A MODEL FOR MANAGING DIVERSITY IN ORGANISATIONS

Date
2011-04-13
Authors
Govindsamy, Thiruvasan
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Abstract
Increasing levels of cultural diversity in the workforce poses one of the most challenging human resource and organisational issues of our time. Increased workforce diversity means that organisations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, race and ethnicity. Such diverse people will, when placed in similar situations, perceive these situations differently and act differently in them. While diversity typically provides different perspectives on the same problem or situation it makes it more difficult to unify teams working together and to reach agreements. For this reason, workforce diversity has implications for organisational performance. However, unlike some other countries of the world, the effective management of workforce diversity is not a matter of choice in South Africa. It is crucial to the future prosperity and stability of the country and, possibly, the region. Notwithstanding the South African situation, however, there are a number of other global motivations driving the shift towards diversity in the workplace and, as a consequence, elevating the importance of the effective management of workforce diversity. A phenomenal surge in the growth of emerging markets, the extensive use of cross-functional, heterogeneous teams to produce creative solutions to business problems, an increased reliance on non-traditional workforce talent and the realities of today’s workplace clearly demonstrate that diversity management has become a critical aspect of operating a business. The drive for diversity is, therefore, a business imperative. The purpose of this study was to identify key success factors for diversity management initiatives in organisations and to develop a model for the successful management of diversity. Owing to the context-rich nature of diversity management initiatives it was decided to use the multiple case study methodology, using three case studies. These three case studies were analysed in the light of research propositions generated from a review of the relevant literature on diversity management. While this methodology was able to facilitate the formulation of key success factors for diversity management initiatives and the development of a model for managing diversity within organisations, the context-rich nature of the diversity management initiatives implied that caution needed to be exercised when these key success factors were generalised and the model applied to other diversity management initiatives.
Description
MBA - WBS
Keywords
Diversity management, Organisational diversity, Human resources management
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