Managing Inclusion & Cultural Diversity

Today's workplace is increasingly global and representative of many cultures, belief systems, and values that often come into conflict. Knowledge workers who build inclusive and collaborative relationships across organizations enable themselves, their teams, and their organizations to respond quickly and efficiently to new market opportunities, new competitors, acquisitions, shifting market demographics, new technology, and changes in employment regulations. Successful professionals need to understand how their own behaviors and beliefs, intentionally or otherwise, impact others. Whether an organization is primarily domestic or international, the potential for internal conflict increases with the expansion of differences within. In this course, presentations, interactive discussions and dialogues, assigned readings, video, case studies, and student projects are used to explore dimensions of diversity, inclusive approaches, cross cultural models and theories, assessment tools for self, individual, and organizational audits, actions and behaviors that model best practices, and the integration of the knowledge and skills facilitated by diversity to proactively improve cross-cultural relationships. Students will be encouraged to actively apply these concepts to their own past, present, and prospective professional circumstances. Upon successfully completing this course students will have mastered the basic fundamentals of, and perspectives on, diversity and inclusion, various aspects of building trustworthy teams, as well as their impact on inclusive activities and other organizational activities. Students will also be able to integrate their understanding of cultural diversity and its relationship to other core workplace challenges.