Gender Diversity at Pricewaterhousecoopers

Executive Summary

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is one of the largest international professional services firms in the world with 184,235 employees operating in 157 countries. The organization prides itself on being a diverse and forward moving company, as evidence by the fact it was ranked #1 on DiversityInc’s 2012 Top Companies for Global Diversity. In addition Forbes ranked PwC as 48th on the Best 100 Companies to Work for in 2012.

In order to receive such a good reputation in terms of diversity, PwC has successfully introduced and implemented several diversity practices for women, LGBT, and disabled employees. Evidence of the company’s dedication to diversity management is found in the fact that there are very few discrimination lawsuits in the company’s history. One can use many different models and concepts to analyze PwC’s diversity management practices. Applying the model of resistance to change by Lewin (1947) to PwC’s diversity practices, the consulting team assumes that PwC is in the refreezing phase. According to the model by Dass & Parker, PwC learned that diversity has many benefits to the organization as seen through better performance and retention of staff.

PwC’s main goal is to support, recognize, understand, and accept all employees and clients, and staff must act in accordance with the company’s policies when dealing with customers and one another. PwC is a global leader in diversity management as outlined in this audit report, however, the authors also made recommendations as to how the organization can continue to grow and succeed in diversity practices.

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1. Introduction

PwC is one of the largest and most reputable consultancy companies. It is represented in 157 countries and employs, partners included, over 180,000 people (PwC, October 2013a). Due to this, PwC has to be a very diverse firm, as it has employees from different countries with different views and cultures. In 2012 PwC made 31.5 billion dollars in sales globally, which is a...