ABSTRACT
The business case for building a diverse workforce includes at least five arguments (Cascio, 2006): (a) the shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, (b) the globalization of markets, (c) new business strategies that require more teamwork, (d) mergers and alliances that require different corporate cultures to work together, and (e) the changing labor market. Diversity includes characteristics that one can see (gender, race, ethnicity, age) as well as those that one cannot (e.g., functional expertise, previous experience and training, personality). In this chapter, we focus on the former because that is the focus of the legal system as well as much scientific research (Pyburn, Ployhart, & Kravitz, 2008).
