Productive Diversity: Capitalising on Human Resources: How can we Harness our Knowledge of Diversity?

Abstract

The process of productive diversity may be harnessed by capitalising on human resources. This is based on research on the micro scale on consulting teams from Middlesex University Business School working on live client based problems. Members of these teams were asked to identify individual cultural differences, in order to create an awareness of the values, traditions and beliefs that influenced their own thinking and behaviours and to identify stereotypes that were associated with their cultures. Our aim was to facilitate an awareness of the complementarity of difference in order that these teams might understand better how they could add value to both their operations as a team and their client organisations. In adopting this position we are informed by the work of Hofstede, Schein. and Trompenaars. What our research points to is not that teams are driven by either shared values or a comlementarity of difference, but rather, that both of these factors are inextricably connected. Indeed, our research suggests that there is a two- stage process that begins with recognising the complememetarity of difference that team members bring from their individual cultural contexts, and that through a process of knowledge management that seeks to reveal this complementarity, shared values then emerge. It is we suggest this two-stage process that leads to productive diversity and contributes directly to an expanded knowledge economy.