Diversity of Leaders and Its Impact on Business and Management

Diversity of Leaders and Its Impact on Business and Management
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Diversity of Leaders and Its Impact on Business and Management
Attributes of organisational leaders and managers are becoming vital success factors in contemporary business settings. Leaders and managers oversee the operations of a business entity, thereby defining its failures or successes. The fact that business environments are becoming highly dynamic and competitive implies the need for stakeholders to develop the necessary abilities to stay relevant. Diversity is one of the primary attributes that contemporary business leaders are encouraged to showcase to stay positively impactful to their organisations. However, debates still rage on the tenets of leadership diversity and how it impacts principle organisational prospects such as decision making. With a proper exploration and understanding of leadership diversity, organisations should change their operational approaches to stay efficient and relevant to the changes in their internal and external environments.
Context of the Research
Diversity is a leadership attribute that implies an individual’s manifestation of greater depth and breadth of perspective and experience. Leadership diversity is what creates an unmatchable understanding of business operations (Barton, 2016). Leaders who showcase the diversity attributes trigger relatability, perspective, and experience that facilitate innovation. As noted, the present-day operational environment is highly dynamic, and businesses stay relevant only because they can innovate continuously. The other benefit that comes with leadership diversity is the extensive understanding that such leaders forge with other stakeholders such as prospective clients, customers, and employees. Combined, all the above benefits of leadership diversity lead to the ultimate role of leaders in businesses, which is effective decision making.
Problem Statement
There are still gaps that need to be filled through research in the construct of leadership diversity and its value to contemporary organisations. While it is established how diversity leadership can be critical to organisational decision-making, little is known of the exact avenues that such attributes employ to reach success (Li et al., 2018). That is, there is a need for contemporary leaders to learn how to master leadership diversity and extend that mastery into actual decision-making for business organisations. One aspect that shows the need to enhance leadership diversity among organisations is the contemporary application of data analytics (Leander, 2014). In 2019, Deloitte conducted a study of US organisations and how they apply data analytics, which is a function of leadership (Davenport & Mittal, 2020). The findings of the study indicated that 63% of company executives in the US do not believe that their organisations use data analytics. Another 67% of the participants indicated their discomfort at using data from their resources. Still, only 31% of business organisations in the US indicate that they are data-driven, and the numbers are decreasing (Davenport & Mittal, 2020). Part of the challenge is the lack of leadership diversity even amidst business developments in big data and artificial intelligence. In a world that is also advancing fast towards cultural diversity, it is only necessary that leaders are prepared to find solutions to the actual challenges.
Aim of the Study
The study will explore the diversity of leadership and its impact on business and management prospects such as decision making. As evident in the problem statement, the application of diversity in leadership has been limited to only a few leaders. At its conclusion, the study will foster making leaders more diverse and versatile enough for the changing operational environment that they keep facing.
Research objectives/Questions
The study will be driven by specific objectives. Primarily, the study will assess the need for diversity of leadership in contemporary business organisations. The study will also explore the extent to which executives of multinational organisations employ diversity issues in aspects such as data analytics and cultural diversity. Ultimately, the study will address the strategies that leaders could employ to master diversity attributes. The study will anchor its scope in the following questions:
* In what ways is the diversity of leaders important to decision-making?
* How extensively do leaders employ diversity attributes in executing their responsibilities?
* What skills must leaders learn to be considered diverse?
* What are the impacts of the diversity of leadership on other stakeholders?
Literature Review
This chapter will focus on the published literature addressing the diversity of leaders and its impacts on business and management. This study will base its inputs on the systems management theory. The systems management theory asserts that businesses constitute multiple components that must work collaboratively to steer such organisations into success (Minelgaitė, Littrell, & Škudienė, 2018). From the basis of such a theory, the success of a business organisation stems from interrelations, interdependence, and synergy among subsystems. The systems theory further indicates that employees are the most valuable resources for any business organisation. However, they must work in synergy through business units, workgroups, departments, and other material resources to steer such entities to success (Adediran, 2022). To that effect, business leaders must evaluate events and patterns to make decisions on the best operational approaches.
The systems theory is implied in the diversity of leaders and their impacts. As evide...