In this chapter, not only conclusion of the overall study on the basis of the finding conducted in the previous chapter as well as possible limitations caused by the samples will be provided. Additionally, in this chapter, research implications, practical implications, and future research suggestions for future study are reported in this chapter.
Conclusions
This study aimed at investigating the effects between coming out and workplace friendship on job satisfaction in Taiwan. Firstly, the results showed that in the sample of Taiwanese employees whether they are in management level or non-management level, coming out will surely influence job satisfaction. To put it differently, employees who choose to come out in the workplace will have higher job satisfaction. Moreover, there was a relationship between workplace friendship and job satisfaction. Employees who work in a much friendly workplace will have higher job satisfaction. It could be said that workplace friendship did play an important role in improving job satisfaction. Lastly, there was a relationship between workplace friendship and coming out choice. When being in a friendly workplace, it would improve coming out willingness. At the same time, coming out choices would be made once the workplace was friendly enough.
Practical Implications of the Study
Firstly, in order to make a better working environment, it is believed that employers and employees should both continue working together and keep looking on the bright side to make the workplace friendly. If the workplace is more friendly and non-discriminated, homosexual can be free while they are doing their jobs in the workplace. Moreover, because of the processing society, it won’t be necessary for homosexual to especially show sexual orientation
to other people. Due to the rising awareness of gender equality, people surrounded are more and more respectful to others. The trend shows that lots of countries have some protections or laws for the homosexual in the last decade, trying to make a friendly workplace for the reason of gender identity and sexual orientation.
Though countries around the world seen “all citizens irrespective of sex, religion, race, class, or party affiliation, shall be equal before the law” as one of their laws, the truth is that people of different sexual orientation have been discriminated for a long time. For several years, discriminations happen among different sexual orientation group or so called sexual minorities in the workplace has been studied by lots of researches. To contribute some devotions to different fields and make a better and much more friendly working environment is an important issue for any organizations.
The researcher has figured out that workplace friendship. It will prevent sexual minorities from performing well and their working productivities may be decreased because they are lacking of their core functions on the job. Moreover, it will gain some unnecessary costs because of absenteeism, lowering productivity, being unmotivated, difficulty trusting coworkers or superiors, frustration, anxiety, and experiences of isolation.
Then, from the findings of the study, due to different style of workplace, it will also influence coming out choice. How to improve the workplace? As human resource professionals, to provide counselling for not only homosexual employees but also all the members. All the employees might change their concept through training and development. Training is good and easy way to improve the working environment and deal with discriminations only if the organizational culture and climate and fit together to prevent discriminations happening. As a human resource professional, all we should do is keep the idea that there is no difference
between all the employees because everyone should have the same opportunities, challenges or even punishments to show the equality. Also, the organization should form a complete set and procedures about discriminations. Human resource professionals should also cooperate together and be able to hear any voices and take actions without hesitation.
Research Limitations
Each research would have some limitations that need to be improved. For this research limitation, the researcher could define the sampling criteria more. Data was to be originally collected by convenience sampling and snowball sampling. However, because of limited time, data was mostly collected by snowball sampling. This might cause sample bias leading to limitations of the results generalizability.
First, the samples for this research was gay or lesbians who are having jobs now. According to the descriptive statistics, some of these participants are females and non-management.
The differences between men and women, the same situation as in a management level or non-management level. This may cause the result to be different. Second, because the researcher used Internet to collect data via Facebook or PTT, so it showed that a large part of the participants we got were young or students. To ensure that we get more correctly, objective, and various data, it is worth to focus on the age, gender, position in different level.
Future Research Suggestions
According to the limitations, there are some suggestions for the future research in this field. First, there may be a bias of answers because the respondents were female which means that most of answers were lesbians. It is suggested that get the sample more randomly and more widely distributed in order to get more samples from different age level, education level, and
also the position level. Second, it will be interesting for other researchers to do the study on the reason for coming out choice. Whether it will be qualitative or quantitative research, digging it deeper into different reasons or situations. Reasons may differ in families, religions, beliefs, and organization cultures. Therefore, it is suggested to include more dimensions in every variable and test each one’s effect separately. Moreover, putting more emphasis on different position level of coming out or not. Coming out choices may be influenced because of someone’s position level, being received less pressure when they are a manager or in a management level. Last, the current study is a quantitative research which focuses on the coming out and workplace friendship, while workplace friendship is too broad and a subjective perception to examine merely by the approaches of quantitative research.
Therefore, it is suggested that future research can try to apply qualitative research so as to get a further understand the deeper aspect of the related issues.
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