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Managing Diversity Using A Strategic Planned Change Approach

Managing diversity using a strategic planned change approach

Earnest Friday, Shawnta S. Friday
The Authors
Earnest Friday, Management in the College of Business Administration, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA
Shawnta S. Friday, School of Business and Industry at Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
Abstract
Many organizations have implemented various types of initiatives within the last few decades in an effort to deal with diversity. A possible missing vinculum (link) between how an organization deals with diversity and its impact on the bottomline is a corporate diversity strategy that is executed using a planned change approach to systemically manage diversity. While many organizations have implemented a corporate diversity strategy, most have not used a "planned change-corporate diversity strategy". The lack of a "planned change-corporate diversity strategy" is quite likely to inhibit managing diversity from becoming systemic to an organization's culture and its way of doing business, thus tending to disallow the potential benefits of diversity to be maximized. Hence, this paper offers a framework for using a "planned change-corporate diversity strategy" to: progress along the "diversity continuum" starting with acknowledging to valuing, and ultimately to managing diversity; and systemically managing diversity using a eight-step "managing diversity process".

Article type: Theoretical with application in practice.
Keywords: Diversity management, Strategic management, Change management.
Content Indicators: Research Implications* Practice Implications*** Originality** Readability***

The Journal of Management Development
Volume 22 Number 10 2003 pp. 863-880
Copyright © MCB University Press ISSN 0262-1711

Introduction
Over the past few decades, academicians, practitioners and organizational researchers have recognized that diversity is a phenomenon that has a wide array of affects within the workplace, and...