Among the many challenges, facing organisations and their workforce is the increasing diversification of the client base. The growth of migration, changes in the British family, the expanding roles of women, margilise groups and continuing economic constraints, all are contributing to make the work of every day life more challenging.B Increasingly the term “diversity” and its links with the ideas surrounding Social Inclusion are being used in this context.B Few people have provided a definition nor have many organisations developed an appropriate “business case” for harnessing human differences as an advantage. The future success of people and organisations will depend in large part on how different value systems can be incorporated into ongoing models and in how well we can help new groups of people with the acculturation process.
Organisations in Britain and globally are faced with the growth of an increasingly diverse population and service base. Methods and approaches that have worked effectively in more homogenous settings may not be as useful in environments that are more diverse. We need to identify new ways to reach client groups in a manner comfortable to their cultural styles and needs.
What is “diversity”? What can we learn from it?
“Diversity” is a much bandied-about term that to many people smacks of trendiest and a corresponding lack of substance, In part, this syndrome is due to the observation that many who use the term fail to define it, or use it as a substitute “buzz word” for traditional human rights terminology’s that have become too emotionally charged. In addition, diversity as a concept remains an intellectual concept to many because a great number of its advocates have failed to tie it to an effective business or organisational case.B We are now seeing a reversal of this trend with the onset of the engagement with Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility.
Diversity as a concept and model has a major use of its own. While we related to the older concepts of equal opportunity and positive action, it goes well beyond the parameters of earlier models.
Equal opportunity is a merit-based model in which only accurate and measurable instruments may be used in evaluating an individual’s ability in competition with others. It is a fine concept, and great progress has been achieved, but the dilemma remains that people clearly are not always measurable nor do all measuring techniques assess everyone accurately. This is particularly true when cultural differences impede traditional measurement and assessment techniques. It is in dealing with people’s attitudes and behaviours that ideas from Psychology become important.
Positive action, on the other hand, gauges the progress of different racial/ethnic/gender, disability constituencies in given arenas and attempts to find solutions for greater social inclusion and representation. Positive action, however, does not mean, “lowering standards” in favour of race or gender, disability but is, rather, a technique for reaching specific segments of society and increasing the previously limited competition. Its limitation is that it is not all-inclusive of all possible human differences. Therefore, it runs the risk of creating an “us/them” dynamic.
Diversity not only assumes that all individuals are unique, i.e., different, but that difference is indeed value-added. This links in with the approach used in Corporate Social Responsibility where the organisations values contribute greatly to its vision and mission. While all societies and organisations have a need to establish common rules and modes of operation, the assumption in diversity is that if an individual or organisation learns how to harness individual differences, it will be more effective and competitive than those individuals in the organisations that are not able to do so. It is, in other words, an effectiveness argument. In personal terms, the other component of a diversity approach requires a finely tuned process for self-examination. Rather than learning about other groups — and that, indeed, may be important — diversity requires an individual to assess what one’s personal values are, and how these values affect our individual behaviours with other people. What we value will affect how we behave with other people. We need to be consciously aware of our values.
For operational purposes, culture is a set of values held by a group of people and, importantly, the behaviours that stem from those values. Diversity arises from this multiplicity of cultures. Cultures not only are national in nature. They may be regional, urban, rural, or based on age, religion, class, professional association and so on, organisation-and many more. In fact, one’s own life experience may affect cultural values. Being “minority” or “majority” in any larger culture will also affect values- how one view the world.
Perhaps strangely enough, diversity should result in supreme individualisation: treating an individual as uniquely different from any other person and thereby avoiding stereotypes based on actual or perceived group memberships.
All organisations, including those of a nature, essentially perform three things they:
Managing human resources subsequently perform these tasks. The critical question to ask in the context of diversity is how does difference, or absence of difference, affect how we design products and services, market them it, or deal with questions of customer/client satisfaction? Do all cultures, for example, provide services in the same way? Do one-market goods and services uniformly around the world, or within diverse societies like in Britain? In addition, how do you please a customer/client if you don’t know what he or she values? Values, of course, are all about culture. This overlaps greatly with the ideas and contributions made by Business Ethics and doing Good Business.
Beliefs and values occur in all human cultures, but is often performed differently from culture to culture. In the Britain, we have developed a great number of community-based organisations focusing on exclusive activities. This phenomenon may not be representative of many other societies where extended family groupings, religious organisations, and government may play greater roles. The challenge for British organisations in an increasingly diverse British population is, on the one hand, to learn how to tap into networks different from those customary here and, on the other hand, to assist in the acculturation of groups new to Britain. Community-based organisations, for example, is relatively rare in the traditional isolated groups contexts — families and churches may play a greater role — yet these populations once here in the Britain are exhibiting a trend toward greater dependence on community organisations. That is clearly an example of acculturation.
From a more traditional perspective, it affects every organisation to identify essential players in each community who can then assist in carrying out the mission of organisations. Activities such as fund raising, how people are managed, and how decisions are made within groups are affected by different cultural norms. Diversity, then, is about learning to include different perspectives and processes so that the work of the organisation can be as effective as possible.
The argument about diversity really centres on how to be more effective personally, professionally, and organisationally. It is not a value judgement about “right” and “wrong” — although each individual has the right (and obligation) to determine his or her own values — but, rather, what approach is most effective in a given setting. In essence, then, diversity is knowing what you don’t know coupled with the knowledge that the way we measure people may not always be accurate due to the filters created by our own individual set of values.
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