The Effect of Workforce Diversity Management on Organizational Performance: The Case of Four Universities in Ethiopia

Abstract

The objective of this study was to explore the degree of association between workforce diversity dimensions and academic performance of four universities in Ethiopia. The diversity management attributes assessed were diversity Climate, values and organizational justice; and identity, schemas and communication with adaptation to the contexts of the higher education institutions in Ethiopia. The Full account of these diversity management dimensions is presented in detail in the methodology section of this paper. The sample universities were selected purposively, and stratified and systematic sampling techniques were further used to identify respondents. The number of respondents that took part in the study was 386. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected to test the various study hypotheses. Descriptive statistics and simple correlation analyses were used to analyze the data. The demographic features of the staff working in the four case study universities was found to be diverse with regard to gender, marital status, age and religion. The agreement level of the staff with regard to the prevalence of diversity management dimension in their university was found to above the ideal average. The mean values of the Likert scale response ranged from 3.72 (with standard deviation of 0.98) for ‘organizational justice’ to 4.12 (with standard deviation of 0.74) for diversity management dimension designated as ‘values.’ Results from Pearson correlation analysis revealed that there are statistically significant positive correlations between the dimensions of workforce diversity and organizational performance. This implies that organizational performance of higher education institutions can be significantly and positively influenced by extant diversity. The practical implication of this is that attention needs to be given to the fair distribution of resources to the teaching staff working in these universities in the future. The freedom to express one’s own identity in the university workforce landscape was also observed to be limited in the universities studied and this has to be also improved. A democratic work environment is critical for the productivity of the staff to be enhanced and an effort has to be towards the goal of creating such an environment. The relationship between diversity management attributes (diversity climate, organizational justice, identity, values, schemas and communication) and overall academic performance was also determined, and the result indicated that there is statistically significant (P<0.00) positive correlations between workforce diversity and academic performance.