Diversity in Complex Organizations

 

The Triangle of Diversity Management, Change Management and Organizational Culture from a System-Theoretical Perspective

Diversity is increasingly seen as a critical success factor especially in the economic context. In addition to the potential which results from a diverse team according to studies, the challenges resulting from a heterogeneous workforce are also being addressed. Both the potential and the challenges result in the necessity of an organization-specific diversity management, which supports the recruitment of new employees on the one hand and the management of the existing diversity on the other hand. Particularly against the background of the complexity of an organizational environment and the increasing demands on organizational agility, there is a need to reflect diversity in organizations more strongly and to develop system-specific approaches. This requires the consideration of organization-specific structures and processes as well as the reflection of the change in organizational culture through the implementation of a diversity management approach that takes up and can cope with the given complexity. In addition, the psychological effects of such changes on employees must be taken into account in order to avoid reactances and to enable a sustainable implementation of diversity management.

  © Cluster of excellence

In the absence of corresponding approaches in the context of publicly funded, complex research organizations, the goal of this dissertation is to develop and test a research design that links the approaches of diversity and change management with organizational culture by adopting a systems-theoretical perspective. The research design is applied to a complex scientific organization.

Keywords

Diversity Management, Change Management, Organizational Management, Corporate Culture

Funding

The research project was realized within the Cluster of Excellce “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countires”. The successor project is continued within the Cluster of Excellence “Internet of Production”. Funding is provided by the Excellence Initiative and the German Research Foundation (DFG).