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Diversity as Strategy: IBM
There are some companies that are more committed to diversity than others. IBM is one of those companies. In 1995, IBM created task forces specifically designed to work with diverse individuals and to help the company relate to different kinds of customers - and to its own workforce. The eight IBM task forces created represented the following constituencies: Native Americans, blacks, women, white men, people with disabilities, Asian, GLBT, and Hispanics (Canas & Sondak, 2011). Each task force was asked to work together and give advice and information to IBM about what the company could do better internally and externally to retain customers and employees.
The task forces were to report back six months later (Canas & Sondak, 2011). Even though they were only required to be active for that six-month time frame, they are still in existence today because they worked so well and they wanted to continue. That speaks to the value of the task forces and the interest the people in them had in making their company...
Diversity as a strategy can work, but there needs to be diverse ways in which that diversity is handled and addressed (Walck, 1995). In other words, because the people in the organization and the customer base are so diverse, the strategies that are used to get them together and working on common problems to find solutions for the company should also be diverse in nature.
The main purpose of the task forces - to better understand the needs of specific groups - branched out into a better understanding of humanity by virtually everyone who works at IBM. The hiring and promotion of minorities and women rose dramatically. In some cases, there was a more than 300% increase in the hiring and promotion of a particular group (Canas & Sondak, 2011). Having the task forces around was something that not everyone could get behind at first. There were skeptics in the ranks at IBM, and they believed that the task forces would not do enough to help the company. Some of them were also concerned about how…
References
Canas, K.A. & Sondak, H. (2011). Case study: Diversity as strategy. Chapter 3: Diversity management as systemic. Part 1: Uncovering the complexities of workplace diversity. Opportunities and Challenges of Workplace Diversity (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Prentice Hall
Walck, C.L. (1995). Editor's introduction: Diverse approaches to managing diversity. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, (31), 119-123.
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