Synergie durch Vielfalt - Synergy Consult

Vielfalt im Gespräch: Dr. Taylor Cox Jr. –
Wissenschaftler, Berater und Diversity Pionier
“I believe the key is to create a team environment in
which the potential problems of diversity are minimized
while the potential benefits are unleashed.”
Dr. Taylor Cox Jr.
What does cultural diversity mean?
Cultural diversity is not as simple as just observing
that all people are unique. It means
that people have differences of social group
identity, such as differences of national origin,
race, gender, work specialization and so on, that
represent social-cultural distinctions and that
have significant impact on their life experiences,
including work.
How do you personally deal with cultural
differences?
In my own life I try (not fully successfully) to be
proactive: People do not naturally welcome or
seek out contact with other people whom they
perceive to be culturally different, but because
I value it, I try to proactively create and maintain
contact with people who are unlike me in
significant ways, such as education, social class,
national origin or race. And I try to make differences
discussable: One of the worst barriers
to positive cultural diversity is the unwillingness
of people to openly talk about differences and
the dynamics of cultural difference. Without
this kind of openness, the pitfalls of diversity
are magnified and the potential benefits are less
likely to be realized.
What are the key benefits of cultural diversity
for companies?
The types and amount of potential benefit will
vary depending on the type of company. For example,
companies that market to end consumers
have a huge incentive to maintain and leverage
the insights from a diverse workforce to enhance
their marketing strategies. This potential benefit
is not nearly so potent for a firm with industrial
customers. Most organizations have a potential
for creativity, innovation and problem-solving
benefits from a diverse workforce, especially
because some of the problems of organizations
are intra-organizational “people” problems. An
example of this is the challenge of creating new
team structures from workers of two different
organizations during mergers and acquisitions.
Cultural diversity in people is highly correlated
with language diversity. In a global economy,
increasing the proportion of one’s workforce
that is multilingual is a significant resource and
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