Board Diversity As An Effective Corporate Governance

However, Thomsen et al. (2012) has a different conclusion and argued that diversity is not without its challenges. Diversity can also result in lower levels of cohesiveness and team work. This can lead to inability to agree on mutual goals, increased conflict and reduced information sharing. The empirical evidence (Bohren & Odegard, 2006; Wang et al., 2010; Ahern & Dittmar, 2010) does not support the idea that there is a business case for board diversity. They concluded that if anything, the available and emerging literature finds negative performance effects of

Before we move on it is important to take the time and think what diversity means to your organization. How does your company define diversity? A simple definition of diversity is that every individual is unique, and has differences. These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, mental abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, personality, cognitive style, or other ideologies. Your organization’s success and competitiveness may depend upon its ability to embrace diversity and realize the benefits.

The way in which an organization tackles diversity determines its negative or positive outcome. All the 5 companies agreed that diversity has contributed to their success. Some barriers were identified in managing diversity like the difficulties faced by women in managing the work and family, fear of discrimination, resistance to change, diversity is not seen as an organizational priority, resistance to change and unsupportive working environment for diverse employees. Diversity contributes to more productivity but if not properly managed could hinder success.

Diversity must be created and maintained with in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of diversity onto an organization in addition to explaining the legally mandated and stakeholder driven explanations for mandatory diversity.

Throughout the book The Loudest Duck by Laura A. Liswood, we learn about what it means to be truly diverse and how to obtain this diversity. The book gives many examples of how and why it is important for companies to be diverse. Through this paper I will be outlining the main points the other made and share some of the lessons I feel are important.

As Canadian Coalition for Good Corporate Governance indicates that the good governance of a corporation is essential to creating long-term sustainable value and reducing investment risk. In other words, the high quality performance of board directors plays a key role in the success of a corporation. We evaluate it based

1. Does the board comprise a majority of independent directors? Ensuring that a majority of independent directors to monitor the actions of executive directors helps to address the potential for, or perception of, conflict of interest of executive director involvement in board decisions. A good corporate governance structure would encourage the board to regularly assess whether each non-executive director is independent.

Workplace diversity refers to the variety of differences between people in an organisation. Diversity encompasses acceptance and respect. It is an understanding that each individual is unique, and a recognition of our individual differences. These differences can include ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical abilities, family status, religious beliefs, perspective, experience, or other ideologies.

Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff continue their study of what once was a white male power structure of business world in their 2011 book, The New CEOs: Women, African American, Latino, and Asian American Leaders of Fortune 500 Companies. In this recent study, the authors explore the broad theme of diversity by studying the seventy-four women and people of color in the chief corporate officer position of Fortune 500 Companies. Zweigenhaft and Domhoff (2011) conclude that small diversity within the top of the corporate body does not signify or translate into an open society oriented on equality of opportunity, education, and income. American society is still greatly circumscribed by class, color, and gender, if have not become even more divided economically than it was before because of diversity as it was implemented by the top corporations (Zweigenhaft & Domhoff, 2011).

Then the CEO and managers need to advertise for diversity, meaning they need to seek people of all races, genders, creeds and etc. The CEO and managers should have a percentage of diversity goals to fulfil. While doing all of this they need to keep the benefits within focus.

“The Board has adopted a diversity policy which aims to, among other matters, address the representation of women in senior management positions

A 2013 survey of Fortune 1000 companies found that 78 of the best performing companies that had taken significant efforts to diversify their management and board of directors had consistently outperformed their peers (Expert pg1). Diversity has a thorough impact on everyone’s life and it has been a part of humanity since the beginning (Div Mgmt pg 3). With the population becoming more diverse than ever, so too has the workforce and the need for organizations to provide opportunities, incentives, privileges, and facilities to attract and retain diverse employees (Div Mgmt pg3). In a statement released by Catalyst Census in 2013, Ilene Lang, president, and CEO, said: “Diverse business leadership and governance is correlated with stronger business performance,

According to books like the Bible women and even in some societies today, women are normally seen as inferior to men and quite weak to handle rigorous tasks like governance among others. Hence the ratio of Sub-Saharan male and female representation and participation in decision-making structures are greatly imbalanced, men are often favored in these structures. This phenomenon is not unique to Sub-Saharan African countries but also occurs in first world countries where women are less represented in parliament.

The culture of diversity leverage at the workplace cannot be overemphasized looking at the advantages and disadvantages in terms of contribution to productivity and business success. This paper is going to discuss how American Express leverages diversity for increase productivity and business success.

He again takes the opportunity to reinforce the role that diversity has to the company strategy. Next the Corporate Strategy Council (CSC) approves Brody’s plan for a Women Global Leadership Forum. Through the attendee identification process, it gave division presidents the opportunity to truly see the female talent within their teams. Although some of the reactions were negative, this just provided a deeper look into the male employees attitudes toward women. After the attendees were identified Brody issued a survey not only to the attendees but to their corporate and senior officers. This information served as a motivational tool for the World Team meeting. This also gave the CEO positioning to mandate specific diversity measures be added to all division scorecards.