LEADERSHIP

Leading in a Changing World

Leading in a Changing World

Blog 1

According to an article by Homan et al (2008) in the Journal of Management, diversity is regarded as one of the most important aspects of organizations nowadays. Be it decision making or any other organizational function, diverse work groups or teams are valued greatly in the contemporary circumstances of the business world. In view of various theorists and researchers, diverse and heterogeneous workgroups have started to prove themselves as one of the major assets of any organizations. Because of the immensely rich mixture of numerous demographics and experience of people in the diverse work teams, it casts an omnipresent and insidious impact on the creativity and innovation of the organizational functioning and operations (Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007, p. 520).

Although regarded highly important and indispensible to the numerous functions of organizations nowadays, there exist two opposite viewpoints on the impacts and role of diverse work teams. One view and group of researches support and provide consistent results for the diverse work teams to put out stupendous results for the organizations. The diverse workgroups are successful for the underline mechanisms of the human nature and personality; people coming from the diverse backgrounds and contexts pool up their ideas and innovative schemes to take up the organizations to the understanding of the cross cultural and national level. The compatibility and compatibility and matching of the minds and personalities often reap into a bigger, more effective team. Such teams and workgroups also facilitate the process of international marketing and businesses; being culturally sensitive and understanding of the various contexts, these groups actually help in broadening the perspectives of the organizational scope and objectives.

On the other hand, organizational research has also shown and depicted results that are inconsistent and incompatible with the assertion that work teams always prove to be beneficial and extremely advantageous to the organizational remuneration. Consequently, the diversity and heterogeneity in the workplaces has been termed as double edged sword, by Martins and Milliken (1996, p. 403).

The diversity and heterogeneity being a double edged sword implies that diversity stands on the edge; either it can prove to be piece of cake for providing the organizations with advantages and options that support the objectives or are compatible with the organizational achievements. The shift and tilt which diversity can take for the organizations depends largely on how they are managed. There have been numerous proposed theories and constructs about understanding the diverse workgroups; these in turn help in managing the teams and coordinating their differences and similarities.

Management of the diverse work teams is crucial to the performance and productivity of the organizations because homogeneity in the people, pool of experiences and varied familiarity and knowledge of the people all lies there in the diverse teams, it is just about how they are discovered, recognized and utilized by the management to the fullest. Moreover, teams perform and reflect the manner in which they are ...