MANAGING PEOPLE FOR PERFORMANCE
Topic: Managing Diversity in the Workplace
Prepared for
Sam Muriithi
Lecturer
MBA 5712: Managing People for Performance
Prepared by
Wahome Prisca (waprm111)
August 13th, 2011.
When I think of the word diversity, like most people the first thing that comes to mind is people of different cultural background, different religions and different ages. Most people are ignorant to the fact that diversity is not only characterized by reference to the culture, religion and age of a group of people. Coates 2006 explains that diversity is characterized by all human character and each individual has a substantial number of this characters that make us who we are; race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, demographic location, urban/suburban/rural background, age, gender, level of education, occupation, income, height and weight.
In my opinion Kenya is the most diverse country being that it holds 48 communities. According to the NCIC report 80% of public services are occupied by only 6 communities. This clearly shows that discrimination is mostly caused by diversity.
Being that we are living in a time where all you need to work anywhere in the world is a computer and a webcam, organizations that were too rigid need to be flexible, otherwise the will be left behind by those that are willing to change e.g. Telcome Kenya was the leading telecommunication company in Kenya for a very long period of time but they took too long to change from land lines to mobiles when the market changed its preferences, therefore when Safaricom came with the mobile communication, Telcom lost a very large number of there customers and they have never been able to get them back.
The objective of this essay is to outline to managers that diversifying is no longer optional. If they want their organizations to grow, diversifying is a necessity. Managers also need to understand that this process takes time because they are dealing with human beings...