Facing the Diversity Management Challenge: a Planned Process of Change

Nowadays, companies all over the world are facing a very difficult moment: they have to find out the way to come out from this economic global crisis. A key element to afford this challenge are persons with their specificities in terms of knowledge, capabilities, inclinations, motivations, life cycle phase as well as gender, age, culture, physical and mental abilities, religion, sexual orientation, dependents and needs. People’s diversities are neither good nor bad for companies but they need to be managed (Guest, 2002). Since the beginning of the 1990s academics and professional have been debating on how to manage people’s diversities in a strategic, efficient, effective and equitable way so introducing the matter of Diversity Management. Diversity Management is a strategic organizational approach that, in order to achieve better organizational results, focuses the organization’s attention on the person and her/his specificities and needs by promoting and fulfilling a cultural and an organizational process of change so as to create an inclusive work environment where people’s diversities are recognized, respected, enhanced and integrated, and the individual’s potential expression is fostered (Riccò, 2012). Forasmuch as it doesn’t exists a best diversity strategy, it not so easy for companies to translate the Diversity Management concept into practices, they need operational guidelines which are sufficiently detailed to accompany human resource and organizational development professionals step by step in applying diversity management principles but, at the same time, which are explained in a flexible manner so they can be adapted and personalized for the specific organisation. This paper presents and explains a planned process of change to afford the Diversity Management challenge, made up of eight phases, that affects the company at the strategic, tactical and operative level (Shen et al., 2009). At the strategic level the change that the company faces lies in analyzing and revisiting its vision to include people’s diversities and theirs management as sources of competitive advantage, also explaining “Why” the company sees them as influent factors for its success. At the tactical level the change that the company faces lies in defining “What” diversities will be managed in a differentiated way, “When” they will be managed (conditions), “Where” they will be managed (in the all company, only at national level or, instead, only within defined departments), “How” they will be managed (strategies, policy and connected solutions) and “Who” is concerned in the diversity management process. At the operative level the change lies in implementing, communicating, monitoring, assessing and, eventually, revisiting the diversity management vision, policy and solutions defined at the strategic and tactical level arriving to rethink the whole process on the basis of the changed situation of the context, the company and the persons in the company. The paper presents and discusses the above cited phases, providing specific examples for each of them and advancing potential avenues for future research.