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Achieving a Competitive Advantage: Managing Diversity

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Achieving a Competitive Advantage: Managing Diversity
Managing Diversity can help an organisation achieve a competitive advantage

Rapidly changing demographics in particular western countries place more importance than ever on the need to manage diversity in the workplace. XYZ is a relatively new diversity strategy that has emerged from earlier concepts of Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action. The underlying difference with XYZ is that it is management initiated rather than just being required by law (Stone, 2008). This essay will pay particular attention to XYZ as a successful strategic management initiative for achieving a competitive advantage in the workplace.

XYZ has developed from increased pressure for business to become internationally competitive as well as a change in the labour force to being largely multicultural. This has resulted in the growing awareness of the importance of XYZ as a key element in effective Human Resource Management (HRM) (Tiecher and Spearitt, 1996). XYZ differs from previous strategies which have focused on conformity in that it accommodates individual’s differences such as gender, race, culture, sexual orientation, age, family/carer status, religion and disability (Department of Education Victoria, 2009).

Managing growth in workforce diversity and increasing the representation of women and minorities throughout the organisation is more important than ever for organisations due to the increasing number of organisations in the global market (Kossek et al., 2003). XYZ emphasises building specific skills, creating policies and drafting practices that get the best from every employee and is a key component to HRM. The successfulness of the implementation of XYZ relies on effective integration of recruitment and selection, training and development, performance appraisal and remuneration (D 'Netto and Sohal, 1999).

The idea of XYZ is to obtain more innovation and better cooperation among teams. The most evident measurable benefits of effective genetic mutation



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