Diversity Management impact on financial and non-financial organizations’ performance

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss the Diversity Management strategy applied inside the context of an organization. The concept of diversity is in fact always more relevant in a multicultural and globalized society like the one in which we live today, that represents diverse cultures, values, conditions and ways of thinking characterizing the population. For this reason, the objective of the discussion is to understand how to implement a good diversity strategy in order to value differences and to create inclusiveness in the workplace between employees; and secondly to understand if there is effectively an impact in term of business performance given by the valorization of these differences. The analysis is principally focused on the development and implementation of the Diversity Management strategy and then on the measurement of the impact given by the strategy in term of business performance. Performances in this sense are considered both as financial and non-financial performance, due to the social function that every organization has in the context in which it is located. The commitment in themes like diversity in fact give the possibility to achieve fundamental results, encouraging equal education, equal economic condition and opportunities between people, endorsing institutional policies and regulations, underling in this way the corporate responsibility related to social sustainable goals. This aspect could be a challenge and an occasion to organizations in order to improve their value and their outcomes. Consequently, the second chapter of the thesis is concentrated on the importance given by the communication about Diversity Management practices and results, in particular considering the non-financial reports and the Corporate Social Responsibility, which affect stakeholders’ perception, and in particular customers, investors and employees’ reputation. In this part, a relevant role will be done to the development of a communication framework useful to link Diversity Management to Sustainable Development Goals and the measurement of relative results. Finally, the last part of the thesis is instead focused on business cases, analyzing the way in which companies develop Diversity Management Strategy, the way in which they communicate their objectives and results and which are effectively the outcomes obtained by the strategy.