The CEO's Moral Values and Leadership Strategies for Managing Diversity

Introduction

There is evidence that effective leadership for managing diversity is essential to any organization's success now and in the future. At the beginning of this decade, the debate about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) focused on race, gender, minorities, and other characteristics that differentiate people. Shifting the discussion from those dimensions of diversity and focusing on the interconnections between leadership behaviors and managing a diverse workforce is imperative. Over the past decades, accelerated development in Africa, the continued growth of globalization, increased cross-border trade and e-commerce, and the transfer of technology pushed big corporations from Western countries to position themselves to compete in the booming African economy. Due to these advancements and other opportunities, firms of all sizes, in the prospect of becoming a presence and adding their footprint in the thriving African market, face the challenges of managing a diverse workforce. Empirical evidence from this research suggests that a lack of leaders' good moral values contributes to organizations' challenges in managing a diverse workforce, especially in the African context. Studies from literature also acknowledge the importance of inclusiveness as crucial as leaders' moral values. The main themes discussed in this research are leaders' moral values and inclusive leadership. The originality of this study from an African context on diversity management distinguishes it from other studies exploring workplace diversity with the demands and understanding of good moral values and cultural competencies of corporate leaders to serve the countries where they offer services.

A study conducted in Africa by Ogunyemi et al. (2022) examined how embedding moral values into the work decision-making and activities of personnel in public offices could be a crucial aspect of the role of any public or private service leaders in Africa. The driving force of their study was investigating the values of African public sector organizations to understand the lapses' root causes and to figure out how to resolve them. Researchers have also observed these lapses in organizations in Western countries because moral values are universal principles with no boundaries. (Cheteni & Shindika, 2017), with a view on ethical practices in public services in South Africa and Botswana, found that leaders in these two countries displayed weak moral values and suggested that leaders must lead and uphold ethical practices in organizations. Several participants in this study conducted in Senegal, West Africa, echoed the consequences corrupt leaders bring to the workplace because of a lack of good moral values and ethics critical in managing diversity or any other groups. Overwhelmingly, they agreed that leaders must have confidence and respect toward their employees and sincere communication with them. A lack of good moral values and ethics could lead employees to stop listening to their leaders, said one participant; most also believed that those who lead a diverse workforce must be good listeners. With a strong belief, they suggested that CEOs' morals must align with their company's values to help create good relationships between coworkers. This research focuses on the interconnections between the CEO's moral values and the leadership strategies for managing diversity. It also examines the relationship between leadership behavior and inclusiveness.

Figure 1.

Research conceptual framework

Treating the conceptual framework as linking elements of the research process, such as the researcher's interest, goal, identity, positionality, context and setting, and formal and informal theories and methods, is essential (Ravitch & Carl, 2021).