In the context of managing employees and serving customers, the term ‘diversity’ means all of the significant differences between people, including perceptions of differences, that need to be considered in particular situations and circumstances. There are multiple dimensions of diversity which may be more or less different in significant business functions and relationships. These are:

• Gender

• Age

• Culture

• Ethnicity

• Regional culture

• Sexual orientation

• Mental and physical abilities

• Education

• Religion

• Language

• Literacy

• Work experience

• Functional role and status

• Economic status

• Family status

• Carer roles

• Geographic location

• Work style

• Communication style

• Learning style

• Thinking style

• Management style

• Personality

• Ideology

• Profession

• Industry

• Organisational culture

"Diversity Management" is the ongoing process of incorporating the recognition of workforce and customer differences into all core business management functions, communications, processes and services to create a fair, harmonious, inclusive, creative and effective organisation.

Understanding what motivates and satisfies employees, whatever their backgrounds or circumstances, is an important component of good management. How can Cultural Diversity be ‘Managed’? The aims of managing diversity all sound perfectly sensible and beneficial – but how are they achieved? There are several key points for consideration:

1. Managing and working with diversity is a generic skill.

It is fair to say that managers in any organisation should have always managed diversity in one way or another. Most business owners and managers deal with situations involving cultural differences as they arise or simply avoid or ignore them. But those that actively manage cultural diversity are the ones most likely to be more competitive. Cultural background is one of the most complex of all the many dimensions of diversity that influence a person’s motivations and expectations, along with age, gender, physical and mental ability, education and so on. The presence of people from many different cultures living and working in an organization certainly adds to this complexity.

Essentially, humans are more alike than different. The differences come from the upbringing, and learned ways of seeing the world and ways of doing things. The most important of these differences are often the least visible, the ones expressed in values and attitudes.

2. Diversity management strategies must be linked to organisational and individual performance.

The quality of the people performance depends on the quality of their thinking –which depends on the quality of the information that they posses. When the people lack important information about each other, misperceptions, mistakes and miscommunications can happen. Knowing how differences will affect relationships, decisions and actions in complex workplace and social environments helps managers to improve individual and team performance.

3. Diversity management requires organisations and individuals to acquire new knowledge and skills and to develop cultural competence.

Effectively managing and serving people from different cultures requires a combination of knowledge and skills that can be learned in order to develop ‘Cultural Competence’. Cultural competence is simply defined as the awareness, knowledge, skills, practices and processes needed to function effectively and appropriately in culturally diverse situations in general and in particular interactions with people from different cultures. Firstly, the people need to understand the nature of culture and cultural diversity very well. Secondly, the people need to acquire and work with broad concepts and frameworks that will help them to analyse and manage cultural diversity in practical ways. Without the understanding and concepts that help people make sense of cultural diversity, the people would be constantly working with details and dealing with complex situations on a case by case basis.

4. Working with and managing diversity raises many complex issues.

In the natural desire of groups of individuals to cooperate and work harmoniously, without conflict, it is common to avoid recognising or discussing differences among group members.

There is a job to do and the people must all negotiate and compromise to ensure that their differences don't get in the way. However, diversity management requires an examination and discussion of differences, their impacts and ways of working with them.

In companies that work to expand globally, team performance becomes

vulnerable to cross-cultural interaction problems.

Managing cultural diversity, cultural differences, and cross-cultural conflicts have

surfaced as frequent challenges for cross-cultural teams. Because of their diverse perceptions, managers are more likely to interpret

and respond differently to similar strategic issues or team tasks Cross-cultural communication competence is thus an important component of a manager’s ability to address any performance challenges.

While many researchers have investigated cross-cultural communication

competence and cross-cultural effectiveness, understanding of the

relationship between cross-cultural communication competence and multicultural

team performance is insufficiently developed. Furthermore, past research finds the relationship between ethno-cultural diversity and performance to be highly complex. Combined analyses of multicultural team performance, cross-cultural

communication competence, and national culture orientations of team members could explain how communication competence influences the performance of

multicultural teams.

In the multicultural work environment, obtaining information from a colleague requires a high degree of cross-cultural communication competence. Furthermore, high competence has a direct and positive effect on the decision making and problem-solving abilities of managers. Past research has identified various characteristics that constitute cross-cultural communication competence, including relationship skills, communication skills, and personal traits such as inquisitiveness. Cross-cultural communication competence entails not only knowledge of the culture and language, but also affective and behavioral skills such as empathy, human warmth, charisma, and the ability to manage anxiety and uncertainty.

To talk about the terms you name is always a political activity. The real question is not how a given term is defined (as this definition will differ between each actor) but rather: how is difference conceptualized? And here, we come to the problem of mulitculturalism - the integration of the other as a mere cultural subject without any political implications. So, Western societies and their enterprises try to integrate anyone by letting them live their way of live - as long as it does not interfere with the Western live-style and the capitalist way of production. So, you can have your religion or dress in your traditional cloths - but you cannot challenge the Western vision of how production should go, how the world is to be understood. Culture loses its teeth. That has been interpreted by Zizek and others.