Research And Inclusiveness Essay

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For our module three assignment “Research and Inclusiveness” we were tasked with finding a full-text article on issues of diversity and their impact on leadership effectiveness. After two days of research, several searches with varying degrees of search parameters, and scanning multiple articles, I narrowed my search down to the article “Diversity as Strategy” (September 2004) by David A. Thomas, who is a professor of organizational behavior and human resources management at Harvard Business School in Boston. I chose this article because I thought it best reflected the assignment out of all the articles I was able to find, and it captured my interest.
The article describes the story of Lou Gerstner, former IBM CEO, who in 1995 created a diversity task force to build upon the already existing IBM equal opportunity policies. Gerstner was of the opinion that the company was not diversified enough, especially at the management level, and that increasing …show more content…

Gerstner realized that diversity is not just about handing out a pamphlet about Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity. He understood that he had to include the entire work force from the bottom up and inter-mix them, so they could gain a better understanding of each other. Gerstner made it clear that fostering, teaching, and managing diversity is an on-going process. However, without being given the proper tools a lot of managers may be doomed to be inefficient as they themselves can sometimes hold on to certain misgivings, as Thomas (2004) indicates, “Executive’s beliefs are frequently inconsistent with their behavior,…” (p. 104). A good example would be a former co-worker of mine. He was in middle management and of Indian decent. His group consisted of employees of various backgrounds, ages, lifestyles, etc. He was ineffective in managing diversity, as he himself discriminated against some of his team

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