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Sarah Moore: University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
Introduction
In current organisational and political environments, the rationale for understanding and managing diversity has never been stronger. Continued developments in organisational globalisation and the increasing workforce participation rates of diverse groups put diversity issues at centre stage as Europe heads for a new millennium. The highly diverse workplaces heralded for the future contain new possibilities and opportunities, but also imply working environments that pose markedly different challenges than do the moderately diverse contexts which currently prevail.
This paper explores various dimensions of diversity and identifies some of the central issues commonly associated with the concept. It is suggested that in some contexts, a generally wider definition of diversity as a concept may be a useful way to help organisational members to respect, to understand and to manage diversity within their organisations.
The link between diversity and performance is discussed and organisational training and development approaches are outlined. Some challenges to successful diversity training are identified, and the potential effects of differing approaches to diversity in the workplace are evaluated from an organisational training and development perspective.
Understanding the concept of diversity in organisations
What is it that defines diversity in organisations? What makes one individual typical and another atypical within an organisational setting? This question is an important starting point for exploring the concept and is also contingent on the consideration of a number of key dimensions. Diversity is not a simple concept that can be defined objectively. As a concept, it is context dependent, selective and relative. It is used as a criterion to segregate people into certain jobs and certain organisational levels and it has to do with invisible as well as visible characteristics.
Diversity is a context dependent concept. No one can be defined as different in isolation. It is only against the background of a variety of contextual factors that it is possible to evaluate the extent to which they appear similar to or different from the people in their environment. A lone female among a group of males, for example, is more likely to be defined according to her gender than would otherwise be the case. Much research has shown that individuals choosing non traditional roles at work (e.g. male nurses, female...