TABLE OF CONTENTSDEFINITION................................................................................................................................................................. 2

DISCUSSION................................................................................................................................................................. 3

1. Benefits:............................................................................................................................................................ 3

2. Challenges:...................................................................................................................................................... 4

3. Managerial Tools:.........................................................................................................................................5

CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................................................... 5

REFERENCES............................................................................................................................................................... 6

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DEFINITIONThe modern era of international business, people around the world no longer live

and work in an insular domestic environment. In order to reach more resources –

especially the human resource and development, the entrepreneurs have to carry out the

cross-border business. In the other hand, “technology continue to increase the reach and

the ease of conducting international business, pointing to even larger growth potential in

the future” (Czinkota, Ronkainen, & Moffett, 2011); as a result, people is now a part of a

global business, compete with each other from different nations. In addition, according to

Czinkota et al (2011) from 1950s, the growth of global trade and investment has been

steadily larger than local commerce. Accidentally, this creates a range of diversity in

organizations – both profit and non-profit. Therefore, maximizing and taking advantage of

the workforce diversity have played a vital part in business management nowadays.

In media, textbook, journal articles, and even academic reports, people have talked

so much about “diversity” for decades. Therefore, there are also a lot of definitions

regarding to what “diversity” is. Nevertheless, for a comprehensive meaning of “diversity”

to be defined, Robbins and Coulter in 2012 stated that “diversity” is not only the difference

“based on the ethnicity, gender, age, religion, disability, national origin and sexual

orientation”, includes of “an infinite range of unique characteristics and experiences”,

“communication styles, physical characteristics”, “speed of learning and comprehension”

but also the “similarities of employees.” Therefore, this could point out an important matter

for leadership within the organisations: the leaders should consider to maximize both the

common qualities that employees share together and celebrate the differences among of

them.

Like other essential issue, diversity can bring out many views in the aspects of

benefits and challenges. Therefore, the enquiry here is the approach that leaders can use in

order to maximize the benefits within the organisations.

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DISCUSSION

1. BENEFITS:

It cannot be denied that managing the diversity in the workplace is one of the most

major factors in Human Resources management. A good management in diversity can help

organizations in gaining such benefits:

a. Enhancing the productivity of the organization through the human capital

management; thus, augmenting the competitive advantages: human has been

playing an essential part in companies. It is not only about the people skills, abilities

and experiences are the main factors which make an organization successful but it

also because companies rely on employees teams in the work place (Robbins &

Coulter, 2012). Therefore, in a report in 1998, Wentling and Palma-Rivas said that

managing the diversity can help the organization to have a more productive,

creative and innovative workforce, have more talented pool of people and lower

level of absenteeism and turnover. These things will make the corporate be more

steadily to grow and expand. For example, in 2013, PricewaterhouseCooper had a

gross revenue of US$ 32.1 billion which is up to 4% in growth

(PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2013); moreover, this company also stood in the position

of number 2 over 50 of diversity regarding to the rating of DiversityInc

(DiversityInc, 2013). A good company can achieve good revenue in parallel with the

good diverse management.

b. Enhancing the relationship among employees, encouraging more

organizational innovation: better relationship means better communication and

interaction among employees, which leads to much more effective work teams, and

more motivated employees, less conflicts and misunderstandings (Wentling &

Palma-Rivas, 1998). Moreover, a diverse workforce means that the organization will

have more perspectives to consider, “the breadth of ideas that constitute a dynamic

intellectual community” (Fine & Handelsman, 2010). This is a big contrast in

comparison with a homogeneous workplace where people usually have a linear

thinking system and do not dare to change or innovate. A heterogeneous will help to

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create an environment where “outside the box” ideas are encouraged, minorities

form a critical mass and leaders value the difference (Hewlett, Marshall, & Sherbin,

2013).

c. Strategic implementation: “it is not enough to acknowledge that cultures and

nations can behave differently” (Fish, 1999); although that the top leaders would

know much about a certain market, they still cannot catch up and fully understand

about the culture and customers’ behaviour. Therefore, a divers workforce and

management level can be better in anticipating and responding to the change of

customers’ needs (Robbins & Coulter, 2012).

2. CHALLENGES:

There are two clear challenges that an organization may have to face in the process

of managing the diversity:

a. Different cultural mindset can lead to the personal bias: one of big challenges for

leaders is facilitating a work environment that allows and encourages an

appreciation for diverse individual characteristics and dimension (Combs, 2002).

This is because in a diversity workforce, there still exists the deleterious approaches

as well as uncomfortable feelings to people who have the differences (Wentling &

Palma-Rivas, 1998). Fish in 1999 made a very important statement when he said

that the culture in this case has been neglected since people in a homogenous team

would take advantage of the difference in culture to blame the different ones and

suggest that ““others” are not quite as good as “us””. More seriously, from this “not

quite as good as “us”” thought, the employees can lead to acts of prejudice,

discrimination, racism, etc.

b. Workforce retention and overlook of the diversity management: one of the

general human resource objectives is that recruitment and retention of talent staffs

in order to make the jobs be done (Czinkota, Ronkainen, & Moffett, 2011). As a

result, human resource management unit would be responsible mainly for an

efficient diversity workplace. However, it will be the big danger if the problems

regarding to the diversity would be “overlooked and disregarded in the pursuit of

what may be viewed by operational managers as just another “flavor of the month”

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promoted by the HR function” (Harris & Foster, 2010) in stead of being a serious

moral issue.

3. MANAGERIAL TOOLS:

There are some of approaches that can be used in order to overcome the challenges.

Among of those, diversity training still be considered as a primary method in order to

expedite the diversity behaviour management within the organization. Nowadays, the

diversity training has been continuously expanded to other forms regarding to the

organizational requirement. Combs in 2002 suggested building a diversity self-efficacy

training for leader first – which incorporated of mastery in work, modelling and visual

studying experiences since the leader can help to spread the inspiration toward employees.

This can help to bridge the gap between the diversity training and diversity performance.

The leaders in each departmental unit then can develop their diversity mentoring

programs for the employees and help to create a culture of valuing difference within the

organization.

Another way is developing the personal/career development program, an

organization which can develop a detailed and systematic career developing program, it

will have high chance to develop trust, loyalty and commitment of employees (Wentling &

Palma-Rivas, 1998) and as a result, the challenge of workforce retention would be solved.

This is quite important when helping the employees to have direction and objectives to

head for – such as a senior supervisor/manager level; hence, they can be motivated and put

all effort for the daily routine performance.

CONCLUSIONA diverse workforce is now an essential part of every organization all over the

world, it reflects of a cross-border marketplace and globalization developing steadily. Good

management in diversity can bring the companies and corporate many obvious benefits –

especially in retention of a pool of talent staffs. This creates a big competitive advantage for

organization. However, diversity also brings number of big challenges that leaders have to

face with. Applying a variety of managerial tools in order to make the diversity become part

of corporate culture can help them thrive those challenges.

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REFERENCES1. Combs, G. M. (2002). Meeting the Leadership Challenge of a Diverse and Pluralistic

Workplace: Implications of Self-Efficacy for Diversity Training. The Journal of

Leadership Studies, 8(4).

2. Czinkota, M. R., Ronkainen, I. A., & Moffett, M. H. (2011). International Business (8th

ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

3. DiversityInc. (2013). PricewaterhouseCoopers: No. 2 in the DiversityInc Top 50.

Retrieved from DiversityInc:

http://www.diversityinc.com/pricewaterhousecoopers/

4. Fine, E., & Handelsman, J. (2010). Benefits and Challenges of diversity in academic

settings, 2nd. The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.

5. Fish, A. (1999). Cultural Diversity: Challenges facing the Management of Cross-

borders Business Careers. Career Development International, 4(4), pp. 196-205.

6. Harris, L., & Foster, C. (2010). Aligning talent management with approaches to

equality and diversity: Challenges for UK public sector managers. Equality, Diversity

and Inclusion: An International Journal, 29(5), pp. 422-435.

7. Hewlett, S. A., Marshall, M., & Sherbin, L. (2013, December). How Diversity can Drive

Innovation? Harvard Business Review, p. 30.

8. PricewaterhouseCoopers. (2013). Facts & Figures. Retrieved from

PricewaterhouseCoopers: http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/annual-review/facts-

figures.jhtml

9. Robbins, S. P., & Coulter, M. (2012). Management (11th ed.). New Jersey: Prentice

Hall.

10. Scroggins, W. A., & Benson, P. G. (2010). International human resources

management: Diversity, Issues and Challenges. Personnel Review, 39(4), pp. 409-413.

11. Wentling, M. R., & Palma-Rivas, N. (1998). Current status and future trends of

diversity initiatives in the workplace: Diversity experts' perspective. Human

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Resource Development Quarterly, 9(3), pp. 235-253.

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