Qué es diversidad

Historia de la Divesidad

In the 1950s and 1960s the scientific world, pioneered by Abernathy and Utterback, identified diversity as the critical factor that would make the 21st century unique.

It was imperative to analyse why human resource management was not contributing as effectively as technological and financial resources to corporate results. Traditional corporate policy was based on segmenting people by their differences (from the corporate "norm") and then designing "positive actions" to try to neutralise specific problems of these "different" groups of people that affected the effectiveness of the organisation.

With this goal in mind, The Conference Board created a panel of Fortune 500 companies, as well as leading figures from the country's scientific, economic and academic communities. Throughout this 10-year-long ongoing dialogue, sharing ideas and experience, trials of all kinds of programmes were implemented to achieve these inclusion goals with the aim of stimulating innovation capacity and organisational effectiveness. And we moved from segmentation by differences to understanding that all people are diverse in one way or another and that the strategy is to recognise and respect their differences in order to manage and enhance the inclusion of all. Corporate diversity management was born.

Not only knowledge was developed, but also models were created that would serve as a guide for the leaders of the organisations to establish this policy at the corporate level. This policy and strategy is based on transforming the relational (interpersonal) behaviour of everyone in the organisation to create an inclusive entity. That is, an organisation made up of people from all walks of life who, with their different contributions, experiences and mindsets, create a dynamic of innovation capable of moving towards the sustainability of the company in convulsive and changing scenarios. The modelling of strategies for diversity inclusion became a priority topic for research, study and piloting in the advanced academic world.

In the 1980s there were already 5 Diversity Councils in the United States and Canada formed by corporations that already had their diversity inclusion policies in place. It was not until 1999 that the first one was started in Europe and then in 2006 the one in Asia was launched. This highlights the cultural differences between regions of the world and their degree of acceptance of changes and innovations in order to accept new realities in scenarios in continuous transformation.

The EU Commission paid close attention to the dysfunction of this scenario, especially the Directorate General for Labour and Social Affairs, which established a directive in 2000 on the inclusion of diversity as a social and legal policy in the European Union. The DGV decreed that discrimination, i.e. non-compliance with the 2000 directive, should be criminalised by law in all EU Member States by 2010.

In 2008, the European Institute for Diversity Management, together with the European Academy of Business Society (EABIS), EIM Business & Policy Research, the SME research organisation, and Focus Group (UK), carried out a large EU-wide research project for the DGV. The aim was to analyse the awareness and implementation of diversity management policies by the different actors in the European Union. 63% of the European corporate world had implemented some action related to diversity inclusion and anti-discrimination, although only 0.3% made it a corporate policy. Small and medium-sized companies in the EU had only 5% awareness of the importance of their people's differences. This is a very serious finding when 92% of companies in the European Union are SMEs and generate 99% of jobs. Meanwhile, 9.7% of academics included diversity as part of their research and development, an encouraging increase compared to the 3% increase in 2003 of universities active in diversity teaching.

The Commission's priority objective is to enhance Europe's diversity as a critical factor. The logo of the European Union - a blue rectangle with twelve stars has a temporal connotation: the clock that marks the time, the moment for the Union. It also has a flag with the same logo; a hymn, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"; and a motto: "United in Diversity", which was the result of a competition held by the Commission at universities across Europe for young people to send in the phrase they would like to use to define what the European Union means. "United in diversity" was the winning phrase, very appropriate for the objectives of the European Union's area of peace, dialogue and construction.

In 2008, the European Institute for Diversity Management, together with the European Academy of Business Society (EABIS), EIM Business & Policy Research, the SME research organisation, and Focus Group (UK), carried out a large EU-wide research project for the DGV. The aim was to analyse the awareness and implementation of diversity management policies by the different actors in the European Union. 63% of the European corporate world had implemented some action related to diversity inclusion and anti-discrimination, although only 0.3% made it a corporate policy. Small and medium-sized companies in the EU had only 5% awareness of the importance of their people's differences. This is a very serious finding when 92% of companies in the European Union are SMEs and generate 99% of jobs. Meanwhile, 9.7% of academics included diversity as part of their research and development, an encouraging increase compared to the 3% increase in 2003 of universities active in diversity teaching.

El objetivo prioritario de la Comisión es el de potenciar la diversidad existente en Europa como factor crítico . El logo de la Unión Europea —rectángulo azul con doce estrellas— tiene un has a temporal connotation: the clock that marks the time, the moment for the Union. It also has a flag with the same logo; a hymn, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"; and a motto: "United in Diversity", which was the result of a competition held by the Commission at universities across Europe for young people to send in the phrase they would like to use to define what the European Union means. "United in diversity" was the winning phrase, very appropriate for the objectives of the European Union's area of peace, dialogue and construction.