Diversity Management Essay

Posted: July 5th, 2021

Diversity Management at IBM

Introduction

The contemporary business world requires companies, especially global companies, to adopt strategies that address their future. These strategies should focus on all corporate functions, most notably the Human Resource management function. A well-managed workforce values and embraces diversity, which is the selected topic for this project (Barak, 2013). To better understand diversity, the chosen company is the International Business Machines Corporation, popularly known as the IBM. The IBM Corporation is an American and international Information Technology Company created in 1911 and is headquartered at Armonk in New York (Reuters, 2019). It operates in the IT industry and is the world’s largest company with a wide range of products and services in its operations.

IBM is the worlds’ largest IT Company; it operates in more than 170 countries and becomes one of the most employing companies with about 398,000 employees. The massive workforce meets the needs and requirements of the company both locally and internationally. IBM Corporation categorizes its products in five principal segments, namely Technology services and Cloud platforms, Cognitive solutions, Global Business Services, Systems, and finally Global Financing. The Cognitive Solutions and GBS segments offer consultation services, among other services (Reuters, 2019). On the other hand, the Systems and Technology services and Cloud platforms offer both hardware and software technologies such as computers and analytics software, among others. Finally, the Global Financing segment focuses on financing niches such as the clients, commercial, and marketing among businesses.

 Diversity Management 

Diversity is commonly described as the differences among people in reference to their age, origin, gender, religion, and education levels, among other personal traits. Diversity in the workplace thus shows the different employees working together in reference to the above-mentioned personal traits. Therefore, diversity management is formal measures and practices adopted by organizations to ensure the diversified workforce works harmoniously and effectively (Erhan Aydin, 2017). Effective diversity management can be understood using Cox’s model of a multicultural organization, where he advocates for the selection of employees based on different personality traits. He argues that a diverse workforce introduces different identities that facilitate effective working. Thus, organizations are stopped from suppressing employees to assimilate to the dominating organizational culture. Moreover, using the learning and integration paradigm, the proponents state that organizations should focus on employees from different demographics and cultures for the benefit of the company (Erhan Aydin, 2017).

Diversity Management at IBM

IBM Corporation is one of the companies recognized for its large workforce and effective diversity management strategies. Nevertheless, the corporation embraces and incorporates diversity in the selection of its employees because it believes diversity is fundamental in delivering its corporate goals and objectives. IBM ensures that its 398,000 plus employees are talented people from different demographics and work freely without any form of harassment or discrimination (Barak, 2013). In the company’s selection and employee recruitment, people with talent and highest qualifications are selected without discriminating against them due to their different demographic traits. The corporation’s task force includes employees from all ethnicities and genders.

Diversity management at IBM is achieved through three main ways. Primarily, the corporation ensures that the selection and recruitment process allows for any demographic as long as they are skilled and qualified. That means that they ignore these differences and offer equal employment opportunities to everybody. Secondly, at one point, the CEO ensured that the areas with low diversity levels were stabilized and balanced. In doing so, eight task forces exist comprising women, men, Asians, African Americans, LGBT, Native Americans, Hispanics, and PWD (Barak, 2013). These eight task forces are meant to occupy the senior levels of executives and higher-level managers. This shows that at all levels in the corporation, diversity is represented and managed effectively. Finally, IBM ensures that all fields are represented equally, especially in fields such as computer science and engineering.

Conclusion 

Human Resource management ensures that the workforce is managed effectively, and the employees are engaged to meet the corporate goals as well as the competitive advantage. The effectiveness of diversity management can best be understood using the multicultural organization model as well as the learning and integration paradigms. Diversity Management at IBM is conducted in three main ways, namely providing equal employment opportunities, ensuring diversity is represented at the top management level and developing HR initiatives that embrace diversity.

References

Barak, M. E. (2013). Managing Diversity: Toward a Globally Inclusive Workplace. New Delhi: Sage Publishers.

Erhan Aydin, M. R. (2017). Theoretical Perspectives to Diversity in Management Research. Journal of Management Research , Vol 9(2), pp: 160-170.

Reuters. (2019, October 08). International Business Machines Corp.IBM.N. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/companies/IBM.N