The biggest difference is between and and –. Notice that while one could care about any one of these individually or collectively, the differences between them are important. Here, the value of diversity is in its aesthetic addition to your organization. You could care about diversity for aesthetic reasons or because you think its appearance will attract others toward your organization. Here, diversity’s value is that it expands the pool of perspectives within your organization.
On related grounds, you could value diversity because you value the difference in perspective and viewpoint that you think minority hires/customers will bring. Here, diversity’s value lies in its ability to improve outcomes for the organization. You could care about diversity for reasons Scott Paige has discovered via mathematical modeling: namely, that more diverse (in certain ways) groups and firms tend to generate better solutions to problems than non-diverse ones.
Here, diversity’s value is a moral one where increased diversity means a “redistribution” of opportunity. You want to make sure that your company gives those traditionally marginalized people opportunities they may not otherwise get. You know that many non-white people have gotten – and still get – an unfair shake in life. You could care about diversity for reasons of morality or justice. Here, diversity’s value is as an indicator of fair and inclusive policies. If the geographical area you serve is diverse, a lack of corresponding diversity in your organization could indicate that these policies are not as fair as you thought. You care that your policies for hiring and for appealing to customers are fair. There are many reasons you might be troubled by this: Let’s go back to when you were looking around your organization and noticing how racially/ethnically homogeneous it is. Being clear about how you think increased diversity benefits your organization will go a long way toward figuring out how best to achieve diversity-related goals. There are many good reasons to seek and expand diversity in a variety of areas, but because there are many, some reasons may not be consistent others. Its purpose is not to signal that there are no good reasons for diversity that could withstand scrutiny.
“Why do we care about diversity, and what are our purposes for wanting to increase it?” is not a silly question. And along the same lines, you might direct your organization to focus advertising on specific minority groups, while also making sure not to treat the groups you are specially targeting differently on the basis of their minority status. Or you might suggest that minority employees – because they are minority employees – be placed on administrative committees, so that these committees have diverse perspective, and yet also endeavor to make sure not to unduly burden these employees with extra work because of their minority status. For example, you might recommend that hiring committees go out of their way to seek out minority candidates and that hiring committees never explicitly consider the minority status of the candidates they went out of their way to invite, based on minority status. The problem with your approach – and not asking the question about what your purposes are – is that you might end up with a scattered list of items that may even unintentionally conflict with one another. Instead, you plow ahead and compile a list of things you can do to increase diversity. Instead of asking the serious question about what reasons you and your company have for caring about diversity, you do what everyone does: treat the answer as so obvious and the question so potentially insulting as to render the question unworthy of being asked. She thinks that getting clear on the purposes diversity is supposed to serve will help you determine what your initiatives should look like. At one of your collective brainstorming meetings, where you are having some trouble formulating a plan for doing this, one of your colleagues asks: why exactly are we trying to increase diversity? What is our reason(s) for caring about diversity? And she asks this non-rhetorically.
You talk with your colleagues and you decide to create diversity initiatives aimed at recruiting and retaining non-white (and otherwise more diverse) employees and clients. Suppose that in your case, you are concerned that your geographic area is racially/ethnically diverse but your staff and clientele seem very white.
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You look around and notice that while you are located in an area chock full of diversity of all kinds – racial, religious, and the like – your staff and customers are quite homogenous. Imagine that you are in charge of some workplace.