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Profiting from Diversity
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Profiting from Diversity

The Business Advantages and the Obstacles to Achieving Diversity

Gloria Moss
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010
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Editorial Rating

6

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Recommendation

Editor and compiler Gloria Moss, a leader in the diversity field, chose this collection of highly readable, scholarly articles on the theme of diversity. Her choices showcase few of the precooked lists and callouts that mark most business books. If you’re prepared to stretch your reading muscles, few topics deserve more careful attention than diversity. The articles have a European slant, but points that are widely applicable emerge, among them: Companies that don’t foster an open, diverse work environment fail to generate the best ideas or earn as much money as they could. Thus what’s good for humankind is also good for business. When firms try to make everyone conform to the dominant culture, they lose competitive advantages. getAbstract recommends this book to human resources professionals who are bringing diversity into their firms and to executives looking to model mind-sets that enable diversity to flourish.

Summary

Why Diversity? The Business Case

Research is beginning to confirm that diversity yields direct “business benefits.” Yet the approaches firms use to promote diversity often hinder the reaping of those benefits. For example, the equal opportunities policies introduced in the US in the ’60s and ’70s led to the inclusion of more minorities in work cultures, which then insisted that those minorities “adopt the norms and practices of the majority.”

Those in privileged positions often define traits such as “best,” “brightest” and “merit.” If you want to maximize your employees’ strengths, think more broadly about individuals and their abilities. Talking about differences and “the features that characterize certain diverse groups” could be good business. Having a diverse set of employees will inevitably help improve or maintain your workforce’s quality, enhance your “market understanding,” and increase creativity, innovative thinking, and “problem solving” aptitude among all those in your working staff.

How Diversity Fits in Your Strategy

Markets are diverse; your customers are diverse. Your teams must shift quickly to meet client demands. Diversity can and should...

About the Author

Gloria Moss has worked in HR and has written more than 30 peer-reviewed articles. She is a senior lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University, UK.

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