Organizational Diversity

Diversity is:

The variation of social and cultural identities among people existing together in a defined employment or market setting (Cox 2001).

Groups made up of diverse personnel do a better job of analyzing and attacking problems (ibid).

Diversity can be an advantage if it is valued and well managed and that diversity is not to be simply tolerated butencouraged, supported and nurtured.(Jamieson and O’Mara 1991). 

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Group

Two or more people with common interest, objectives, and continuing interaction.

Team

A group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common mission, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.

Group Behavior

Norms of Behavior: The standards that a work group uses to evaluate the behavior of its members. 

Gropu Cohesion: The “interpersonal glue” that makes members of a group stick together. 

Social Loafing: The failure of a group member to contribute personal time, effort, thoughts, or other resources to the group.

Loss of Individuality: A social process in which individual group members lose self-awareness and its accompanying sense of accountability, inhibition, and responsibility for individual behavior.

A group member cab contributein different ways this drives intellectual discuss and promotes problem resolution, the styles are:

Contributor: data driven supplies information.

Collaborator: big pictures focuses team on mission

Communicator: listens facilitates and promotes collective effort.

Challenger: devils advocate, question missions, purpose, ethics.

Diversity managment is a way of creating an environment that will enable all people to use full potential to accomplish the mission.

Question

Since diversity is a source of competitive advantage, what could be the recruitment strategies to  effectively target to diverse groups? What would be the consequences of ignoring diversity?

Well, in my experience you dont have to do an special strategy to recruit diverce groups, you can not put in the recruitmet request, "please diverce people", the people come to you, and if this persons are different dont throw them away here is the clue, if the person is different but it has enougth capabilities it will be able for the job.

References

Cox Jr., T. (2001) Creating the multicultural organization. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Ely, R. and Thomas, D. (2001) “Cultural Diversity at Work: The Effects of Diversity Perspectives on Work Group Processes and Outcomes,” Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 2, 2001, pp. 229–273.

Jamieson, D. and O’Mara, J. (1991) Managing workforce 2000: Gaining the diversity advantage.