Thirty-First International Conference on Learning

Abstract

In recent years, organizations have started paying special attention to diversity. Diversity has now become a business imperative. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) defines diversity as “the collective mixture of differences and similarities that include, for example, individual and organizational characteristics, values, beliefs, experiences, backgrounds, preferences, and behaviours.” From the organization’s perspective diversity is important for value creation and increasing the bottom line. Organizations ensure workplace diversity by having a workforce comprising of individuals of varying race, religion, differently abled people, age, gender, region, ethnicity, education, cultural background, language, skills, citizenship status, military service and mental and physical conditions. This study is an effort to understand and explore ‘cognitive diversity’ which is of great importance and relevance for the organizations. Cognitive diversity means having a mix of people with different ways of thinking, different skill sets, different viewpoints in the organization. Organizations have realized the importance of diversity in age, gender, qualification, and started taking cognizance of the same. Cognitive diversity is the way forward. This paper is an attempt to put forth the importance of cognitive diversity, which is invisible but very vital for organizational success.