Does Diversity Management Provide Competitive Advantage?

Abstract

One of the most important concepts of the globalizing business world is managing diversities and creating a competitive advantage to cope with increasing global competition. In the related literature, the most accepted competitive strategies are the generic competitive strategies recommended by M.Porter (1985). Porter divided these strategies into 3 basic headings; differentiation, cost leadership and focus strategies. The aim of this study is to investigate whether there is a relation between responding to increasing competition due to globalization and ability to manage changing labor force structure due to, again, globalization and to propose a model based on this relation. For this purpose, 39 questions were asked to determine the competition strategy and the ability to manage diversities to the individuals who work in 501 workplaces, and the answers received were evaluated by loading into the SPSS package program. It has been determined that there is a relationship between business strategies and the management capabilities of the diversities as a result of the strategy of making factor, the correlation and the regression analysis. It has been found that there is a significant relationship between the management of individual diversities and all competition strategies, and that there is a positive interaction between cost leadership strategy at the highest level. It has been found that there is a significant relationship between group diversities management and all competition strategies and that there is a positive interaction with the strategy of differentiation at the highest level. It has been found that there is a significant relationship between the management of organizational diversities and all competition strategies, and that there is a positive interaction between internationalization strategy at the highest level. Businesses have come to the conclusion that the management of diversity explains the competition strategies by 24.9%. It is thought that this study will benefit literature by being one of the premise studies that search for a relationship by bringing together the two popular concepts of strategy and organizational behavior.