Abstract
Cognitive diversity means having an amalgam of people with different ways of thinking, different skill sets, diverse perspectives, and different viewpoints in the organization. Organizations have realized the importance of diversity in age, gender, qualification, and started taking cognizance of the same. All these are visible forms of diversity. However not much attention is paid to ‘cognitive diversity' because it is not visible and is deep level diversity. Organizations need to have cognitive diversity as a part of their diversity and inclusion (D&I) agenda. Cognitive diversity is indeed the way forward. This study is an effort to understand and explore ‘cognitive diversity' which is invisible in nature, yet of great importance and relevance for the organizations.
TopBackground
Most of the literature available on cognitive diversity is in articles, newspapers and blogs. Moreover, most of the literature on diversity talks about gender diversity. The purpose of this paper is to understand and explore ‘cognitive diversity’ which is of great importance and relevance for the organizations and to put forth the nature and importance of cognitive diversity, which cannot be seen prima facie, but is very vital for organizational success. Cognitive diversity means having a combination of employees with different ways of thinking, understanding, interpreting, analysing, varied skill sets and diverse viewpoints in the organization. It is observed that organizations have started understanding the importance of diversity as far as qualification, gender, age, experience is concerned. However, despite of all these diversities, the teams may still be homogeneous in their approach if there is no cognitive diversity. Organizations have started taking cognizance of the fact that cognitive diversity encourages and enables creativity, innovation and divergent thinking.
A study conducted by Tata Communications (Goldberg & Kumar, 2018) revealed that 81% of the respondents indicated that demographic diversity in the workplace is important or very important and 90% of the respondents believed that cognitive diversity is essential for management. Further, the respondents also agreed that it is vital to increase cognitive diversity in teams. The study also hinted that in years to come, artificial intelligence could help CEOs gather teams with cognitive diversity. Literature suggests that ‘Human Capital’ is also an industry (Neal, 1995). If the organizations have to make optimum use of this resource, they must pay special attention to diversity. Diversity is the long term element in the success and sustainability of organizations. It would be highly beneficial for organizations to team people who think differently in order to solve problems with newer approach and innovative ways.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Cognitive Style: The unique way in which an individual acquires, accumulates, retrieves, processes and transforms the information.
Innovation: Implementing ideas generated as an outcome of creativity to create value and translate them into reality.
Teamwork: Group of people coming together to achieve a common goal.
Problem Solving: The mental process of analysing a complex problem and coming up with solutions.
Creativity: Refers to the mental ability of imagining, originality in thinking and coming up with new ideas.
Invisible Diversity: Refers to those aspects of diversity that cannot be easily seen or recognized and are less outwardly apparent e.g., values, cognitive skills, abilities, beliefs, attitudes, personality traits, etc.
Cognitive Diversity: Diversity exhibited by individuals in terms of thinking and perceiving, processing and analysing and coming up with diverse ideas.
Visible Diversity: Refers to those aspects of diversity that can be easily seen or recognized e.g., age, qualification, race, experience, language, etc.
Groupthink: A psychological phenomenon wherein the group members conform to the majority opinion with an intention to maintain group harmony, rather than asserting their own opinions.
Diversity: Differences among individuals working in the organization on account of region, religion, skills, language, qualifications and many such differences.