it? Straight away, the answer is an unqualified yes. Our country is built on a premise of diversity; we must develop such an ethic if we are to be a department of government that interacts with the world.

From a Foreign Service perspective, one can see how this can be done in America--and why we in the Foreign and Civil Services can pioneer such a new organizational model.

America: Unity As Well As Variety

Americans who have grown up seeing our country only from a domestic point of view may be more conscious than we are of our domestic problems and of our regional, economic, and ethnic differences. But with distance often comes perspective. The Foreign Service observer looks at America and sees two sets of characteristics relevant to the theme of this article.

First, for all of its variety, America viewed from abroad seems a remarkably unified, harmonious composition. The details and color fall into place, as those of a painting do when seen from the right distance. Many average, native-born Americans discover this too: African-Americans, Irish-Americans, Greek-Americans who go back to their countries of origin learn a lot, including just how important this "Americanism" is in the eyes of the citizens of their "cultural background country." Similarly, new immigrants often are impressed by how rapidly our society accepts them and their children. There never could have been an Edmund Muskie, a Henry Kissinger, a Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Hermann F. Eilts, or a Carl Schurz (to go back a while) anywhere but in the United States of America. Two of our recent Rhodes scholars were children of Vietnamese refugees.

The unity and cohesion of America become even more evident with South Africa in discernible transition to a possible multi-racial country of unlimited possibilities, as the communist ice cap recedes, and as centrifugal force pulls at the former Iron Curtain countries--and even the USSR itself.

Second, America's openness, energy, and creativity continue to astonish and to motivate much of the world. Our culture and even our language--American English--are welcoming and egalitarian; our universities--the best in the world--reflect these American traits and are a Mecca for foreign students everywhere. Senegalese President Diouf has specifically said he wants his cadre of new government workers to have a practical education--best obtained, says he, in the United States.

Unity, openness, energy--these characteristics help to show how Americans created history's first and only multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy of continental proportions. Our Constitution and the ideals underlying it enable us coherently to organize unparalleled variety into a working nation-state. More importantly, many societies seem to embody these principles, as we have, but without the constitutionally structured commitment.

The Department As a Model of Diversity

This brings us back to the immediate question: How can the Department of State take the American ability to evoke a unified national effort out of varying cultural traditions and apply it to itself?

We can start by becoming more self-conscious of what is being done in the private sector as companies anticipate and respond to the changing composition of our society and use it as a useful tool. Leading companies accept the fact and consequences of a more varied work force. They use various techniques better to tap the potential for their employees: cultural audits, management-labor seminars, sensitivity training, networking, mentoring, plus the specific celebration of ethnic customs, food, and history. In such companies, minorities see themselves not as recipients of a sort of managerial charity but as an important and well-integrated part of the organization's work and culture. Companies have found that by constructively managing diversity--by accepting and even celebrating it--they can improve organization morale and performance, and, most importantly, they learn more about their country and its people.

The Department of State employs many similar management techniques and procedures to create a more participatory workplace. In some respects, we may even be in advance of the private sector. How many corporations would consider assigning women to top positions in Saudi Arabia or other Arabian Peninsula nations or sending an African-American to represent the organization in South Africa?

We keep trying, moreover. In 1990, for instance, our Foreign Service officer generalist study was completed and implemented, and we have undertaken a unified recruiting effort that includes more vigorous minority outreach. Other studies are underway of the Foreign Service specialist function, of Foreign Service secretaries, of Civil Service employees at the Department of State, and of the role of our American family members, and there are more. In these studies, we have sought to build and arrive at consensus by the freest exchange we could devise.

A common, fundamental purpose of these studies--and of the process by which they are conducted--is to reduce or eliminate whatever in our institution impedes the open, efficient conduct of business among Foreign Service people. Time must elapse before we know how effective our changes will be. There is some reason for optimism, though, because our changes reflect extensive internal discussions and a capacity for internal self-education. They have the benefit, moreover, of building on the efforts of previous years.

Even before our current initiatives were announced, our institution was becoming more open, flexible, and representative. We have made progress toward making our workplaces congenial to Americans of every sort and background. We must continue proactively and vigorously.

Our current criteria show there have been gradual, steady increases in the percentages of minorities serving as Foreign Service officer generalists. Between 1981 and 1989, the totals of minority Foreign Service officers rose from 9% to 13.1% and that of women from 16.4% of the Foreign Service officer corps to 23.4%. At the same time, the percentage of white males declined from 76.9% to 67.4%. Relative progress is even more visible if we consider the gains made by minorities and women at the junior-and mid-levels from 1981 to 1989.

Conclusion

None of these accomplishments is sufficient reason to celebrate. What has so far been achieved shows only that results are possible; it should motivate us to try harder. But the more I study our institution and travel to posts overseas, the more I am convinced that we are a more welcoming institution than we were in the past. I sense a genuine evolution of spirit within our service. I expect that because of the kind of people we profess to be.

I repeat: Much remains to be done. In any career institution, there can be a significant time lag between a shift in an organization's culture and when this shift is reflected at all levels of that organization. But I believe that we have approached a watershed and that the driving force for a more tolerant, open, and representative institution comes increasingly from my Foreign and Civil Service colleagues themselves. Edward J. Perkins, Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Personnel

COPYRIGHT 1990 U.S. Government Printing Office
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