Diversity

Chapter 2 is all about diversity and being to able to bring people from different cultures, backgrounds, and with different attitudes, personalities, characters, and values to work together in harmony and of course to work together effectively. The company benefits greatly from such things because it gets higher quality of work but it also allows their employees to work in stress free environment, and being able to get along with their co-workers will want to make employees want to go to work every morning and do their best everyday. Elijon Fitzgerald, Paul Spoonely, and Bronwyn Watson describe "Diversity Management" as, "a broad strand of organisational management literature that was developed as a means of helping organisations respond to the growing diversity apparent in contemporary labour markets. From the 1980s, discussions of diversity management focused on managing heterogeneity in the workforce in relation to demands for "affirmative action" and "equal employment opportunities" which were intended to increase numbers of workers from "minority" groups. Therefore many laws were made demanding that corporations and businesses gave equal treatment and equal opportunity, and such laws became getting passed in the 1960s by the United States. In this new millennium diversity has been seen as having a "marketing advantage" because of the different view points and all the diversity being a positive factor. But, some say that while it has great advantages in the market it might lead to overstaffing in managerial positions, or may lead to misunderstandings and some employees might feel used or exploited. Despite that countries across the globe are beginning to implement what they call "diversity dividends" which involves investing in diversity management today and a byproduct being future diversity dividends.

Kreitner, Robert. Organizational Behavior. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2007.

Watson, B., P. Spoonley, and E. Fitzgerald. "Managing Diversity: A Twenty-First Century Agenda. " New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations (Online) 34.2 (2009): 61-76. ABI/INFORM Global, ProQuest. Web. 15 Mar. 2010.