Chapter 2. What Is Global Diversity?

Over the last forty years, the word "diversity" has become part of the language and management of North American firms and increasingly of European-headquartered corporations as well. However, the rise in globalization requires us to expand our vision of what "diversity" means in the workplace.

When used to address this new business reality, the term "global diversity" does not yet have a broadly shared or universally understood meaning. For some it denotes race and gender, for others it means accepting all things "that make us different," and for others it means ethnicity and culture.

Often, those varying interpretations stem from the user's national context, political agenda, dominant culture, or minority group identity—making the term "global diversity" even more complex. For example, many people in the United States connect issues of diversity to human rights and civil liberty; Europeans may connect them to cultural heritage and language differences; many in Latin countries focus their diversity dialogues around the innate dignity of the individual; and many Asian societies interpret diversity in terms of collective accountability. This chapter will examine this dilemma and suggest a new model, the Six Spheres of Inclusion (SSI) Model. It will also provide tools to apply the model to global organizational development as well as interpersonal assessments. Last, it will provide a process to evaluate your company and its current stage of global diversity management.