Diversity & Case Studies

Introduction

There is no doubt that todayÐŽ¦s business world is changing rapidly and many factors are also simultaneously interacting. Perhaps these factors are created by diversity.

According to the dictionary, diversity is a point or respect in which things differ. In fact, diversity in the population, the work force and the market place give many benefits for organizations. Managers are to gain more knowledge on internal diversity in order to maximize the efficiency of workforce and profit. Therefore, not only are changes inevitable while competition and improvement interacting, but also globalization is a crucial factor affecting all organizations. This essay will focus on and analyze some themes related to the diversity in todayÐŽ¦s competent business environment and a successful example will be discussed at the end of this paper.

Reform of traditional management

Bell and Harrison (1995) have an opinion on the ÐŽ§past leadersЎЁ. In the past business world, leader were required to show that they have the strongest ability among all other staff. Centralization of power seems to be the characteristics of a leader and certain information control helps to maintain leader control and management. As far as making profit is concerned, centralization coursed a lot of red tape and poor performance. Therefore, it is about time there was a reform.

Moreover, advanced technology has urged the reform of workplace nowadays. According to Casey, C. (1999), technological changes change the concept of leadership. The development of advance technology facilitates and speeds up the flow of information. Techniques, information and skills become possible to be enhanced, acquired and discarded in leaning that happens at work. Centralization of information and special skills are no longer regarded as element of leadership.

As far as diversity is concerned, setting the same target, sharing the same value and mutual understanding are essential. Therefore managers and employees are encouraged to challenge top managements in terms of various aspects: such as discrimination, norms, biases and inappropriate decisions. This emphasis on employee involvement should be continued shift to have an ultimate management change: shifting the centralizing management to a more personal development and work-together basis to maximize each employeeÐŽ¦s talent and ability.

In general, executing diversity in management can increase the level of education and have perception changed. Therefore, more broaden views and different ideas can be obtained and analyzed. A suitable coordinator is responsible to link up the people from different perspective so as to perform effective management rather than ÐŽ§one-man-bandЎЁ in organization. Since leadership is extremely important, thus, motivation and encouragement should be given to leaders and staff.

Various diversities

Workforce Diversity

Workforce diversity means hiring staff from different gender, race, age, ethnicity and cultural background (Draft, 2000). Management should pay more attention to the social context of these people as there are communication differences. For example, German has low context culture, which states they use communication mainly to exchange facts and information. In other words, they are more practical and realistic; In contrast, Chinese has a high context culture, they use communication mainly to build personal social relationship. They reckon relationships and trust are more important than business. The importance of overcoming these differences is to enhance the harmony and coherence in an organization.

Nevertheless, workforce diversity provides a broader base of experience in terms of problem solving and creativity.

Market Diversity

Market diversity means to diverse a business into different market. Corporate should make use of information technology to achieve this goal. For example, the population of people using internet is enormous, it is possible to explore more markets online so that the business can be enlarged; Nowadays, more collective, accurate and efficient analyzing can be obtained as information system is advance, corporate is able to make use of these data to explore more markets.

Geographic Diversity

Geographic diversity refers to corporate assigns divisional responsibilities according to geographic regions. It is considered into two sections: national and international geographic divisions. All functions of different regions report to one particular division manager, it enables him/her to focus on local market conditions in order to have a rapid reaction and make adequate strategies. Nevertheless, for multination firms, branches should be more internationalizing to saturate more resources and market shares around the world. For instance, McDonalds has divided its U.S. operations into five geographic divisions to help speed up decision making and enhance innovation.

In addition, top management must also increase its reliance on properly designed management control systems to facilitate the implementation of the organizations' strategies; and align managers' personal goals with those of the organizations they manage. When an organizationÐŽ¦s management group diversifies, its management control systems may lose effectiveness if they are not reengineered to reflect the cultural diversity of the target management population.

Technology Diversity

Technology diversity refers to the change of organization production process. Information Technology has been advancing rapidly in the past decade, in general sense, there are no boundaries among people around the world. Corporate has to adopt new technology, techniques and attitude to increase efficiency and profit. For instance, using online transaction and e-shopping enhance a support by electronic linkages. Nevertheless, corporate should also pay more attention to the areas of business to business (B2B) and e-commerce as they can be enhanced and further elaborated due to the globalization nowadays.

Global management

In comparison, there is no doubt that all countries and cooperates are working more close together nowadays.