Society and Trends -- Diversity

Once upon a time, the division of labor in a large-scale manufacturing and services organization was clearly defined by the appearance of the employees. The white-collar managerial force was largely male, largely white, and predominantly from the same ethnic and regional background. Not only were these persons college-educated, but quite likely they had gone to the same colleges. Perhaps their fathers and grandfathers had worked in the same industry. The secretarial and clerical employees, if female, were dismissed as mere pink-collar workers, no matter how vital their contribution to the organization. The blue-collar employees seldom had any transactions with the white-collar workers. And virtually everyone spoke English -- very likely all of the workers had grown up near the place where they worked, lived near there for most of their lives, and all of the familiar faces and names of the persons they greeted on a daily basis were from the same region of America.

Today's managers come from every conceivable ethnic origin, are made up of the ranks of men and women, and have a diversity of educational backgrounds that span the liberal arts, to technology, to the sciences. This pool of experiences and knowledge is an additional resource for the international focus of the company. Even the American employees represent a wide variety of regions of the nation, as persons are more mobile today. Most of the employees have worked in a variety of occupations and jobs over the course of their occupational lives, as it is no longer common for persons to remain secure in the same company and job for any long duration of time. Workers travel more frequently, and live abroad, bringing back their knowledge and experience from these different areas of the world. And yes, many of the formerly blue-collar jobs are no longer unionized, or in some cases have been outsourced to different corners of the globe. Managers must still deal with these international employees as colleagues, even if they might not see them every day, and thus develop a fluency in the cultures and perhaps the languages of these lands, regardless of the managers' own backgrounds.