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Diversity is a concept that recognizes the uniqueness and individual difference. At the moment, the concept shows its potential to spur innovation and productivity at a workplace, education, and even communities. In the future, human individuality will be supplemented with technology in its multidimensional diversity scale. This article will look at several dimensions of diversity, its implementation, and effects.
Down
to basics
Diversity is a base of genetics and evolution making it hard to underestimate its importance. The uniqueness and finding the variety is essential for development. Each person has her or his unique character, skill, abilities, and appearance. The tropical forest description of Alfred Russel Wallace is a vivid illustration of the term: “If the traveler notices a particular species and wishes to find more like it, he may turn his eyes in vain in any direction. Trees of varied forms, dimensions and colors are around him, but he rarely sees any one of them repeated. Time after time he goes towards a tree which looks like the one he seeks, but a closer examination proves it is distinct. He may at length, perhaps, meet with a second specimen half a mile off, or may fail altogether, till on another occasion he stumbles on one by accident.”
Multidimensionality and diversity of the diversity itself are exceptional. It can be described by gender, ethnics, nationality, physical appearance, nationality, skills, education, and in the future, robotics and AI will be an addition to the term. The architectural uniqueness of the buildings in the city has shown to increase citizens’ happiness. And today, the diversity of everything is the topic that is highly discussed and researched on the levels of the workplace, education, living conditions, and even shopping.
Diversity at
a workplace
Intel found out that “improving ethnic and gender diversity in the U.S. technology workforce represents a massive economic opportunity, one that could create $470-$570 Bn in a new value for the tech industry, and could add 1.2 – 1.6% to national GDP.” McKinsey research shows that top-quartile gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to financially outperform those in bottom-quartile. At the same time, ethnical diversity gives companies up to 35% advantage. As an example, findings illustrated that in the UK, “greater gender diversity on the senior-executive team corresponded to the highest performance uplift in our dataset: for every 10 percent increase in gender diversity, EBIT rose by 3.5 percent.” On the global level, PwC found that 87% of respondent value diversity making it a priority of the organization. Thomson Reuters Diversity and Inclusive organizations ranking bring up Contact Energy Ltd, Gap Inc, Johnson[&]Johnson, to the top three in the rating. In the global arena, it is a natural way of the structure when the talents are being hunted by the performance omitting the traits of age, gender or ethnicity. The current decades are showing an advancement in the gender hiring politics, and while being a good sign, it acknowledges that diversity advances problem-solving results, creativity levels and overall well-being in the workplace.
On the global level, PwC found that 87% of respondent value diversity making it a priority of organization. Thomson Reuters Diversity and Inclusive organizations ranking bring up Contact Energy Ltd, Gap Inc, Johnson[&]Johnson, to the top three in the rating. In the global arena, it is a natural way of the structure when the talents are being hunted by the performance omitting the traits of age, gender or ethnicity. The current decades are showing an advancement in the gender hiring politics, and while being a good sign, it acknowledges that diversity advances problem-solving results, creativity levels and overall well-being in the workplace.
In the smaller scale, even a changing the structure of the office and sitting of employees can create a more productive atmosphere. Diversity at a workplace starts with a variety of skills – the heterogeneity of experiences and higher education. The mash of talents and uniqueness in the office increases the motivation. Fater all, the role of leadership is to engage, motivate and engage people for creative and productive work. Nowadays, the gamification, resto rooms, flexibility – all tools give into stimulation and develop multidimensional diversity.
Global
education
Increased educational mobility gives an advantage to the future labor market in the current global environment. Altogether, according to OECD, between 2000 and 2011, the number of international students has more than doubled. USA, UK, Germany, Australia, and France, are the most popular destinations for tertiary studies abroad. What is more, more than a half, namely 53% of exchange students in 2013 were from Asia. As a result of the growing market, countries try to fill in in the competition for hosting international graduates.
A great example of thriving programs is Erasmus, the most successful student mobility program embracing more than more than 250 000 students in 2013-2014 with an average duration of half a year. Third of participants have gotten traineeship, while rest has been on university exchange programmes. Getting to know a new culture, being taken out of the comfort zone trains tolerance, open-mindedness, and critical thinking. Since the establishment in 1987, the Erasmus program has reached 3 million student mobility level by 2012.
Why should the university invest into internationalization? First of all, accepting exchanges and offering short-term and full-term programs can offer institutions a better ranking. Research conducted by Richard B. Freeman and Wei Huanghas unveiled that homophily is less appreciated than a diverse and international collaboration when it comes to academia. As the author cite their findings: “the evidence shows that persons of similar ethnicity co-author together more frequently than can be explained by chance given their proportions in the population of authors. This homophily in research collaborations is associated with weaker scientific contributions. Researchers with weaker past publication records are more likely to write with members of ethnicity than other researchers. Papers with greater homophily tend to be published in lower impact journals and to receive fewer citations than others, even holding fixed the previous publishing performance of the authors.” Thus, diversity makes it a hot topic in education and, consequently, for future generations.
New structure
for living areas
Keeping in mind the mega-trend like urbanization, longevity, and global mobility, there is a need to reinvent the neighborhoods. Ageing at place illustrates elderly living alone in the household and often having no daily communication. As a sad rule, there are spatial clusters for senior which prevents them from being active participants in society. Similarly, immigrants at large are having own neighborhoods. Those might be the barriers to economic development. A new development in Mannheim, Germany, is about to address all of the previously mentioned issues while implementing the latest technologies and sustainability at large.
To begin with, the new area is designed to be fully walkable and car-free. The parking lot is to be placed underground.[nbsp]“By getting rid of the cars, you then open up the streets, whether it’s for children to come out and play with each other, or to encourage residents to sit outside their house, chat with one another, or go for a stroll,” says Johannes Pilz, one of the architects from the design firm MVRDV. “By getting rid of the [pavement] barrier between households, you then increase interactions between neighbors, and the community then starts to bond.”
AsMahnheim is sadly known to have a “city within city”, authorities decided to reinvent it boosting the diversity at the roots. The new neighbourhood will mix different sized houses and apartments designed for different demographics. Thus, studios for students and young couples will be next door to elderly and families. The mix of buildings and apartments will create new communication and collaboration and reduce the stereotyping. Their thinking has a potential to create a new community with a blend of uniqueness. “To come up with different, more innovative variations of their designs doesn’t require any expensive modification, it just requires more in-depth thinking into how people live their everyday lives, and how their needs might be different from their neighbors,” says Pilz. “What we did was translate this thinking, combined with Traumhaus’s components, into a catalog of designs that can serve a whole community in a whole spectrum of different ways.”
