Implications for Diversity in the HRD Curriculum Drawn From Current Organizational Practices on Addressing Workforce Diversity in Management Training

Abstract

Valuing workforce diversity entails managing in a way designed to fully realize the potential benefits that differences can bring. It means being aware of behavior, leveraging strengths, acknowledging biases/prejudices, avoiding assumptions, and focusing on job performance and conduct. In practice, human resource development (HRD) is often called on to provide training that supports management’s efforts to value workforce diversity. Although many organizations have stand-alone diversity training programs, an emergent organizational practice is inclusion of diversity topics within other training curricula. Of particular interest is the leadership development curricula for senior managers, as participants in these programs are expected to establish and maintain an organizational culture that values diversity. The purpose of this article is to answer the question, Based on the way some organizations address diversity issues in their leadership training for senior managers, what are the implications for diversity in the HRD academic curriculum? This study was exploratory, limited to the perspectives of organizational stakeholders (i.e., training and workforce diversity specialists) conveyed through three case studies.