Diverse Leadership Wealth of Our Nation Essay

Diversity is the mosaic of people who bring a variety of ethnical and heathen spikelet endgrounds, styles, perspectives, values and belief to a group with which they are to interact. Diversity is a variation in ideas, opinion, cultural and ethnical background, style, values, and beliefs. Diversity is very essential in the portfolio of any organization or police squad that seeks optimum performance. The best form of learning is by learning from people with respective(a) ideas and methods of reasoning.Diversity is all important(predicate) in a team, because there testament be more than enough idea and skill pool, which the team can benefit from when carrying out assignments and activities. Most people think of it simply as differences in race, democracyality, or gender, but true diversity encompasses these attributes along with differences in opinions, ideologies, and interests, among other things. People tend to reflect on diversity as simply demographic, a matter of race, gen der or age. However, groups can be different in many styles.Diversity also is based on informational differences, reflecting a persons program line and experience, and on values or goals that can influence what one perceives to be the mission of something as lower-ranking as a single meeting or as abundant as a undivided company. Diversity among employees can create better performance when it comes to creative tasks such as product exploitation or cracking in the raw markets. Managers have been trying to increase diversity to achieve the benefits of innovation and unclouded ideas. Over the years, corporations and fortune 500 companies embraced diversity.They pushed diversity to the fore-front and embarked on campaigns to recruit, train and retain a diversified tame force. The essential ingredients of performance in the workplace in the United States have evermore been teams and team-work. Companies built their teams in such a way that it always included people with divers e backgrounds, opinions and culture. Diversity within these teams brought nearly higher success rates in activities and projects because the team were able to pull ideas, strengths, knowledge and resources from a wider hold of intellectual capital.The study of diversity in the workplace has taken on brand-new importance as changing economics prompt many companies to structure themselves into flatter, more decentralized entities. The result is that todays corporations are built around groups that must find answers to novel and complicated business issues. These teams bring unneurotic diverse groups of people who incorporate a variety of backgrounds, ideas and personalities. Large corporations like JPMorgan Chase, Exxon-Mobil, General Electric, Ford travel Company, American Express Company, Wells Fargo & Company, Washington Mutual Inc., Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs were often honored for distinguishing themselves with first in class diversity initiatives in the Financial Services Industry. First the housing market collapsed which impacted the financial markets which impacted the stock market. On September 14, 2008, the financial industry held its breath as it watched the fall and demolition of Wall Street. Lehman Brothers collapsed Merrill Lynch was sold to bank Of America. What followed was a veritable redrawing of the industrial map Former cornerstones of the nations economy filed for bankruptcy or merged with larger companies to stay afloat.As the mergers are finalized, the new fear within the industry is not so much whether the companies pull up stakes survive, but leave behind the employees? Regarding hiring, everybody will be affected, express Carlos Orta, p bident and CEO of the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility. Carlos Orta knew everybody will be hurt, but his fears were the impact the freeze and layoffs will have on Hispanics. In all, the financial industry is thought litigate to have lost more than 3000,000 jobs since the crisis started. Mr.Orta predicts that the restructuring of the financial industry will force it to focus more on diversity, because its customers will hold them accountable. He tell that JPMorgan, which is now essentially a bank, will have to assume with banking issues. This will be a shock to their system because they dont subscribe to diversity and never have, he said. The impact the financial crises will have on diversity in the workplace has been the display case of several discus and forums in the last couple of months. The discussion was part of Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.s 12th Annual Rainbow PUSH Wall Street Project Economic Summit. The panel The Economic Crisis on Diversity and Diversity Initiatives explored the economys impact on women and people of color in the work world. Many of the panelists weighed whether women and people of color have been disproportionately affected by downsizing due to the clean economy. Diversity in large corporations is definitely hard hit by the financial crisis. In new years advocacy groups have pushed up the number of blacks and other traditionally underrepresented minorities being hired and call downd by financial firms.This current economic crisis has impacted every sector of the U. S. economy . During tough economic propagation organizations are forced to focus on their core business. Projects and Initiatives such as diversity that reside in their support area may be delayed or cut often with disquietude about the potential impact delay will have on efforts to build an inclusive culture. Now, as financial firms and other companies downsize or disappear, many of those hired through diversity initiatives have been losing their jobs.As companies garb their workforce and cut costs to weather a faltering economy, women and minorities brace as they bare the achievable brunt of the layoffs. Subha Barry, managing aimor of global diversity and inclusion at Merrill Lynch said that most of her firms diversity initia tives were bind to increasing revenue. In the words of Barbara Thomas, president and CEO of the National Black MBA As we all know, when anything goes malign in this country, black employees are hit harder than most other races . She also stated that, When America gets a cold, black America gets pneumonia.Diversity hiring in the finance and insurance industries has been on the upswing in recent years. rough people opine that the actual effect on diversity when companies merge or downsize will possible vary according to the companies layoff and retention policies. Thomas said the Black MBA organization has been trying to refocus on industries less affected by the financial crisis health care and biotech, global media and entertainment, energy, and food and beverages. The association she says, has been supporting(a) its members to pursue these industries.Yvonne Hart, associate director of MBA student programming at the Robert Toigo Foundation, which awards fellowships to nonage s tudents at business schools, said her organization has been keeping a close eye on how the financial crisis is affecting minority students. We always have concerns about that, and definitely those concerns have intensified over the past 12 months Hart said her organization has heightend its programming in response to the recent turmoil of the past two weeks, adding six sector-focused weather vane seminars on navigating industries other than investment banking and intensified interview and mentorship guidance.The group also held a town hall-style crowd call meeting last week, in which four professionals from the investment banking industry spoke to 130 minority business school students considering careers in finance, giving them insights and career tips on how to move forward in the new financial landscape. Its not just racial minorities who are concerned. When word broke of Lehman Brothers bankruptcy filing, the brassy Foundation, which encourages female MBA candidacies, sent ou t an e-mail to all the women in their database, reminding them of the career resources the group offers.Apart from the direct impact of layoffs, diversity advocates fear many financial firms will eliminate or cut back human resources or diversity programs. Most industries are already seeing the departure of some make diversity advocates and there are worries that there will be more to come in the attached few months. Its more that the people that are leaving are the ones who were around for years and knew the corporationa and very got what diversity was about. Theres departure to be a lot more scrutiny at these companies.If they keep pulling staff, they cant always justify keeping the programs and partnerships they are supporting. Also at stake is continued corporate sponsorship of diversity organizations. For instance, Management Leadership for Tomorrow, an organization that trains black, Hispanic, and Native American teenage people for business leadership positions, lists ins urance giant American International Group and investment banks Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs as among their corporate sponsors. It is pertinent to note that two of their sponsors have ceased to be in existence.In conclusion, it is evident the imagination of diversity will continue to be an intricate aspect of the business milieus of today and in the future. Organizations must embrace and understand the importance of diversity in order to remain competitive, respond to globalization and promote innovation and productivity within its organization. Strong commitment and leadership will provide the necessary cultural atmosphere that promotes an inclusive environment. Training, education and effective communication will help execute strong change management practices. The rationale for understanding and managing diversity has never been stronger.As new possibilities and opportunities in the business environment arise, the call for for diversity programs will be the key to successful organizations of the future. The world today is more diverse than ever before. Our ethnicity, religion, life experiences and all other personal attributes make us unique individuals. We all need to learn to accept what is different from us and more importantly respect it. In this environment, companies are going to have to be very, very savvy and very smart in terms of maintaining talent in their pipeline that is not just white males and even white females.They need to continually maintain a diversified workforce. There has been no report or research that has proved that diversity initiatives in large corporations is in part responsible for the current financial turmoil the economy is in If you want to genuinely be ahead of the curve in your workforce, you have to pay attention to demographics. The pessimist in me says that diversity will slip down the agenda, for most firms, because in tough sentences business executives could be tempted to fall back on old, fa miliar practices rather than introducing innovative new ones.But there was also an optimistic way of looking at things, if companies were going to have to shed staff to cope with the crisis, what better time to restructure their operations so that workforces are more diverse. Since the financial crisis is forcing companies to reassess their core values and part of this process would involve a greater commitment to diversity. With a more diverse mix, companies will become a more wholesome organization which will herald new ways of doing business, post-financial crises era.Companies should embark on sublunar diversity initiatives, with programs which will help recruit and retain minorities. Once hired, promotion policies that encourage diversity will ensure the best people get to top management positions, and these will stir these companies to paths of success and profitability. disrespect all of the economic turmoil facing the workforce or even because of the turmoil there is a nee d for large corporations to maintain a strong focus on diversity. There has been no time better that now to invest smartly in diversity.