Management Diversity

Introduction

Nowadays, diversity is commonly practised in many companies. Diversity, in short, is the varieties of perspectives and approaches to work that different people in terms of gender, race and other characteristics can bring about the work.1 The aim of diversity is to increase the organisations’ efficiency and effectiveness in the normal work routine. Through maximising employee’s potential, more profits can be earned.

Diversity is a double-edged sword. Without proper management, diversity can lead to problems such as communication breakdowns which will hinder the group’s creativity, thinking and optimal performance. It might even lead to ethical and social responsibility issues. Thus, there are questions to be pondered, “What is diversity?” and “how do we manage it properly?”

Commonly mistaken by many, diversity is just plainly a group that consists of people from different races and gender. It’s true on the surface but to be more precise, it is actually on how an individual can contribute to the teamwork in a creative and meaningful way regardless of one’s background and how the individuals work as one to attain synergy. Failure to recognize the real meaning will not bring the team to a higher stage. It requires the change of attitude and behavior of an individual in the organizations, especially those in higher management and the commitment of the team. Sometimes remedies to salvage diversity problems must be done properly and carefully. If not, it is going to backfire and worsen the situations which lead to further communication breakdown.

To understand the problems and solutions done to diversity in reality, interviews were done to analyze the situations so that we can understand better about the different approaches to solve the problems-internally resolved or with the aid of external resources.

Interviewee 1-Culture Diversity

The following situation illustrates a “lack of diversity”. The interviewee...