What is diversity?
What is diversity?
Diversity is best explained by the word diversity. Scientists from various disciplines deal with this concept; as an example, we would like to present three different approaches: one from the social sciences, one from psychology and one from economics.
Maisha Eggers understands diversity "as a point of convergence of equality and difference, i.e. different partial identities that each touch on fields of equality and fields of difference" and also "as an intersectionally informed view of inequality relations" (Eggers, 2013, p. 3.).
Rosemary Hays-Thomas understands diversity as the differences between people that can influence their acceptance, performance, satisfaction and development opportunities in an organisation.
We will use the term 'diversity' to refer to differences among people that are likely to affect their acceptance, work performance, satisfaction, or progress in an organisation.
Rosemary Hays-Thomas, 2004, p. 12
What is diversity?
Taylor Cox, on the other hand, sees diversity as variations in social and cultural identities that exist between people in a company or a market segment.
...the variation of social and cultural identities among people existing together in a defined employment or market setting.
Taylor Cox, 2001, p. 3
Literature:
Cox, T. H. (2001). Creating the Multicultural Organisation: A Strategy for Capturing the Power of Diversity. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Eggers, M. M. (2013). Diversity Matters: Thematising Equality and Difference in Racism-Critical Education and Social Work. Accessed on 02/02/15 at Internet source.
Hays-Thomas, R. (2004). Why now? The Contamporary Focus on Managing Diversity. In M. Stockdale & F. Crosby (Eds.), The Psychology and Management of Workplace Diversity (pp. 3-30). London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Glossary
Disability
"People are disabled if their physical function, mental ability or mental health is likely to deviate from the typical condition for their age for more than six months and their participation in society is therefore impaired. They are at risk of disability if the impairment is to be expected." (Section 2 (1) SGB IX)
According to the Higher Education Framework Act, Viadrina must ensure "that disabled students are not disadvantaged in their studies and can take advantage of the university's offers without outside help as far as possible." (§ 2 para. 4 sentence 2 HRG)
Ethnicity
"Ethnicity refers to the individually perceived affiliation to an ethnic group, whose common characteristics can be, for example, language, religion or shared traditions." (Schubert & Klein, 2011, cited from: Internet source)
Racism
"There are many definitions of racism. It is generally understood to mean actions, speech or attitudes that favour or discriminate against people because of their skin colour, culture or ethnic origin.
Racist incidents and harassment can occur in any situation. A racist incident is an event that the victim or anyone else perceives as racist."