Diversity and Employee Engagement in the 21st Century Organisation: A Focus on Inclusive Leadership

Introduction

Globalisation has affected the work environment leading to an increase in the diversity of workforce in organisations (Ehsan, 2021; Ongori & Agolla, 2007; Choy, 2007). Diversity denotes the differences that exist between persons based on their personal characteristics and this influence how individuals perceive one another (Ragins & Gonzalez, 2003). Workforce diversity can therefore be based on ethnic origin, gender, age, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and all other ways in which people differ. These differences are meaningful and relevant tools for the promotion of innovative ways of accomplishing individual and organisational goals efficiently (Ehsan, 2021; Roberge & Van Dick, 2010). Workforce diversity has therefore become an antecedent to organisational success. It is therefore imperative that the appropriate leadership style is used to manage the diverse workforce to benefit for organisational success.

The 21^st century organisation is characterised by increase knowledge sharing, increase focus and demand on employee competencies, cultural transformation, and workforce diversity (Krebs, 2007; Ployhart, 2006). It has been established that organisations can survive only where these diverse employees, are well managed through improved connectivity (Meraku, 2017; Krebs, 2007). Consequently, the effective management of workforce diversity has become a core strategic value that managers perceive they have a duty to understand (Ragins & Gonzalez, 2003; Ongori & Agolla, 2007), uphold and follow for employees to feel connected, inclusive and perform in the organisation (Roberge & Van Dick, 2010; Saxena, 2014; Ashikali & Groeneveld, 2015). This is because Inclusiveness, in the long run matters most to ensure organisational growth (Riffkin & Harter, 2016). Further, “diverse workforce provides better quality and innovative superior solutions to organizational problems than the homogenous groups; which can ultimately lead to organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability” (Ehsan, 2021, p. 2). The question then is what leadership style should be adopted to ensure diverse employees in organisation feel inclusive?

This chapter seeks to advocate for inclusive leadership in the 21st century organisation to effectively manage the diverse workforce to feel inclusive. Inclusive leadership is a specific relational leadership style where such leaders tend to be open, accessible and available (Carmeli et al., 2010; Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006). The argument then is, inclusive leader with its unique characteristics is preferred as compared with other leadership styles to manage diverse workforce for them to feel inclusive.

Research on inclusive leadership has attracted attention of both practitioners and scholars’, hence over the last one and half decades after Nembhard and Edmondson (2006) introduced the concept of inclusive leadership in the field of management, numerous researchers have shown much interest in its studies (Nishii et al. 2009; Choi et al., 2017; Fang et al., 2021). This interest is due to the significant positive effects inclusive leadership (IL) has on employee work behaviors and attitudes because of the cordial relationship such leaders foster (Ospina, 2011). Regardless of the interest, there remains paucity of critical academic literature on IL, and relatively little is known about how it influences employee behaviour in general and specifically, employee engagement (Vakira et al., 2022; Choi et al., 2015).