Globalization and the Effects of Diversity and National Identity — with Illustrations from Three British Companies

Abstract

Both ‘globalization’ and ‘managing diversity’ have become central themes in academic and popular business discourses. Of the two, globalization is the older concept and is signified by such terms as ‘the global village’ (McCraken, 1988), ‘the global market place’ (Paliwoda, 1993) and ‘the global economy’ (Hirst and Thompson, 1994). It presents a view of the world and its people, whether as organizational managers, employees or customers, as being increasingly ‘connected’. More recently, globalization has been coupled with the younger concept of diversity management, which originated in the US and, as Litvin (1997) observes, has been quickly leapt upon by scholars and practitioners as an important tool in harnessing the energies of organizations in the global battle for economic success. While there are many different interpretations and understandings of diversity management (see Kirton and Greene, 2000; Lorbiecki and Jack, 1999 for overviews of the literature), it is underpinned by the central belief that organizations with highly diverse workforces — in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, able-bodiedness, religion, sexual orientation and other differences — perform better in today’s ‘global’ economy than corporations that are monocultural or homogeneous. It is argued by leading advocates, such as Thomas and Ely (1996) and Dass and Parker (1999), that it makes good business sense to increase the number of different affinity groups on corporate payrolls, because their members are more in tune with the varied needs and tastes of people within our increasingly diverse and multicultural societies.