Managing Diversity to boost ProductivitY

Managing Diversity to Increase Productivity

Managing Diversity to Increase Productivity

Introduction

Defining diversity management from an organizational perspective requires first a definition of workplace diversity itself. These definitions of diversity have evolved significantly over time. Early efforts defined diversity almost exclusively in terms of race and gender differences in the workforce. In some sense, the terms diversity and race and gender were treated synonymously during the 1990s. Since then, however, the meaning of these terms has expanded. In addition to race and gender, individuals with disabilities, older workers, and foreign-born workers (to name only a few examples) became recognized for their contributions to workforce diversity. Beyond the incorporation of additional demographic differences, as efforts to address organizational diversity increased, researchers began to look at a variety of individual differences as well. Differences in experiences, expertise, and knowledge among members of a team might be considered to represent important elements of diversity. A further conceptualization of diversity has recently been presented which characterizes individual differences as either “surface-level,” which refers to characteristics that are easily observed or identified such as race, gender, or age, or “deep-level,” which refers to differences that may not be directly observable, but are important characteristics of the individual, such as personality and value system. With this distinction of surfaceversus deep-level forms of diversity comes the recognition that each form may raise different challenges for the management of diversity in organizations. Although this latter distinction represents a more comprehensive approach to thinking about diversity, some diversity researchers have expressed concerns that emphasizing deep-level factors may incorrectly suggest that surface-level factors, such as race and gender, are less important for organizations to consider. (Reasons why attention to both levels of diversity is important will be discussed in more detail later.) Despite these concerns, there is no question that a richer understanding of the different forms of diversity in an organization should be incorporated in efforts to develop theories of diversity management and in the practice of diversity management.

Structure of the Study

In this study, first, we shall survey municipalities (towns and cities) in North Carolina to determine how they responded to diversity and related issues by adopting different diversity management programs. Since municipalities that take up more diversity management practices are more expected to boost, support, and organise diversity effectively, they as a result will furthermore have a more diversified workforce. By understanding how other villages and villages (villages, hereafter) respond to diversity management issues and what diversity management practices are more routinely taken up, cities can determine how adequate their practices are and if or not they are well arranged to deal with diversity issues. Therefore, the data that will be produced by this study will help cities improve their organizational performance by giving them the opportunity to be proactive in managing diversity. Second, we will also examine if the adoption level of diversity management practices was affected by changing demographics and other factors such as the manager's different backgrounds. Moreover, we wanted to use the connections (if ...