Managing Workforce Diversity: Perspectives and Organizational Strategies

Introduction to the Study

In "Managing a Culturally Diverse Workforce: Diversity Perspectives in Organizations," Podsiadlowski, Groschke, Springer, et al. (2013) present two different but related studies on how Austrian workplaces manage diversity. Both studies address ways organizations conceptualize and leverage diversity. The first study uses interview data to gain insight into how organizational cultures either reflect a diversity approach or resist it. The second study involves the development of what could become a standardized test for diversity perspectives, with goals that include measuring perceived threats and benefits of diversity in the workplace.

The authors acknowledge the importance of diversity management and emphasize the need to develop a diversity framework that reflects an organization's mission and values. They also stress the significance of such a framework as globalization leads to increasingly diverse workforces.

Defining Diversity and Its Organizational Benefits

To operationalize the definition of diversity, the authors suggest that all aspects of diversity—including gender, age, and educational status—and not merely ethnic or national diversity, be included in the conversation. Defining diversity broadly has its drawbacks, but the authors show how a broad definition is critical for understanding the implications of diversity for human resources development, managerial styles, and organizational culture.

Prior research has revealed that more diverse groups outperform less diverse groups on measures related to creativity, innovation, and productivity. Moreover, the literature suggests that diversity improves an organization's ability to respond to change and enter new marketplaces. The crux of diversity management is leveraging different approaches to problem solving, diverse worldviews, communication styles, and ways of thinking. Essentially, a diversity strategy can become an important competitive advantage.

The Five Diversity Perspectives

The terms diversity strategy, diversity orientation, and diversity perspective can be used interchangeably. This study addresses five diversity perspectives: Reinforcing Homogeneity, Color-Blind, Fairness, Access, and Integration and Learning (Podsiadlowski, Groschke, Springer, et al., 2013, p. 160).

Reinforcing homogeneity is essentially the same as resistance to change or resistance to diversity, entrenched in company policy and organizational culture. In fact, it is more than merely denying diversity or denying the need to respond to it intelligently; reinforcing homogeneity involves actively disparaging the principles of diversity and can be considered an overt or covert embrace of discrimination.

Color-blindness and fairness are two diversity perspectives that fall under the general rubric of discrimination-and-fairness models. These perspectives stress the importance of equality and fairness but may overlook the importance of interpersonal differences and how those differences might inform company strategies, policies, and performance. The access perspective sees diversity from a utilitarian standpoint—in terms of how to leverage a diverse workforce for entering new marketplaces, enhancing a public relations or communications strategy, or improving a company's reputation. Finally, the integration and learning perspective values diversity for its own sake, recognizing that the organization learns and grows specifically because it has a diverse workforce. These five diversity perspectives are arranged on a continuum, ranging from dysfunctional resistance to diversity to forward-thinking, realistic, optimistic, and proactive organizational strategies.