CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1   Background to the Study:
The human capital is one of the most important factors for any organization since it forms the engine that drives that organization. As the organization seeks to achieve its objectives, it requires people to manage or run the other factors of production. The workforce is becoming increasingly diverse. Many organizations, particularly multinationals, realize that diversity is an inevitable side effect of social changes, but a factor and reality, which can bring new perspectives and enhance the development of new products and services (Bedrnova andNovy, 2007; Rašticova and Senichev, 2011).
The world’s increasing globalization requires more interaction among people from diverse cultures, beliefs,and backgrounds than ever before. People no longer live and work in an insular marketplace; they are now part of a worldwide economy with competition coming from nearly every continent. For this reason, profit and non – profit organizations need diversity to become more creative and open to change. Maximizing and capitalizing on workplace diversity has become an important issue for management today (Green, Lopez, Wysocki and Kepner, 2012). In diverse workplace managers are dealing with individuals of different age, gender, nations, cultures, individuals who graduated from different universities and have different mental and physical skills, etc. all of these is just one of the results of the globalization process (Rašticova, Senichev, 2011).
Diversity Management is not only related to the human resource diversity management, but it is an important part of the company’s operations, long – term planning, strategic management, and it is as well one of the factors of survival in turbulent and uncertain future.
Diversity refers to the coexistence of employees from various socio-cultural backgrounds within the company. These includes their cultural factors such as race, gender, age, colour, physical ability, ethnicity e.t.c (Loden, 1996).
Diversity issues are now considered important and are projected to become even more important in the future due to increasing differences in the Nigerian population. Companies need to focus on diversity and look for ways to become totally inclusive organizations because diversity has the potential of yielding greater productivity and competitive advantages (SHRM, 1995). Managing and valuing diversity is a key component of effective people management, which can improve workplace productivity (Voorde, Paauwe and Veldhoven, 2010). Organizational outcomes of managing diversity on the other hand, are largely measured in terms of employees’ commitment, team spirit, sense of ownership, turnover and productivity (Idowu, 2012). It is on this foundation that this study seeks to explore the relationship between Human Resource Diversity (HRD) and Organizational Outcomes (OO).