Literature Review

In the world of today which has become a global village, the word diversity comes up

everywhere. The major reason behind this fact is that modern technological advancement in

means of communication and transportation has shrunk this world and now it is very easy to

communicate to any person anywhere in the world as well as to go anywhere in this world in a

matter of hours. Diversity is defined as the composition of work units being different from each

other in terms of such characteristics or features that are symbolically meaningful as well as

salient in the relationships among the members of such a group. (DiTomaso, Post, & Parks-

Yancy, 2007). Such times have gone by when a new employee who belonged to a different

cultural background would join the work and you would expect them to blend in and start

working. Today the organizations have realized that if you need to expand your business to

international markets you need to have diversity.

Over time the focus has been shifted from how to blend in the new employee from a

different cultural background to how to handle a diverse employee base and sustain the program.

Konard (2003) made an assessment of multicultural workforce value and according to him, there

are three reasons why the attitude of the companies and their strategies regarding the diverse

workforce is changing. Firstly, you will not find all the best talent locally which means that you

need to go out into the world to find out the best-minded people for your organization. Secondly,

the market share increases with an increase in the diversity of the workforce; a diverse group of

employees can easily cater to the needs of a diverse customer base. For each local market, you

need insights from an employee of the same locality. Thirdly and finally he states that having a

diverse employee base is beneficial for the organization in the sense that each employee from a
different background brings something different to the table and together all these attributes

make the organization more diverse and competitive.

In an argument which is not business related (Jayne & Dipboye, 2004) say that for an

organization increasing diversity in their workforce in the right way to go because it is one of the

best ways to address the issues of race and gender. This argument might seem a little weak in

front of the fact that organizations today are more into creating, generating or increasing

stockholder’s value than doing the right thing. Other than the social and ethical responsibilities

of the organization's diversity has also become a legal responsibility. Due to civil rights laws

organizations are forced to bring in diversity in the human force. In order to create a competitive

advantage, the company is trying to bring in such programs which reduce conflict and increase

creativity through diversity. Even at the level of government, it is realized that in order to

achieve economic success there is a strong need to control the diversity of the workforce and

utilize it as a tool rather than a problem. One of the best examples of controlling diversity at the

government level is a policy introduced by the Australian government. The name of the policy is

“Productive Diversity”. The main purpose of this policy is to make good use of the skill set and

experiences of the people who have been raised in the different culture, ethnic background or

even a different country, therefore they provide great intel on the local and international markets.

What is discussed in the previous paragraphs in more rhetoric and based on theory? The

question arises if there is any statistical and solid evidence which proves that for a prosperous

and successful organization cultural diversity is necessary. There are a number of different

research studies which have looked into this issue, however, no one has a satisfactory answer.

There is a strong need to fill this literature gap and studies should be done to get an objective

answer rather than a subjective one. Jayne and Dipboye (2004) after reviewing a lot of such
researches came to the following four conclusions; i) Talent pool is not necessarily increased by

increased diversity in the workforce. ii) It is not necessary that increase in diversity will bring

about more motivation and commitment and reduce conflict among the workforce. iii) Diversity

among the members of a group does not necessarily increase the performance of that group. Iv)

Diversity does not necessarily increase the performance of the overall organization.

Once more, the above investigation, despite the fact that viewed as significant data, just

incorporated the US managing an accounting industry so it can't be said to portray the entire

picture, (Richard, Murthi, and Ismail, 2007) in this manner augmented the degree to different

businesses and concentrated the connection between racial diversity and middle of the road and

additionally long haul firm execution and the part that natural setting plays in this. The outcomes

demonstrated that at high and additionally low levels of racial diversity, there was a curvilinear

positive connection between racial diversity and transitional firm execution. The outcome

likewise demonstrated a positive connection between's racial diversity and long-haul firm

execution. In any case, these outcomes were reliant on the kind of industry and natural

steadiness, implying that the U-molded connection between racial diversity and firm execution

would be weaker in unsteady situations contrasted with a steady one.

Till now the assessments were about how social diversity influences organizations and

furthermore related the hypothetical presumptions to genuine examinations done on this critical

issue. In the following segment, I will endeavor to audit writing that principally centers around

the accepted procedures for overseeing diversity. "Compelling administration of diversity

depends on the acknowledgment of shared traits and attention to contrasts" (McMahon, 2010).

Overseeing social diversity includes distinguishing the prescribed procedures. A best practice is

a strategy, strategy, process, movement, motivator, or reward that is accepted to be more

powerful at conveying a specific result than some other system, technique, process, and so forth

when connected to a specific condition or situation. So what are these accepted procedures that I

alluded to? Amaram (2007) gives a couple of proposals about them. He gives specific

significance to diversity preparing programs, giving administrators diversity-related objectives

and ensuring they are met lastly, offering admiration to individuals everything being equal, that

is, accounting for religious occasions, eat fewer inclinations and so on., on the grounds that

occasionally it's the seemingly insignificant details that issue the most.

Jayne and Dipboye (2004) propose "directing a thorough needs appraisal" with the goal

that the diversity activities are "customized to the circumstance". Another recommendation is to

build up a technique remembering the natural setting of the association along these lines

resounding the consequences of the exploration did by Richard, Murthi, and Ismail (2007). One

more point that they contacted in their paper was the requirement for concocting a framework to

assess the impacts of diversity administration techniques created by associations with the goal

that better than ever methodologies can develop by taking in the slip-ups from past ones.

Additionally, this term is used in certain cases to talk about the multicultural dimension of an

organization. Some experts have proposed social diversity management the methodology of a

human asset to empower the compelling management of diversity in the workforce of an

organization. According to Seymen (2006) and Fluery (2009), social diversity management is a

solution for the need for competitiveness in an organization. Some say it is more of a reaction to

this need rather than a solution or an answer. The same sources have also stated that a holistic

focus is represented or implied by the cultural diversity management. It allows the management

to create such an environment inside an organization where employees are encouraged to work

with their full potential while achieving the organizational goals and objectives.
Gender diversity is the fact that what is the ratio of male to female working in an organization. It

answers the question that whether the distribution in the workforce is even in terms of gender.

Some organizations have even distribution, some have more men and some have more women.

However, all these facts communicate something about the organization and let one predict the

behavior of the people working in an organization. Similarly, the work environment is also

affected by other demographics such as racial characteristics, population etc. As per Kochan et

al., (2003), organizations have found that if such diverse environments can be proved fruitful if

they are well managed. According to researchers if an organization gives more focus to the

gender diversity matter, then it becomes more attractive for women to work in, as women are the

major beneficiaries of such gender diversity initiatives. Organizations with a higher proportion of

female have reportedly got more health-related issues than those with more men or diverse ones.

Age diversity is the proportion of employees belonging to different age groups in a work

environment. Age diversity, although is correlated with health issues, however, in groups age

diversity, could lead to better decision making. Age has become more of a controversial issue in

work environments as some states have raised the retiring age to 65 years while organizations, on

the other hand, prefer younger people as they are more energetic and can take the workload.

Organizations with people of older age have reportedly shown less absenteeism among the

employees as well as less turn over. Younger people tend to get absent more and also they have a

high turn over rate (Wegge et al., 2008).

Religious diversity is considered to an aspect of cultural diversity which holds great importance

to the employers. Educators are taking a serious interest in the matter. However, religious and

cultural diversities are nowadays treated and perceived differently. There is superficial and least

polite consensus among the people of today’s society that cultural diversity may be proved
fruitful to an organization. However, some people think that religions, class and ethnic groups

inside an organization might create problems as they might want to go against each other and

protect members of their group. Many people are of the opinion that their religion is somehow

superior or better than the others which are considered as an important component in the religion

but it could be fatal towards the integrity of an organization. Most organizations are dealing with

the religious diversity in a very inadequate or cursory manner. It is observed that religions have

more than often encouraged hostility among its members towards the members of other religions,

stating that they are not only different from us but also diabolic or inferior at the least (Gross,

1999).

References

Amaram, D. I. (2007). Cultural diversity: Implications for workplace management. Journal of

Diversity Management, 2(4), 1-6.

Aytemiz Seymen, O. (2006). The cultural diversity phenomenon in organizations and different

approaches to effective cultural diversity management: a literary review. Cross-Cultural

Management: An International Journal, 13(4), 296-315.

DiTomaso, N., Post, C., & Parks-Yancy, R. (2007). Workforce diversity and inequality: Power,

status, and numbers. Annu. Rev. Sociol., 33, 473-501.

Gross, R. M. (1999). Religious diversity: Some implications for monotheism. CrossCurrents,

349-366.

Jayne, M. E., & Dipboye, R. L. (2004). Leveraging diversity to improve business performance:

Research findings and recommendations for organizations. Human Resource

Management: Published in Cooperation with the School of Business Administration, The

 University of Michigan and in alliance with the Society of Human Resources

Management, 43(4), 409-424.

Kochan, T., Bezrukova, K., Ely, R., Jackson, S., Joshi, A., John, K., ... & Thomas, D. (2003).

The effects of diversity on business performance: Report of the diversity research

network. Human Resource Management: Published in Cooperation with the School of

Business Administration, The University of Michigan and in alliance with the Society of

Human Resources Management, 42(1), 3-21.

Konrad, A. M. (2003). Special issue introduction: Defining the domain of workplace diversity

scholarship. Group & Organization Management, 28(1), 4-17.

Martins, L. L., & Parsons, C. K. (2007). Effects of gender diversity management on perceptions

of organizational attractiveness: the role of individual differences in attitudes and

beliefs. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(3), 865.

McMahon, A. M. (2010). Does workplace diversity matter? A survey of empirical studies on

diversity and firm performance, 2000-09. Journal of Diversity Management, 5(2), 37-48.

Richard, O. C., Murthi, B. S., & Ismail, K. (2007). The impact of racial diversity on intermediate

and long‐term performance: The moderating role of environmental context. Strategic

Management Journal, 28(12), 1213-1233.

Tereza Leme Fleury, M. (1999). The management of cultural diversity: lessons from Brazilian

companies. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 99(3), 109-114.

Wegge, J., Roth, C., Neubach, B., Schmidt, K. H., & Kanfer, R. (2008). Age and gender

diversity as determinants of performance and health in a public organization: the role of

task complexity and group size. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(6), 1301.