Why should we care?
In an increasingly stratified and globalized world, our
working definition of diversity shifts alongside sociopolitical trends. While
diversity has grown from a race-based term to include a kaleidoscope of
identities including sex, gender, religion, nationality, income, educational
attainment, and many other labels, it continues to lack definition in many
ways. In understanding that the term is sociopolitical and will continue to
evolve, leaders must operationalize the term in context to their work.
Jeanne McNett writes that an economic argument for diversity
is one that recognizes the shifted and globalized pool of consumers.
Businesses, in building relationships with consumers and other business
leaders, must engage a diverse workforce because they will speak to a larger
consumer base and promote creativity, particularly culturally competent creativity
that businesses traditionally did not engage.
The same is true for non-profit organizations. Whether
engaging potential employees or potential volunteers, diversity matters. Leadership
must work with and hire more diverse individuals whom reflect the diverse
communities from which they come from. These communities are often the target
of non-profit work.
Further, diversity aligns with the philosophical impetus of
non-profit work. If non-profits in the U.S. truly bridge the gap services
offered by the government or provide greater services to “deserving” often
under-recognized groups, then non-profits are engaging in ethical work.
According to McNett, this ethical derivation of diversity that non-profits
engage in can be categorized into three areas: deontological (faith-based),
teleological (hope-based), and caring (charity) approaches to diversity either
applied universally or to a particular application. Regardless of the ethical
theory applied, the United States is becoming more global along all of these
facets and non-profit leadership must engage the audience and constituents.
What are the implications?
As historically excluded groups begin to stratify and make
up sub-groups, thus adding to diverse identities, they bring with them varying
skills. This idea is mentioned by Thomas Sowell whom noted that while Japan an
Switzerland haven’t been historically prosperous in natural resources, their
populations have developed a broad range of human capital that promoted
economic prosperity (33).
Robinson and Dechant further this examination of diversity
in soft skills in citing Fortune 100s data on why human resource executive
foster diversity. While laws exist to denounce discrimination and segregation like
the Equal Opportunity Employment Act, these HR executives promoted diversity
because it’s presence added value to the company. This included creativity and
innovation, higher0quality problem solving, greater leadership, and fostering
global relationships (230-35).
What can leaders do about
it?
For ethical and production reasons, non-profit leaders
should foster diversity within their organizations at various levels. While
Robinson and Dechant identify four steps to involving diversity in an
organization (236-7), I find that they are no different than any other human
capital targeting program, whether it be marketing, volunteerism, etc. The main
take away is that to foster diversity, one must focus on and set goals to
foster diversity. No organization will just happen upon diversity.
Further, Robert Herman (Renz, 2016) notes that executives must traverse both the internal organization and external forces. This reinforces the idea that context matters. Impressions and intentions matter. Having leadership that reflects the community, stakeholders, or other parties is important, particularly when addressing issues from the four distinct organizational perspectives: structural, human resource, political, and symbolic. This is starkly apparent in the case study involving the Acheen Malay Mosque Village where, despite having their cultural and historical interests in mind, the Muslim community was distrusting of the Penang Heritage Trust because their board was almost exclusively composed of Chinese-descendant Malay persons.
