Managing Cultural Diversity Essay

The following paper brie y debates the rhetoric of managing kind and considers whether managing diversity is a distinct approach to managing muckle or a means of diluting fittedise opportunities in UK organizations. With respect to the realities of the imaginations in UK organizations, empirical info from a survey of sixty UK human resource professionals and general field of operation managers is presented. We pose a number of cautionary questions, including what does it matter and to whom?By doing so we intend to encourage further critique and challenges in respect to the ideal of managing diversity in organizations. Keywords Managing diversity, commensurate opportunities, HRM/D, rhetoric, reality Introduction Today the manpower does not look, think, or act like any manpower of the past, nor does it pee the same values, have the same baffles, or pursue the same necessarily and desires (Jamieson and O Mara 1991). The composition of today s workforce has changed signi crappertly in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, culture, education, disabilities, and values.Running parallel to these changes is the shift in thinking by human resource theorists and practitioners with regard to addressing equality in the workplace (Cooper and innocence 1995 Liff and Wacjman 1996). This shift is underpinned by the emergence of the business case argument for equal opportunities, as opposed to the persuasive debate for social justice or equal opportunities as correcting an imbalance, an injustice or a mistake (Thomas 1990). in that respect is now a view that, after twenty years of the outfox of legal compliance (which has achieved little), the carrot of underpinning the business case for equal opportunities entrust perhaps achieve more (Dickens 1994). The business case argument for equal opportunities in organizations is often termed managing or valuing diversity , but, as with most contemporaneous Human Resource Development International ISSN 1367-8868 print /ISSN 14698374 online 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd http//www. tandf. co. uk/journals 420 Peer-Reviewed Articles anagement issues, the underlying principles and recital of this concept are open to mass interpretation, criticism, and indeed misunderstanding. D. Miller (1996) argues that the noteworthy widening of the meaning of equal opportunities has brought with it more complex and confusing messages for employers and practitioners. By drawing on literature and empirical data, we consider whether managing diversity is a distinct approach to managing people or a means of diluting equal opportunities in UK organizations and pose a number of cautionary questions, including what does it matter and to whom?By doing so, we intend to encourage further critique and challenges in respect to the concept of managing diversity in organizations. What is managing diversity? Thomas (2000) argues that, with the growing number of mergers and acquisitions, workforce diversity will become more of a pr iority for organizations and, therefore, in the future, people will become clearer on what diversity is and how to manage it. As with the debates surrounding de nitions of human resource management and development (HRM/D), managing diversity as a concept means different things to different people.It can tinct to the issue of national cultures inside a multinational organization (Hofstede 1984) it can relate to the further development of equal opportunities or to a distinct method of integrating different parts of an organization and/or managing people strategically. Much of the literature regarding managing diversity relates to the US experience, where the concept is particularly commonplace a re ection perhaps of the more pronounced diversity of workforce composition (Cassell 1996). In a recent report 1999), a division of Education in America described managing and valuing diversity as a key component of effective people management, arguing that it focuses on better the perform ance of the organization and promotes practices that enhance the productivity of all staff. Their dimensions of diversity admit gender, race, culture, age, family/carer status, religion, and disability. The de nition provided also embraces a range of individual skills, educational quali cations, work experience and background, languages, and other relevant attributes and experiences which differentiate individuals.