Rethinking Diversity: Transitioning from ‘How Do We Look?’ to ‘How Do We Function?’

Messy Middle Musings Track

Ebenezer Puplampu, M.A., Leadership and Organizational Psychology

The concept of diversity is today more associated with demography than ever before. Ask the average person on the street in America what diversity means and you are likely to be told it is about race and gender, but is that all diversity is? This presentation takes the audience through the journey of how demography became associated with diversity and why we have not been able to move on from thence. This presentation also seeks to reframe the diversity discussion by refocusing it on how we function rather than on how we look because, after all, isn’t that how God intended it to be? The session ends with a look at a functional approach to managing diversity in the 21st century based on the notion that diversity that does not functionally aid the achievement of organizational objectives is not diversity.