Contribution of Workplace Diversity to Creativity and Problem Solving, and a Manager’s Role in Its Promotion

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Contribution of Workplace Diversity to Creativity and Problem Solving, and a Manager’s Role in its Promotion Abstract This essay discusses about the influence of workplace diversity on the creativity and problem solving aspects of a business. It provides an outline of the benefits and potential drawbacks of having a diverse workforce, with some measures to manage and balance the diversity for the betterment of the organization. Keywords: Workplace diversity; Diversity management; Benefits and drawbacks of workplace diversity. Diversity is differences among people in age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background and capabilities/ disabilities (Waddell 2011). Diversity not only involves how people perceive themselves, but how they perceive others. Those perceptions affect their interactions. For a wide assortment of employees to function effectively as an organization, human resource professionals need to deal effectively with issues such as communication, adaptability and change. Diversity will increase significantly in the coming years. Successful organizations recognize the need for immediate action and are ready and willing to spend resources on managing diversity in the workplace now. It is very important to understand how the differences in all these factors affect the performance, motivation, success and interactions of the members of any organization, as heterogeneous organizations that valued diversity have been argued to have higher-quality group decision making, greater creativity and innovation, more organizational flexibility due to the possession of divergent thinking, greater ability to attract and retain the best talent, and greater marketing capability (Cox and Blake 1991). With a diverse workforce, there is a variety of culture and perspectives which allows an organization to visualize the same idea or a

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