Statement of Purpose: Master's in Business Administration with an Emphasis on Design Strategy

In recent years, diversity and inclusion have emerged as an essential business practice. Why are diversity and inclusion so critical to organizations nowadays? Do they really help organizations achieve better results? Why is it a unique issue in the 21st century workplace? To answer these questions, organizations should look into factors such as globalization. Globalization increases interactions around the world and diversifies the profile of the workforce, which also contributes to the changing composition of the current workforce. While globalization offers extensive opportunities for organizations, it also imposes many challenges that require new responses. Organizations are not only looking for ways to effectively manage a diverse workforce but also to leverage it to achieve better outcomes.

Those that go into the business world quickly recognize that each work environment they find themselves in can be total different from another. This can especially be said even of environments within the United States, from region to region. There is definitely a disparity of workplace environments from country to country. Not only can culture drive a varied atmosphere, but the diversity of the personnel making up that environment can equally create a challenge that a leader must be prepared to manage. Recognizing that special care needs to be placed on communication and perception skills is crucial in our present professional domain. Managers of today need to employee tools from the psychological and sociological field to be successful. Having a deep understanding in the differences in culture and diversity in the workplace is critical, especially when debating about accepting a position overseas or assigning an employee to an embedded position abroad. With a broad knowledge of cultural differences and diversity, success as a manager and the stability of a positive work environment can be achieved and maintained without unnecessary effort and focus.

In companies or corporations the global landscape now reflects diversity in the employees found in the workplace. Employees come from different backgrounds, geographic or global areas, ethnic and cultural origins, and have unique skills and talents. Individuals must work together and merge skills and manage diversity effectively in the workplace. Our thoughts, actions, and very beliefs are shaped by our culture. These things are ingrained and remain unshakeable until, faced with someone who is of another faith or belief system with a different way of doing things than individuals are familiar with.

Globalization has transformed society and has had its impact on diversity from the president of the free world, Barack Obama, changing the look of leadership from a middle aged white male to anyone can be president of the United States. Since the world has become intergrated, every business must embrace diversity in the workforce because it represents their customers and suppliers. “A diverse body of

Our corporation being a global one has expatriates across the globe. It is important that all employees understand that they need to be global workers. In order to do so, they need to be capable to work with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds. This is essential for their development. Diversity training would train them in countless skills and abilities and make them knowledgeable and aware about other cultures. This cross culture experience would help the employees understand the different work ethics and values of the other cultures. This training would encourage understanding and increase cooperation among the co-workers. This exercise is not only important for expatriates, but others as well as expatriates would be working with these employees. In this circumstance the employees have to be open about accepting people from other communities and background. Also another important point is that

Adaptability is a great advantage for a workplace for all who are connected to it. Companies where customer service is a significant aspect, flexibility gives the ability for the promotion of the workplace and for the association with customers. If there is the ability to do this and provide service to consumers in their culturally appropriate tongue, the array of customers allows for the comprehensive understanding of what is wanted. The presence various social and ethnic backgrounds in a workplace allows for this to happen (Greenberg 2013.) Another advantage of a culturally diverse workplace is the many different views on an issue that can be accessed. The immense assortment of viewpoints that people of different cultural backgrounds can have is astonishing. The effective resolution of matters can be made possible due to this, whether there are issues regarding general workplace administration, or even possible discriminatory concerns. Similarly, the overall productivity of organisations can benefit from a diverse workplace as well. Varied abilities allow for communication between

It is often said that the success of a Business has to do with how well its backbone team manages it. In today’s world, most of a company’s management and backbone team is one that is composed of up of a diverse group of employees. Strong, diverse teams play a vital role, on the success of a business. Diversity is understood to be the ways people can be similar or different from each other. Some examples of diversity in the workplace include culture, race, age, and gender. A good diverse workforce group is made of distinct employees from diverse backgrounds, different age groups, and distinct gender. Cultural Diversity in the workplace is one business component that has extreme importance in an organization. More and more organizations

Future trends for a diverse society will become more evident. As a result, the workforce and to a greater extent, the marketplace must increase diversity. Globalization of corporations begat a global economy increasing the marketplace, and enlarging a diverse workforce. The reality is diversity will become less of a social issue and more of a business concern linked to competitive strategies. Upper management will become more involved in diversity issues because diverse workforce needs to be better utilized in order to remain competitive. Diversity training will be integrated into other types of training. Corporations will continue to explore demographic changes in our society and link them more closely to global changes.

The importance of understanding cultural, ethnic and gender differences by managers and professionals in a business setting is essential to make the work environment comfortable. In every culture there are basic standards of thinking, and acting and these cultural differences strongly influence workplace values and communication. What may be considered acceptable and natural in the workplace for one person may be unacceptable for another person. People from diverse cultures bring new ways of thinking, creativity and language skills needed to survive in today’s work force. In many

In a world that has grown increasingly smaller due to mass media, world travel, and readily available information, the workplace has grown increasingly diverse in both gender and cultural aspects. Individuals no longer live and work within the confines of their geographic locations. At almost any position with any company the individual employee is a part of a larger world economy that harvests assets from the ends of the earth. Because of this, companies seek to capitalize on diversity to become more creative and flexible in their business models.

Organizations have been becoming increasingly diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. This diversity brings substantial potential benefits such as better decision making, greater creativity and innovation, and more successful marketing to different types of customers. But, increasing cultural differences within a workforce also bring potential costs in higher turnovers, interpersonal conflicts, and communicational breakdowns. The utilities of diversity training and the essential managerial skills required for effectively managing diversity will also be discussed.

Historically, diversity in the workplace was seen as an employment equity issues. As the years passed by, it all changed. The surge of globalization has needed the collaboration among people of different backgrounds and cultures. Nowadays, organizations are now creating a diverse workforce beyond just gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. Many U.S. organizations are embracing women, ethnic minorities, and foreign-born employees more than ever before in history. Diversity calls for organizations to recognize individuals for themselves, regardless their designated groups. This paper will be focusing in three different parts of diversity in the workforce: type of organizations, the benefits & cost, and measurements taken by CEOs to promote diversity.

The workplace has become one of the biggest multicultural settings. Almost half of the work force in the United States is made up of minorities. There are many advantages to having this percentage of people from different cultures throughout our workplace. One is the increase in creativeness. Not only in products that are being created but in the developing of an approach to solving problems. "Other cultures can offer insightful alternatives" (EthoConnect). Another way in which the workplace is affected by this is in productivity and attitudes. When people of all cultures pull together to reach a common goal there are less limited boundaries and there are more global understanding that are used to help reach the world's market place; creating a larger market for products. With this change in productivity in the workplace is more desirable and enjoyable for all employees. The market place has become more global based that workers having a diverse culture base is very important to break down barriers in language and knowledge of certain markets. This affects our lives by more companies hiring more international job seekers.

In response to the growing diversity in the workforce around the world, many companies have instituted specific policies and programs to enhance recruitment, inclusion, promotion, and retention of employees who are different from the privileged echelons of society. The privileged groups may vary from one country to the next. The workforce of the world is a dynamic environment, and in order for this dynamism to be put to use for the benefit of organizations, they must develop an effective strategy for managing diversity. Global Diversity Management refers to the voluntary organizational actions that are designed to create greater inclusion of employees from various backgrounds into the formal and informal organizational

Many opportunities are associated with a culturally diverse workplace and global expansion may have potential to provide just such a diverse work group. Cross-culturalism in business can provide leaders and employees with a wonderful opportunity to work with people from different backgrounds and cultures. In addition, “the more opportunities for business leaders to interact with people from different cultures, the more likely they will be to have positive attitudes from different cultures and identify, learn and apply diverse culturally-appropriate business behaviors” (Caligiuri & Tarique, 2012, p. 614). Culturally diverse environments offer a multitude of benefits including “the variety of perspectives, skills and personal attributes” (Matveeve & Nelson, 2004, p. 254). Moreover, multicultural teams have potential to “generate more ideas of higher quality in brainstorming tasks” (Matveeve &