A perspective on the benefits of diversity management in organizations

Abstract

One of the basic steps to making a business case for diversity is to understand what diversity means in the workplace and what benefits it brings. Also, proper implementation of practices for an inclusive work environment requires making managers aware of the potential benefits of diversity management. Accordingly, the article presents the results of a survey of organizational representatives on the benefits of implementing diversity management concepts. The analytical part of the article is based on the results of a survey of 1,076 representatives of large, medium and small companies located in Poland which was carried out before the COVID pandemic. Knowledge of the diversity management concept and awareness of its benefits were analyzed at the level of the entire group, as well as in a cross-section of companies by size. The analytical part of the article used selected modified multi-criteria decision-making methods for ordinal data. The adoption of an analytical approach also made it possible to identify the most important benefits that representatives of small, medium and large companies believe are a consequence of implementing the concept of diversity management. The survey participants were able to observe a relatively high impact of implementing the diversity management concept on most of the benefits obtained by the organizations detailed in the article. However, the analysis of the correlation matrix clearly indicates that the opinions of representatives of small, medium and large companies operating in Poland on the benefits that diversity management can give to an organization vary. Quite consistent opinions were observed among the surveyed representatives representing large and medium-sized enterprises.