MANAGING DIVERSITY

Diversity can be explained in a variety of scenarios for this case in the workplace. Managerial staff must contemplate such diversity as an opportunity. There are many aspects to take into account that may have differences or similarities in the people that belong to the diversity in a workplace. These are:

• Age


• Parental status


• Personality


• National origin


• Field of work


• Race


• Gender


• Sexual Orientation


• Religion


• Education


• Thinking style


• Socioeconomic status


• Job classification

Diversity is everywhere, there is diversity in:

• Workforce Diversity (Development, Recruitment)


• Workplace diversity (Organizational insights, Work integration)


• Marketplace diversity (Suppliers, franchises, customers)


• Managing Cultural Diversity
  
  In order to manage cultural diversity is really important to consider at first:


• Organizational Culture


• Human Resource


• Women’s career involment


• Heterogeneity


• Mind-sets


• Cultural Differences


• Educational programs

BENEFITS MANAGING DIVERSITY

Also, managing diversity has some benefits that help to understand why it is important for the organization.

· Higher creativity in decision-making: as a result of diversity, there are diverse ideas and opinions that may help to take a good decision making.
· Better understanding and serving of customers: Creation of products that is appealing to a broader customer base. Those products are innovative in order to satisfy customer needs.
· More satisfied workforce: the workforce is no longer discriminated. Employees that feel that they are discriminated are less committed and motivated.

· Higher stock prices: Investor’s perception about management practices like affordable prices.
Lawsuits: companies that announce settlements for discrimination lawsuits.

· Higher company performance: there is a positive relation between the members mostly for racial diversity and firm performance.

· HRM efficiency


· Decision making, problem-solving, creativity and innovation

· Cross cultural capabilities

· New products/services and marketing strategies



CHALLENGES MANAGING DIVERSITY:


ž Tendency to be attracted by those who are similar
ž Faultlines: It is an attribute that divides the group (organization) into subgroups:
— By age, gender, experience
ž Reduce the cohesion of the team
ž Norms need to be established.
ž The presence of stereotypes: those stereotypes can lead to unfair decision making, which is used to make about particular individuals.
ž Example:
— Women are relationship oriented
— Men are more assertive
— Result: the male candidate is hired for a managing position because he is supposed to be more assertive.




Question:
1.¿Is diversity management at IBM a source of competitive advantage? ¿why?

IBM is one of the fifty companies that are committed to diversity. In this case, the loyal function of those businesses plays an important role to diversity which is a tool for organizational culture which represents a source of competitive advantage. Increasing a diverse workforce and affairs with a diverse set of stakeholders provides firms a competitive advantage, which means low cost with a strong commitment.

2. ¿Do you think the IBM case reflects a strong organisational commitment to diversity? ¿why?

According to the document “The business case for commitment to diversity”, IBM case represented a large contribution giving a commitment to the issue of diversity. The commitment was in 1995 when the ‘CEO Louis Gerstner formed eight executive-level task forces which focused on attracting members of different minority groups, keeping them engaged, and retaining them’.

Bonus question:

¿Do you consider managing diversity a key success factor in the performance of virtual teams?

Conference: Virtual Teams and International Business
Dr. Eoin Higgins PhD

It was explained the definition of Virtual Teams at first: ‘groups of people working together’. Those teams do not have a communication face to face at all; they make use of technology as a way to get a good contact between them. These teams are from different locations each location has different resources, which means each member of a team has to cross boundaries as a challenge.
As an interesting aspect that is related to the subject, he mentioned about multiculturalism in virtual teams which means that each member of the team has to know the other´s culture at first before to get a commitment. It is better than do not know anything about the partner who you are going to have a connection with in business for a long time. Managing diversity is totally connected to virtual teams for all the reasons given before. As a conclusion managing diversity is an important tool factor to the performance, even to the commitment that manager’s staff must take into account for virtual team’s mission.



References:
1. Slater, Stanley F., Weigand, Robert A., Zweilein, Thomas J., 2008. “The business case for commitment to diversity”. Business Horizons 51: 201-209.
2. Conference: Virtual Teams and International Business by Dr. Eoin Higgins PhD