Global Diversity Management

Managing diversity is an imperative for organisations of all sectors and sizes. If managed effectively, workforce diversity promises to have positive social, economic and environmental consequences by removing barriers to contributions of individuals from diverse backgrounds; by transforming ways of thinking, structures and routines of work; and by regulating work and life in unprecedented ways. As the literature on diversity management is littered with narrow rationales, it may seem as if workforce diversity does not have intrinsic merit or wider purpose (social, economic and environment) than that. This chapter brings together a wider range of rationales than just organisational longevity and sustainability alone in pursuing diversity management. It explores the practice of global diversity management (GDM) through models of change and brings evidence together from field studies and organisational case studies. The chapter discusses the three main challenges that face GDM: individualism, deregulation and financialisation. In response to these challenges, the chapter introduces three innovative approaches as contemporary remedies: intersectional solidarity, global value chain and synchronicity, respectively. Intersectional solidarity can help organisations to overcome the individualist tendency that renders diversity management practices ineffectual. The global value chain approach can help organisations to have a more robust and meaningful accounting of diversity interventions across their value chain. Finally, the synchronicity approach challenges the domination of financial decisions on business case arguments, alerting practitioners to the wider possibilities of social, economic and environmental benefits in acausal forms of togetherness and coexistence.