Managing Diversity

Managing diversity entails recognizing the existing differences in the workforce and
acknowledging that those differences are valuable. It encourages best organizational practices by
promoting inclusiveness and preventing discrimination. Working in an early childhood education
organization requires maximum diversity management. The organization has continually
achieved this by conducting diversity training and enforcing workplace policies that support
diverse groups (Kirton & Greene, 2021). Such ensures that the organization overcomes
unconscious bias, which, if left unaddressed, would affect organizational behavior.
The organization has been effective in managing diversity in multiple ways. Firstly, it has
embraced diversity training, which helps staff members understand that existing differences are
socially constructed, not individual traits. Whatever is framed as desirable or undesirable is the
product of social construction, which breeds discrimination and inequality (Mumby & Kuhn,
2018). Also, the organization never treats race and ethnicity as a central theme. It considers race
a standard feature of organizational life rather than a relevant context of minority issues. Besides,
it views individual differences as a structural aspect of an organization and the society that
shapes values, meanings, and identities. Such allows people to perceive race-organizational
relationships as power relations established and sustained by communicative production of
difference. The other concept that the organization focuses on in managing diversity is
explaining whiteness and white privilege; how it creates a system of power domination (Mumby
& Kuhn, 2018). The organization suggests that everyone has a responsibility to create awareness
and self-reflexivity about the unconscious ways they participate in systems of inclusion and
exclusion.

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Societal forces can influence organizational communication and opportunities within an
organization. The most prevalent concept to me in chapter nine is the complexities of
relationships between organizational communication and differences. The differences are
communicatively constructed through discourses that shape values and give meanings. The
concept is prevalent to me, in particular, because of the nature of the organization I serve.
Managing an early childhood organization involves communicating, transferring values, and
shaping the identities of the young generations. Therefore, the concept will allow me to have a
workforce that takes the existing differences personally and think about them institutionally
(Mumby & Kuhn, 2018). This means thinking of how they can participate in short-circuiting
institutional inequalities.

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Reference

Kirton, G., & Greene, A. M. (2021). The dynamics of managing diversity and inclusion: A
critical approach. Routledge
Mumby, D. K., & Kuhn, T. R. (2018). Organizational communication: A critical introduction.
Sage Publications.