MANAGING DIVERSITY IN ORGANISATIONS TO GAIN COMPETITIVENESS

Organizations the world over is increasingly finding themselves coping with the changes taking place in their environment. There are two sets of forces that are changing the once familiar organizational landscape increasing reliance on teams and the changing workforce. This is bringing more and more people from diverse backgrounds into contact with one another. In general, diversity refers to the ways that people in organizations differ.  That sounds simple, but defining it more specifically is a challenge because people in organizations differ in many ways-races, gender, ethnic group, age, personality, cognitive style, tenure, organizational function, and more. Managing diversity means establishing a heterogeneous workforce to perform to its potential in an equitable work environment where no member or group of members has an advantage or a disadvantage. Effectively managing diversity helps organizations to identify and capitalize on opportunities to improve products and services, attract, retain, motivate and utilize talented people effectively improve the quality of decision-making at all organizational levels and reap the many benefits from being perceived as a socially conscious and progressive organization. The paper attempts to analyze the mechanism of leveraging and unleash the powerful benefit of a diverse workforce in work organization.