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The concept of diversity is not a static one – or a new one. The word was first used in the twelfth century to mean “difference, oddness, wickedness, perversity.” The origin may help explain the negative perception of diversity that lingers today. Some organizations now avoid the word altogether, using words like “inclusion” instead. By the late nineteenth century, “diversity” had taken on a meaning more consistent with modern political and corporate initiatives. The Oxford English Dictionary defines diversity as “the condition or quality of being diverse, different, or varied; variety, unlikeness.” Even today we must continually reiterate that, contrary to our cousins in the twelfth century, “different” does not have a negative connotation. 

In the United States, diversity is big business – and a well-established one. Our understanding and approach to diversity has evolved in several ways – moving from a legal and social justice focus on equal opportunity, affirmative action, and assimilation to a more inclusive, market-driven, and business-directed focus. It is now evolving from a purely domestic focus to a more global one, in which culture has become a key consideration.

To more fully understand diversity, it’s important to understand the driving forces behind that diversity focus in the first place. According to Lawrence Baytos, author of Designing and Implementing Successful Diversity Programs, there have been three key drivers for diversity work in the United States – The Three “Ds” – Demographics, Disappointment, and Demands.

Demographic changes in both the workforce and the marketplace have resulted in shifts in the talent pool and in markets, according to Baytos. Organizations have been disappointed in traditional methods of using diversity, such as affirmative action. And the demands from employees and for improved performance of the human assets of the organization have all been drivers from the U.S. focus on diversity, he says.

Demographics

The first of these, demographic change, has long been a major business driver for focusing on domestic diversity issues in the United States. Two-thirds of the world’s immigrants still go to the United States, and the number of foreign-born U.S. residents is at the highest level in U.S. history, according to the 2000 U.S census statistics.

Demographic change is a business driver outside the United States as well: in the future, most of the growth in the workforce of the world will be in countries with non-Caucasian populations, creating more diverse human resources to choose from and manage a global arena. In fact, reports Carlos Cortés, all the European growth in the past twenty-five years has come from immigration, primarily from Asia and Africa. Around the world, the numbers of women in the workforce will continue to increase, especially in developing countries; the average age of the world’s workforce will rise, especially in developed counties; and education levels will increase globally as the developing world produces a rapidly increasing share of the world’s skilled human capital.

But worldwide labor mobility is not a new phenomenon. Irish stonemasons helped build U.S. canals; Chinese laborers raced against German workers to build North America’s transcontinental railroads; Turks work in large numbers in Berlin; and Algerians assemble cars in France. What is different about current labor mobility also relates to Baytos’ theory of the Three Ds: the demographics of today’s immigrants are vastly different, countries are disappointed by past approaches to immigrations; and there are different demands being made by both the immigrant population and their new homelands that ever before.

While some countries are tightening their borders in response, others, like New Zealand, are opening their doors wider to immigrants they believe can bring innovation, global linkages, and social cohesion to their island nation.

In such a way, it is far easier for immigrants to maintain their cultural identity in a strange land, changing the paradigm of immigration in many nations. In the case of New Zealand, immigration is welcomed as a source of economic growth. The Canada’s case, the diversity brought by new immigrants is seen as a tool for tapping new ethnocultural markets.

Pluralism is a more modern (and realistic) way of viewing ethnicity, providing an alternative to assimilation. In a society that embraces pluralism, immigrants maintain their unique cultural identity while exiting in a second culture simultaneously. This requires much more cultural awareness, knowledge, options, and actions than the assimilation model of the past.

Disappointment and New Demands

Equal employment and access to employment opportunity become a legislated national objective in the United States in the early 1970s. Using an affirmative action mode, organizations began focusing less on opening doors to “protected classes,” such as people of color, females, people with disabilities, those over age 40, and Vietnam era veterans, and began focusing more on the numbers. Those brought into the organization were expected to assimilate or adapt to the existing norms and practices of the organizations, says Baytos, rather than the organization adapting to meet the needs of the individuals. In this way, the organizational response mirrored the “melting pot” model of the country itself.

While affirmative action is still being used and hotly debated in the United States, the corporate approach to diversity has evolved to a less quantitative and more qualitative approach, yet many cynics in the US still believe that “diversity” is just another name for “affirmative action.”

Effecting social change is no longer enough in the U.S. approach to diversity; companies are increasingly trying diversity goals to the bottom line. To underscore the business implications and benefits of diversity, the following initiatives are present in many diversity strategies.

-Support from CEO

-Senior management visibility

-Compensation tie-in

-Stronger retention initiatives

-More mentoring

-Active vendor programs

-Diversity training at all levels

-Global initiatives; and

-Education/special initiatives

In other parts of the world, this evolution has taken a different form. For example, in Europe the commercial bottom line was the starting point for managing differences, not the unused potential of disadvantaged people.

These differences have a profound impact on how diversity is viewed, managed, and leveraged around the world. Before “exporting” diversity management from the United States to other locations around the globe, it is important to understand that the starting point and area of focus might be quite different, depending on the social, political, cultural, and economic context of the country in which you are doing business. Not understanding this has caused many U.S. originated diversity efforts to fails overseas because they are perceived as an attempt to make the world over in out own image, rather than truly listen to the prevailing conditions and cultural norms in the countries in which we are doing business.