MANAGING DIVERSITY

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From the appearance of the first multinational corporations, diversity in work teams has become a major component inside the companies these days. It is possible to find in a Colombian company for example, a Brazilian manager, an American engineer and a Colombian advocate.

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This diversity may bring many benefits to the company, as well as many problems. That is why to know how to handle diversity is so important.

According to Dougherty (1992) emotional conflict is likely to occur in a heterogeneous team. This usually happens due to the social and cultural differences are very strong and interfere in the performance of the team. 

On the other hand Slater, Weigand and Zweilein (2008) think that diversity is a source of competitve advantage. They also argue that in order for this to happend it is necessary to have inside the organization a commitment to diversity. Here the role of the managers is crutial: they must enhance team work, treat human capital as a source for competitive advantage and specially show their employees the benefit of diversity. 

This video shows the advantages of Diversity in teams.

References

Slater, Stanley F., Weigand, Robert A., Zweilein, Thomas J., 2008. "The business case commitment to diversity". Business horizonts 51: 201-209

Von Glinow, Mary Ann. Debra L. Shapiro, and JeanneM. Brett. 2004. "Can we talk, and should we? Managing emotional conflict in multicultural teams". Academic Management Review 29, no. 4: 578-592