Multicultural and diversity management

Diversity management is the “recognition and valorization of individual differences”. The concept of diversity encompasses acceptance and respect. It means understanding that each individual is unique, and recognizing our individual differences. These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic, status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies. It is the exploration of these differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing environment. Moreover, it is about understanding each other and moving beyond simple tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of diversity in each individual.

Implication for managers

It is important for managers to understand cognitive diversity. One of the reasons is that the problems of todays’ business activities are complex to a higher extent than multiple years ago. Understanding the concept of cognitive diversity therefore is highly desirable for good management. Moreover, research projects are larger and more expensive, partly due to the economic hard times. Another result of the economic downfall is the greater need for innovation. Since competition increased significantly, companies have to diversify and innovate on fields other than their direct and indirect opponents. A last point of attention would include the essence of predicting the future becoming more important in the years that lay ahead of us.

Implications of managers on the work level are can be seen as more practical than the concepts described above. This can be said to be a hand-on approach. To realize the potential of employees in businesses, managers should be open for individual differences. In several cases managers would like to see employees to behave in a different way, while this is not method that employees are used to and in which they are most efficient. To realize the potential of the employees, it often is helpful to build teams capable of solving complex problems and making better predictions. Since people think and act differently and moreover have different backgrounds, a broad range of ideas will be gathered. In this way the best possible solution can be reached easily. One can say that in this way, you tap into diversity of perspectives, heuristics, interpretations and predictive models to create innovating organizations capable of sustaining competitive advantage.

Some critical managing diversity issues are summarized below:

• Creating an inclusive organization
• Working to change the corporate culture towards valuing diversity
• Demonstrating commitment through flexibility
• Creating awareness and skills – learning and training
• Measuring and creating incentives
• Linking valuing diversity to strategic objectives
• Assuring top management support
• Clear and credible communication

Diverse and inclusive diverse organisations

Diverse organizations are characterized by a focus on employment profiles (i.e. workforce composition) and fair treatment. On the other hand, inclusive diverse organizations have policies and practices that facilitate the full utilization of human resources and enhance employees' abilities to contribute to their maximum potential. An organization however could go one step further, and become a truly inclusive organization. A truly inclusive organizations uses the diversity of knowledge and perspectives to shape their strategy, work, management and operating systems as well as its core values and norms of success.

References

• ¹ Roosevelt, 2010.
• ² Jones, 2011.
• ³ Kaminska, 2009.