Celebrating Diversity through Spirituality in the Workplace: Transforming Organizations Holistically

Managing diversity effectively is the key to attract and retain a productive workforce. Research demonstrates that celebrating diversity leads to greater productivity, increased creativity, and heightened morale and motivation. Organizations often benefit from the differing perspectives and rich experiences a diverse workforce provides. Similarly, organizations can enhance their creativity by encouraging diverse perspectives and opinions. Thus, issues of managing diversity, valuing diversity, and celebrating diversity have assumed added importance. This paper suggests that diversity is not a problem, but rather a solution to most of the challenges organizations face such as employee engagement and participation. Managing workforce diversity effectively transcends meeting a company’s legal requirements and complying with equal opportunity and non-discrimination regulation. Leaders need to understand and deal constructively with their own biases and prejudices that hinder diversity. Celebrating diversity is the extension of healthy spirituality that leads us to celebrate our differences and view diversity as different manifestations of the underlying Unity that permeates every phenomenon. This paper discusses key advantages of celebrating diversity, pinpoints barriers to organizational diversity, and offers some perspectives to overcome barriers to inclusiveness

Transforming leaders, transforming organizations

Includes bibliographical references

Performing theories, transforming organizations

Marti and Gond (2018) have recently attempted to extend our understanding of how theories shape social reality by developing a process model of performativity and by articulating the boundary conditions that delimit that process. While we laud Marti and Gond's attempt to develop an analytical template to study the effectiveness and influence of theories, and fully share their overarching sentiment about the substantial potential for this kind of theorizing effort, we believe there are two fundamental flaws in their framework. First, Marti and Gond conceptualize a theory as an objectified, standalone entity. Second, they characterize the effects of a theory in terms of a linear, sequential process. In contrast to this view, we conceptualize a theory as inherently relational (i.e., they must be considered in conjunction with actors, artifacts, practices, and other theories) and characterize the effects of a theory in terms of dynamic, non-linear processes. We believe that conceptualizing theories relationally and characterizing the effects of theories dynamically enhances the generative potential of performativity for management research

Celebrating Diversity through Spirituality in the Workplace: Transforming Organizations Holistically

Managing diversity effectively is the key to attract and retain a productive workforce. Research demonstrates that celebrating diversity leads to greater productivity, increased creativity, and heightened morale and motivation. Organizations often benefit from the differing perspectives and rich experiences a diverse workforce provides. Similarly, organizations can enhance their creativity by encouraging diverse perspectives and opinions. Thus, issues of managing diversity, valuing diversity, and celebrating diversity have assumed added importance. This paper suggests that diversity is not a problem, but rather a solution to most of the challenges organizations face such as employee engagement and participation. Managing workforce diversity effectively transcends meeting a company’s legal requirements and complying with equal opportunity and non-discrimination regulation. Leaders need to understand and deal constructively with their own biases and prejudices that hinder diversity. Celebrating diversity is the extension of healthy spirituality that leads us to celebrate our differences and view diversity as different manifestations of the underlying Unity that permeates every phenomenon. This paper discusses key advantages of celebrating diversity, pinpoints barriers to organizational diversity, and offers some perspectives to overcome barriers to inclusiveness

Basic Aspects of the Digital Economy

The digital economy is characterized by the digitations of many product and services and the user of the Internet and other networks to support economic activities. The traditional marketplace shifts to a virtual marketspace. Competition in such an environment is very intense and major changes occur. The impact of digital economy on business can be identified at three basic levels: improving direct marketing, transforming organizations, and redefining organizations.Ekonomia cyfrowa charakteryzuje się cyfryzacją wielu produktów i usług oraz wykorzystaniem Internetu i innych sieci do kreowania działalności gospodarczej. Wyraźnie występuje zjawisko transformacji tradycyjnego, fizycznego rynku w stronę wirtualnej przestrzeni rynkowej. Konkurencja w tak określonym środowisku ulega znaczącym zmianom i zasadniczo wzmaga się. Wpływ ekonomii cyfrowej na sposób prowadzenia biznesu uwidacznia się na trzech zasadniczych poziomach: doskonalenie marketingu bezpośredniego, transformacja organizacji oraz przedefiniowanie podstawowej działalności organizacji.Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 zostało dofinansowane ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej nauk

The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media

When it comes to social media, several perspectives are prevalent among those who have knowledge of the subject. Unfortunately, prior to quite recently, I would have been classified as one of those who view the phenomenon as an entertainment tool riddled with trivial information. Thankfully, this book has contributed to rectifying many preconceived misconceptions and expanded upon potential avenues of basic communication by both showcasing applications of successful utilization and introducing technologies that might not necessarily be at the forefront of applied communication

Consultants as discreet corporate change agents for sustainability: Transforming organizations from the outside-in

Despite their central role in the construction and development of the market for virtues as well as in the design, implementation, and evaluation of corporate sustainability strategies and governmental sustainability policies, sustainability consultants remain at best “hidden” corporate change agents. In this paper, we bring sustainability consultants back to the fore to account for how these actors discreetly regulate and shape contemporary sustainability transformations from the outside-in. We do so first by unpacking various roles of consultants as engineers, market builders, power vehicles, boundary workers, issue translators, and soft regulators; then we conceptualize how, through these roles, they contribute to empowering, legitimizing but also potentially supplanting and undermining the activities of corporate change agents operating inside corporations. We finally propose some research orientations for studying further the role of sustainability consultants in corporate transformations towards sustainability

An assurance of learning success model: toward closing the feedback loop

This paper provides a systemic approach to building and sustaining a solid assurance of learning program using the framework of Kotter’s (1995) Strategic Model for Transforming Organizations. A comprehensive model for launching and sustaining a systemic approach to program review that ‘‘closes the loop’’ is shared step by step. Particular attention is paid to the organizational behaviors and processes that accompany each step, and to sharing important lessons that were learned. A review of the assessment literature in higher education and recent Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) contributions to this body of knowledge identifies a critical gap regarding models that ‘‘close the loop’’ and make a compelling case for the Simmons College model

What are the Most Important Capabilities/Competencies for Managers Who Lead People?

With the advancement in technology and the rapid increase of globalization, there is now an increased need for managers to engage in better communication, coordination, improved performance, team monitoring, and interdependency and trust. Unfortunately, while an increasingly large number of companies are focusing on leadership development at the higher organizational levels, majority of the organizations admit that they are not very successful in providing leadership development at all levels within the organization. It is therefore important to develop sets of leadership skills that would be useful at multiple levels of the organization

CREATING THE 21ST CENTURY ORGANIZATION: THE METAMORPHOSIS OF OTICON

Much has been written about transforming organizations. At the heart of this activity is the notion of Business Process Redesign (BPR), the restructuring of a firm's basic business methods. We describe some of the forces that are behind this need for major organizational change. Next, we provide an overview of BPR and raise several questions concerning its suitability as a theoretical underpinning for radical organizational transformation. We then describe the transformation of Oticon, an international manufacturing firm with headquarters in Denmark. We have called this transformation a Metamorphosis because of the complete reconceptualization of the firm that took place. Using the example of Oticon, we speculate about the prerequisites for change of this extent, paying particular attention to the role of technology, which has been enabling rather than driving.Information Systems Working Papers Serie