Diversity Approaches in Organizations: A Leadership Perspective

Diversity approaches are beliefs or organizational models for how to manage workplace diversity. Two prominent approaches exist: diversity-awareness (e.g., multiculturalism), which focuses on recognizing and celebrating group differences, and diversity-blindness (e.g., colorblindness), which ignores group membership in favor of focusing on individuality, similarities, or equality. While effectively harnessing these approaches has great potential as a leadership strategy, the literature has remained relatively silent about how leaders can utilize approaches to maximize the benefits and reduce the downsides of diversity in the workplace. In this chapter, we first review the literature on the DI benefits and challenges associated with diversity approaches. Next, we propose effective ways for leaders to utilize diversity approaches to attain a diverse and inclusive workplace. We discuss future directions for diversity and leadership scholars and practitioners.