Diversity and Multiculturalism Meaning - Assignment Example

sity has been defined “as acknowledging, understanding, accepting, valuing, and celebrating differences among people with respect to age, class, ethnicity, gender, physical and mental ability, race, sexual orientation, spiritual practice, and public assistance status” (Esty, et al., 1995). Diversity can be defined in many other ways too. Diversity is recognizing and appreciating the various characteristics, some of them have already been mentioned above, that make an individual unique. Diversity helps in promoting individual as well as collective achievement.

Diversity believes in providing equal opportunities to all irrespective of race or religion. The concept of diversity is being increasingly used by business managers to deal with the issues that have cropped with the increased presence of minorities and women in the workplace. "Managing diversity” has become a critical part of the management of an organization. Diversity has to be successfully managed or else it can lead to an increase in employee turnover, absenteeism, disruption in work, harassment and what is more important a low morale.

All this in turn will further lead to low productivity. Today it has become necessary to have a diverse workforce as it adds value to an organization. Diversity in a workplace means recognizing and respecting individual differences that may arise in the workplace. This will benefit the organization and lead to more productivity and also give a competitive edge to the organization. Good diversity management means creating a fair environment for the employees. Today many definitions and terms can be used to describe multiculturalism.

One definition is that multiculturalism is “the doctrine that several different cultures (rather than one national culture) can co-exist peacefully and equitably in a single country” and "by making the broadest range of human differences acceptable to the largest number of people, multiculturalism seeks to overcome racism, sexism,