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Walgreens Diversity

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Organization Paper #4
The purpose of this assignment is to identify four concepts that relate to diversity in the workplace. The business in the case study is Walgreens, a semi-worldwide drugstore chain that has expanded to more than 6,000 stores. These four concepts will help with the understanding of what Walgreen’s will decide to do in the short/long term in regards to diversity in the workplace.
Diversity: Differences That Matter
The term diversity is defined in our textbook as a “variety of demographic, cultural, and personal differences among an organization’s employees and customers” (Williams, 2015). A simple way to define diversity is to say variety. Diversity is typically dealt in terms of people in schools and the workplace. If a …show more content…

Since the final settlement regarding the lawsuit could take up to a few years to decide, Walgreens needs to look at making some changes in their business diversity. One of the subjects from the textbook suggests diversity paradigms, or different methods for managing diversity (Williams, 2015). The first method for managing diversity is discrimination and fairness. This method specifically focuses on equal employment opportunities and fair treatment. With this method, success is found in how well a company handles diversity in gender, culture, and other outside groups. Seeing that Walgreens is treating African Americans unfairly, its top-level managers should get together to brainstorm ways to better this issue. Another method for managing diversity (that Walgreens should be aware of) is access and legitimacy. This method is defined in the textbook as “focusing on the acceptance and celebration of differences to ensure that the diversity within the company matches the diversity found among primary stakeholders, suppliers, and local communities (Williams, 2015). If Walgreens really wants to be a diverse business, they are going to need to shake things up a bit. The word that sticks out in the definition of the access and legitimacy method is acceptance. Having an open mind and encouraging employees to be who they are would help make the workplace more diverse. A way Walgreens could work on this is when they hold executive meetings; take turns inviting employees who come from different ethnic backgrounds. Also, making sure to include the same amount of men and women is important. While this case study primarily focuses in on race/ethnic backgrounds, there are other aspects of diversity that companies should be aware

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