Thank you. Now, I don’t want to see that “ya’ll” crap again.
Maybe it flies in Tampa, but Tampa is less “the South” and more “one big titty bar”.
Isn’t it “y’all”? The apostrophe in second place? (“You” doesn’t have an A…)
Could we have some clarification here? By “one big titty bar” do you mean “the whole city seems to be composed of establishments that cater to a traveling man’s needs” or that the city has an establishment whose sole attraction is a solitary mammary of enormous size?
This is the key. Corporations don’t spend money; they invest, and most often carefully. If they’re spending any money on promoting diversity, it’s because they have a good reason to believe that they’ll get more out of it than they’re putting in.
Hey, hey, hey! :mad:
It ain’t the South, it’s spelled “y’all”, and it ain’t one big titty bar either.
It’s several titty bars, and they’re just around the airport and along US 41. 
For a serious answer, I have no idea whether diversity provides much immediate benefit to the bottom line in the next quarter.
However, down the road, having people with different backgrounds and cultural assumptions has to be a strength when conditions change.
Jared Diamond has a chapter in Guns, Grms, and Steel addressing the question of why Europe rose to political and military dominance over much of the world instead of China. If I may be excused for leaving out a lot of detail, he concluded that the political diversity of Europe (a product of its geography, strangely enough) was a strength in competing in the fields of technology and exploration.
That makes me think that diversity would be of long-term benefit to a firm interested in the future.
Sailboat
IF people are different, and we begin with that assumption, and if those differences are generalizable across cultural groups and/or ethnic groups, then those people bring something to a business that others do not. Consequently, they theoretically posess some talent or ability that could be of benefit to a business that others do not. The question that remains is to what extent is any one individual in possession of those qualities that are assumed to characterize the cultural/ethnic group to which s/he belongs? That is the job of the personnel director - to see to it that the WASP who applies for the job has those WASPy qualities that sets him/her apart from the rest of the crowd. (Although, in most businesses, for many years, everyone WAS a WASP.) And that the Black guy who applies has close enough ties to the “community,” and so forth. But, of course, they can’t and don’t do that. In fact, we’d have a hell of a time even trying to describe those differences that we think are important. But the theory is nice.
One way of looking at it is that a company that doesn’t discriminate with respect to race, religion, national origin, etc. will select its workers from a larger pool of talent, resulting in a workforce that is both more diverse and more competent than if the company did discriminate. It’s not the diversity per se that results in a better company - it’s the lack of barriers to diversity that does.
I meant that, all I’ve seen of it is many establishments offering live nude girls. I don’t know what the quality of their charms may be.
Then again, all I’ve really seen of the place is when we used to go through it on the way to see my grandparents in Clearwater, so maybe it has hidden charms. Very hidden.
(And yes, I know it’s spelled “y’all”, that was my point. And no, it isn’t the South. The South hides its titty bars. Cafe Erotica, we bare all! Good food! 24 Hours a Day! Truckers Welcome!)
If you ever come to Tampa Bay, I’ll be happy to show you. It does have its charms. Don’t judge a city by where its interstates run – you’ll never get a good picture that way.
So many "it depends"s, so little time.
But first, regardless of how many business articles claim that X, Y, and Z are the keys to the success of some firm’s profits, there’s rarely academic work to back up the claim. Picking what helps or hurts a company (especially helps) is often easily refutable by the next quarter’s profits of that company or by another company in the same field doing those same things even better, but not doing as well overall.
It’s almost like asking why a particlar person is healthy. If you ask, there will usually be an answer like “I eat 10 carrots a day and do 100 situps.” But that isn’t really the reason they are healthy. They are healthy because tens of thousands of things are working as they should without being hit by illness.
So my guesses are WAGs:
If the diversity happened organically, likely helpful, as the best people to hire will generally be a diverse group.
If it is diversity for diversity’s sake, maybe not, unless the business has decided that the lack of diversity is preventing it from connecting well to the customer base. The “not” part of the “maybe not” is because to BECOME diverse in less than an employee-turnover generation, the company will have to limit hiring from the over-represented group (or, more generously, market more strongly in under-represented populations). That will sometimes prevent the best candidates from being hired.
If under pressure from the EEOC, helpful in reducing lawsuits, unhelpful due to point above about limiting hiring from over-represented groups.
If just diversity posters and emails, likely unhelpful, as people spend valuable time wondering what the diversity posters will do for either diversity or the business.
Like I implied above, it is often much easier to see what has gone wrong with a business (especially with hindsight), and I haven’t heard of a case of diversity as a setback for a business (on the other hand, I don’t know who would have the guts to publish such a thing for fear of sounding racist, sexist, etc.).
I can think of a couple of companies that wish they’d gotten on board the “diversity” bandwagon a little sooner, like Eddie Bauer and Denny’s. There’s a monetary value to not being punlicly perceived as a racist institution.
MTV, for the first couple years, ran only videos by white artists. Like any radio station with a niche format, they were limited to a specific type of music, specifically “rock.” Few black artists performed Rock ‘n’ Roll in 1981. (MTV didn’t play country videos either, so I’m sure race wasn’t the only criterion.) But MTV added value to itself when it put Michael Jackson and lots of other black artists into the rotation.
No, Tampa is not the south, but I don’t claim it makes me southern. I despise Tampa. (Born and bred in the Smoky Mountains) I used to live in Micanopy, the land of Cafe Risque, that used to be a Stuckey’s. It was pretty upsetting to the town folks, however, it was outside the city limits by a hundred feet or so and there wasn’t much they could do. It certain changed the image of the place from being an antique center.
See, I even screwed up the apostrophe in ya’ll. Twelve steps takes time.
Diversity is great until things get close to 50-50. Then humans tend to start killing each other and otherwise acting poorly.