Valuing cultural diversity (by organizations, managers And HRMs Essay

Valuing cultural diversity (by organizations, managers And HRMs Support Role in Managing Cultural Diversity) - Essay Example Perspective is the belief and practices of management carried out with realisation of importance of diversity to a company (Ely and Thomas, 2001). With this view, Ely and Thomas (2001) developed three diversity perspectives, the discrimination-and-fairness perspective, access-and-legitimacy perspective and integration-and-learning perspective. According to Peters (2008), perspectives try to achieve the dual purpose of performance enhancement and social role of unity in diversity. However, the learning-and-effectiveness perspective wields greater importance in times of emergence of global business with diverse workforces. Learning-and-effectiveness perspective intends to achieve individual and organizational goals through creativity and learning of an individual employee in a flexible atmosphere (Thomas and Ely, 2001). As the ‘emerging paradigm of diversity’ it taps the true benefits of diversity (Thomas and Ely, 2001) in the long and short run (Dass and Parker, 1999 cited at Peters, 2008). The real awakening into the contemporary aspects of human resource management made a beginning with Hawthorne experiments (Trompenaaars and Hampden-Turner, 2004). Further studies like the Scanlon Plan, Mayo’s analysis, and the Managerial Grid Seminars of Robert Blake stressed the team-based or group nature of HRM (Trompenaaars and Hampden-Turner, 2004). Ely and Thomas (2001) through development of three perspectives provided the landmark rationale for diversity management in HR systems of organizations. Diversity has gained in importance in organisational life as companies become more diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, age, and nationality (Shaw, Barret-Power cited in D’Netto and Sohal, 1999). Diversity is presence of differences in a social group. (Jackson, et.al, 1992 cited in D’Netto and Sohal, 1999). A diverse workforce shares difference