Capacity for Empathy: Confronting Discrimina tion in Managing Multi cultural Work Force Diversity

Abstract

This commentary focuses exclusively on problems of dis crimination as a major obstruction in managing diversity and incorporates an experiential training exercise for con fronting discrimination to better understand the difficulties in "going beyond equality" in managing diversity. The exer cise communicates the needed capacity for empathy or ability to cope with the emotional reactions of unequal treat ment that inevitably occur when socially or ethnically dif ferent people work together in organizations. The exercise and results of a recent field study reported herein focus on traditional forms of black and white discrimination. How ever, the procedure and instrument are general and may be modified to fit unique situations.