Management of Diversities: A Research in Bursa City, Türkiye

Background

The main studies on diversity management in the world began to be seen in the United States (USA). This situation arises from the multicultural structure of the society and the reason for this is expressed as to improve the living conditions of people belonging to different races in the country where the problem of “racism” is experienced at an advanced level. Affirmative Action was carried out in the USA in the mid-1960s and early 1970s as a response to the disadvantage, exclusion, and discrimination of people in work life (Agocs & Burr, 1996). In the 1990s, the concept was developed and gained recognition in England and as a result, it became one of the management approaches. Therefore, in recent years, workforce diversity has become one of the main issues for many organizations and the correct management of diversity has become a necessity for managers today. Although the USA is known as one of the main countries where people from different ethnic backgrounds live together, most countries today show significant cultural diversity. According to recent studies, 184 independent countries in the world are in a tremendous diversity with 600 living language groups and 5000 ethnic groups and these studies underline that very few citizens of a country belong to the same ethnic-national group and that very few of them speak the same language (Şan, 2005; Akduru, 2020). Thus, it can easily be concluded that when the diversities are not managed professionally, it is inevitable for employees to face both psychological and physical health problems. In this sense, the purpose of this research is to find out the attitudes of employees in the logistics sector towards diversity management. In this context, research is conducted on the logistics sector in Bursa City, Türkiye via a survey form that consists of demographical questions and a workplace diversity inventory (Taylor, 2011) that consists of 24 items. The data is analyzed via the SPSS 22.0 package program and according to the analysis results there is a statistically significant relationship between the socio-demographic characteristics (gender, marital status, age, experience) of logistics sector employees and their attitudes towards Diversity Management. The reason for defining the logistics sector as the sample is the multi-national nature of the sector, which makes it compulsory to manage diversities in a professional way so as not to affect employees’ physical and psychological health situations in a negative way. In this sense, as it is impossible to reach all the organizations in terms of time and budget, logistics organizations in Bursa City, Türkiye, is taken as sample.