Eighteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

Youth service is part of Germany’s welfare system and has a monitoring and counseling function. Within this current research, youth service is seen as an organisation with its own culture and rituals. Using organisational pedagogy, how diversity is defined and handled shall be analysed. The case study is based on the Grounded Theory and designed as a mixed method research. Interviews on all levels of the organisation were implemented. No fixed term of “diversity” was set, so the definition of diversity comes from members of the organisation itself. All employees of the organisation were asked with a questionnaire about their (social-)demographic data (age, gender, migration, etc.). The data were combined and first results shown. Migration Background e.g. is seen as a strategy to get into contact with the clients but the rate of migration within the organisation is very low, far beneath the communal average. Furthermore, diversity is seen as very positive and indicated as a factor for a good work climate, but there is also a very high identification with the own department and a high demarcation to the rest of the organisation. These results show that the effects of diversity were occasionally seen and interpreted contradictorially.