Workplace Diversity: Emerging Issues in Contemporary Reviews

Abstract

This paper is an examination of workplace diversity, especially the emerging issues in contemporary reviews. Considering the demographic differences of people in terms of age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture etc working in an organization that usually drive productivity and business performance; such a diversity or heterogeneous work organization is largely driven by globalization and liberalization of trade which allow productive factor inputs to move freely across nations. Workforce diversity is embedded with some attendant advantages such as the creation of a learning-work environment through collaboration and team participation, productivity and increased profit. It is pertinent to note that, there are some emerging issues in workforce diversity, which include multicultural task environment, existence of large talent pool used for creating and innovation, inter-functional coordination, complexity and discrimination at work. These issues are brought to bear through globalization, migration, aging population, outsourcing, women’s work etc. Organization should have a framework for workplace diversity management; optimally allocating resources to create a multicultural engaged workforce for productivity and excellent business performance.