Diversity generally refers to the co-existence of employees from various socio-cultural backgrounds within the company. It includes factors such as race, …show more content…
In the past, demographic differences such as sex and age were related to team level effects (Williams and O’Reilly, 1998). So increasingly, managers in both public and private organisations have a pressing need to comprehend, foresee and manage this fascinating nature of the diverse workforce. An understanding about the history of diversity management would provide an idea about the evolution of the importance attached to a diverse workforce in organisations. While several organizations have accepted diversity, others still regard it merely a matter of complying with legal …show more content…
No organisation in this globalized world would subsist without a multi-cultural workforce. Therefore, it is the responsibility of business leaders to analytically assess the advantages of workforce diversity in their respective organisations. On the other hand business leaders should also adopt conditions that would enhance the workforce diversity in their respective organizations, especially in their strategies devising on the diversity of the workforce. Hence, with workforce diversity, the organisation would ultimately become internally and externally competitive.
In terms of organizational education, businesses are still caught on the difficulty of getting people to value diversity and is yet to determine ways to utilize and exploit it (Porras, 1991). It is the approach to diversity, not the diversity itself that determines the actual positive and negative outcomes (Adler, 1997).
Managing diversity in organizations is unquestionably reliant on the recognition of some key objectives to which staff are prepared to commit, such as the subsistence of the firm (Gentile, 1994). In today's fast-paced work environment, a successful business is one where diversity is the norm and not the exception (Lawrence,