Developing Diversity Neutral Organizational Culture: A Study on Selected CPSEs of India

Different Approaches To Diversity

Diversity inclusion and competitive advantage of organizations could be linked by Fleury (1999), based on study of Brazilian organizations. Fleury defined diversity as mixture of people within the similar social system. Therefore diversity is an inclusive approach, encompassing race, gender, age, colour, physical disability, ethnicity, etc. (Kundu & Turan, 1999). With encouraging results for practicing diversity neutrality and embracing diversity inclusion, organizations across the world started aligning diversity issues with their strategy (Hayes & Mandez, 1997; Palich & Gomez, 1999) to get the benefit of efficiency and effectiveness in terms of achieving higher productivity and improving quality (Morrison, 1992) etc. With these gradually diversity management practices have been acknowledged as necessity in the corporate world. Cox (1993) defined diversity management as organizational systems and practices making use of potential advantages of diversity. To ensure diversity inclusion and neutrality, first thing that organizations need to do is following the principles of equal employment opportunities. For this organizations first document their policies on diversity issues, and then try to institutionalize the culture of diversity inclusion through series of interventions. Such interventions may be periodic diversity management audit, aligning adherence to diversity policies with performance management systems, periodic training reinforcements on diversity, etc. In organizations human resource management department plays the critical role in institutionalizing diversity management practices.

Diversity management has now become a business imperative for organizations. However, approaches to diversity management vary from organizations to organizations with respect to deficiency, discrimination, and differentiation (Glastra, 1996).