A beautiful accountability
Diversity has a vital role in understanding and facilitating organisations to ensure the diverse needs and concerns of the multiplicity of stakeholders are met.
In a world faced with a growing proportion of humanity claiming allegiance to particular ideologies, and with mega and chronic global issues, such as conflict, inequality, corruption and human-induced climate change, the urgent tasks of educators and organisational leaders is to eschew exacerbation of conflict, while focusing on key diversity issues through walking with a fierce discipline, humility, transparency and fortitude.
Diversity is not going to turn on a dime. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the supreme court justice, the first woman to lie in state at the US Capitol building in Washington, epitomises the long marathon and determination in undergirding emancipatory schemas and strategic shifts pertaining to women in business and society.
In overcoming silences and facilitating voice, it is crucial to remember that silence cannot be read as an absence, but it could be signalling a range of allegiances and loyalties in these unprecedented times of race, the epidemic of violence, the political calculations of the polls and our pandemic-ravaged times. In making diversity the watermark of organisational strategies, we need new, fresh, provocative and bold ideas to be enacted.
Against today's backdrop of fear and uncertainty, the need to entwine strange bedfellows such as faith and management, or two seemingly disparate schemas, is greater than ever. The long-standing dichotomy of faith vs business needs to be replaced with a business model that recognises and celebrates the myriad possibilities that come from diverse, inclusive and economically robust system approaches to business and beliefs – and this is the privilege of diversity – a beautiful accountability that belongs to each of us.
Virtual diversity events
Hear from University Director of Diversity Professor Edwina Pio at two virtual diversity events.
Privilege of Diversity: Working towards Inclusion
When: Wednesday 7 October, 7-8pm
Where: Online event
Strategizing for an unknown future
When: Thursday 29 October
Where: Online event