Diversity Management: Economically Reasonable or "Only" Ethically Mandatory?

• Published in: International journal of diversity in organisations, communities and nations communities and nations, 2007, Vol.7 (3), p.159-168
• Main Authors: Hanappi-Egger, Edeltraud, Köllen, Thomas, Mensi-Klarbach, Heike
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1447-9532; 1447-9583
• DOI: 10.18848/1447-9532/CGP/v07i03/39399

Organizational diversity more and more becomes a crucial issue in companies. Amongst others due to demographic changes and the increase of the labour-force participation rate of women the diversification of the workforce is obviously augmenting rapidly, but only few European companies have already implemented diversity programs. Some studies identify economic reasons for establishing diversity management in terms of lower levels of absenteeism, attraction and retention of highly talented people, increased creativity and innovation, higher quality problem solving and as well in terms of general profit indicators. Particularily, the question whether diversity correlates to higher innovation capability experiences growing attention. We assume that different shareholders need different sources of information; in order to understand the point of view of decision makers we present results of a study, in which the estimation of the interrelationship between gender sensitive measures and relevant cost categories is investigated.