Is Affirmative action a method of managing diversity?



Is Affirmative action a method of managing diversity?

Introduction

This paper discuss that is the affirmative action method of managing diversity or not? Affirmative action refers to the various workplace policies aimed at benefitting a group of people that had been underrepresented or not provided equal rights or opportunities; it consider factors such as race, national origin, color, sex, and religion into account. Diversity basically means that are from different cultures having different nationalities, religions, races, genders, etc. Since today's world has become a global village nations as well as organizations have to manage the diversity.

Discussion

I believe that affirmative action and diversity are two different things. Affirmative action is a method to address the diversity. Over time, affirmative action has been cited to be one of the various ways of managing diversity. It has been observed that in many countries many groups have faced biasness because of their race or religion, in diversify culture it has been observed that groups favor to their race. Since diversity refers to the minimization of factors that impede multiculturalism (Rosado 2006, p.4), any effort undertaken to benefit groups that have been ignored leads to an indirect reinforcement.

While affirmative action aims at providing relief and remedy to those people who have been ignored. Management of diversity involves strategic approaches, and it is inclined towards being practical because of the globalization. Diversity focuses on the benefits that an organization could enjoy in its presence, whereas affirmative action is an approach designed to focus on avoiding legal hassles and compliance to legal standards (Shen et al 2009). Another distinguishing feature of affirmative action is that it takes into account only those people which had been disadvantaged previously. Diversity, on the other hand, has a broader vision of people, and it aims ...