The impact of workplace diversity on the working environment and climate in engineering organizations: A study of ethnicity, culture, spiritual belief, and gender

Several factors brought into play the heightened awareness of workplace diversity and its potential benefits at the turn of the century. The globalization of businesses, increased competition, and changes in workforce and consumer demographics stipulate that scholars and business leaders evaluate diversity in the workplace in order to respond to these changes. Taking the approach derived from the change and organizational theories to introduce, incorporate, and sustain workplace diversity within the organizational culture is one potential response. A diverse workforce introduces varying skills, ideas, and perspectives to an organization; promoting these qualities could improve a firm’s output. Acknowledging the potential benefits, it became crucial for organizations to create relationships that respect mutual interests and maintain a culture of inclusion, expressed internally through workplace diversity. The challenge is to equip business leaders with the tools they need to assess workplace diversity and create diversity initiatives to leverage the talents of the diverse workforce. This study developed a tool that was used to assess diversity perceptions in the engineering sector based on ethnicity, cultural background, spiritual belief, and gender. The findings of the study were (a) Perceptions of workplace diversity do not significantly differ by employees’ ethnic backgrounds, (b) Perceptions of workplace diversity do not significantly differ by employees’ cultural backgrounds, (c) Perceptions of workplace diversity do not significantly differ by employees’ spiritual beliefs, and (d) Perceptions of workplace diversity do not significantly differ by employees’ genders.