Making sense of cultural diversity’s complexity: Addressing an emerging challenge for leadership

Abstract

The growing complexity of cultural diversity within organizations’ workforce today requires leadership to find new organizational approaches to diversity management. Today’s workforce are seeking a different management approach where the staff experience inclusion and belonging whilst contributing to the organization’s purpose. The current organizational approaches to diversity management have not been successful in delivering on the promised outcomes (e.g., creativity and innovation) that leadership seeks. Leadership’s role is critical to developing organizational approaches to diversity management. Cultural inclusion offers leadership today’s approach of managing for inclusion. This paper proposes a conceptual framework that looks at leadership’s role in their organization’s diversity management approach. We identify three dimensions in our conceptual framework that influence leadership in their effort’s for effective diversity management: leadership’s accountability for diversity management; leadership’s approach to diversity management; and leadership’s focus of diversity management. This conceptual framework allows the leadership of organizations to identify their current diversity management approaches by mapping leadership position’s position with the three dimensions to identify leadership’s role in managing their culturally diverse organizations.