influence of gender balance and diversity on the growth of a business

Chapter One: Introduction
According to Adriaanse (2016), diversity can be defined generally as acknowledging, understanding, and accepting individual’s differences irrespective of their gender, age, class, ethnicity, race, physical ability, spiritual orientation, and spiritual practice, among others. Kubik-Huch et al., 2020 assert that every person is unique and shares several biological and environmental characteristics, leading to productive growth if combined. As such, conferring to Adriaanse (2016), diversity is classified into two main dimensions. The primary dimension entails gender, age, and sexual orientation. The primary differences have the most effect on initial encounters and can be noticed quickly and function as a filter through which individuals perceive the world. On the other hand, the secondary dimension entails education, religion, geographical location, and income (Tamunomiebi & Onah, 2019). These are features that are not easily noticed during the first encounter and can even transform throughout various encounters. Therefore, these characteristics are mainly noticeable after interactions between people. In the recent past, globalization has triggered more interaction among people from varying cultures and backgrounds, mainly due to technological advancements (Tamunomiebi & Onah, 2019). Individuals are presently more open-minded in the worldwide marketplace, with competition coming from different parts of the world. However, diversity can be both beneficial and harmful to an organization, depending on its adoption. The challenge is only to embrace the essence of diversity and manage it tactically for an organization and individuals’ importance.
Copious organizations adopt diversity at their workplace, especially for them to be more innovative and open to change, leading to business growth. Improving and increasing workplace diversity has become a pressing management issue due to recognizing the changing workplace (Kubik-Huch et al., 2020). Remarkably, because diversity management remains a challenge in various organizations, the management tends to learn different managerial skills required in a multicultural work environment. Managers prepare themselves to teach other people within their companies to value cultural diversity and treat a worker with dignity (Wahab et al., 2018). Therefore, diversity enables the identification of differences between individuals and acknowledges that they are the company’s valued assets. Kubik-Huch et al. (2020) denoted that diversity naturally respects individuality while simultaneously encouraging others’ respect. Apart from that, diversity accentuates the roles of different groups such as ethnic background, gender, and income in the community and the within an organization (Tamunomiebi & Onah, 2019). Despite the known benefits of diversity, it must be positioned in organizational culture to achieve the workplace’s set goals and objectives.
Phetmisy et al. (2020) proclaim that between the 1960s and 1970s, the US understood the need for promoting workplace diversity the first time. As a result, President John F Kennedy restructured a President’s Committee on Equal Employment Prospect to halt government employment discrimination. The workplace diversity promotion continued further, establishing a policy whose goal was to promote equal chances for jobs and create the program’s possibility to be extended to all government departments (Wahab et al., 2018). This project was a success because it avoided the deliberation of diversified traits like the human race, nationality, and skin color, among others. People began to believe in the notion of being fair to everybody and being committed to treating everyone equally (Phetmisy et al., 2020). The Nixon Administration in 1971 reviewed this policy in a manner, which ensured that positive actions were outlined with the set. Therefore, the US was one of the first countries to embrace diversity, mainly in government employments entirely.
In contemporary times, workplace diversity, especially gender diversity, is developing at a faster pace. Generally, apart from the US, other developed countries are also experiencing unparalleled workplace gender diversity, and the dynamic is anticipated to persist. Unlike in modern times, past gender diversity mainly asserted that a female’s priority was to take care of the family (Boakye et al., 2020). For this reason, all females were assigned automatically to a low responsibility or a temporary position in the workplace. There is a possible biological explanation for this belief because women are responsible for bearing children and nurturing them for the first month of their lives, signifying that they cannot be given more responsibilities at the workplace than men (Phetmisy et al., 2020). Subsequently, males had the possibility of moving more freely relative to females, and there was also a cultural need for them to provide shelter and food to the females who primarily stayed at home. Such assertions made men work hard and gain better employment positions in terms of income than women (Boakye et al., 2020). The fact that females stay or even used to stay with children at home stresses women’s nurturing perception. According to Kubik-Huch et al. (2020), the preconceived women view can make them more prone to taking employment opportunities that entail caring than men. Accordingly, society has always awarded men for jobs being done outside the house because they are statistically stronger and taller than women, which encourages them to take more jobs that are physically demanding (Phetmisy et al., 2020). Thus, over the years, the social status that has been built within the domain of a family is still mirrored in the large society today, making it challenging to change the gender roles regardless of gender diversity efforts.
Various studies demonstrate that mixed-gender groups typically perform better than same-sex groups due to the group’s behavior gender differences (Cardillo et al., 2020; Attah-Boakye et al., 2020). According to Boakye et al. (2020), in mixed-gender groups, men always offer suggestions and opinions when given group tasks while women incline to acting friendly and agreeing with others leading to productive work. It is the combination of such differences in socializing styles that contribute to the excellent mixed-gender working environment (Lewellyn & Muller-Kahle, 2020). Gender diversity tends to impact communication, behavior, and individuals’ experiences within a given group instead of the group’s performance per se. However, women are still expected to perform better than men or men to get the same job levels, and in some cases, they are even not being paid the same despite their performance. Notably, conferring to Cardillo et al. (2020), in companies with females at the top management positions or majority members in the board, there is a surged rate of innovation and social and community obligation. Fine et al. (2020) also posit that the success elements that have the most significant impact on the result of the company are those associated with more females on boards and other management positions. The authors conclude that for any organization to grow, they need to put more females in management positions (Phetmisy et al., 2020). Women’s success in a management position is attributed to their in-depth and intimate knowledge of consumer markets and customers because they are generally in control and speed more time on household spending.
1.1 Statement of the Problem
Copious studies have been done on workplace diversity’s general issue (Ng & Sears, 2020; Wieczorek-Szyma?ska, 2020). However, scant sources have specialized and focused on specific facets of workplace diversity, such as gender diversity. Therefore, the study is provoked by the research gap, which has been left unfilled by several workplace diversity sources and its importance on businesses’ growth. In the recent past, gender diversity has become a substantial aspect of management. Many companies have been forced to embrace it to surging their profit and productivity (Wieczorek-Szyma?ska, 2020). This compelled integration has developed uncertainty and divergence in the workplace because the management is not adequately skilled in regulating the diversity management concept and its impact due to not limited updated focused research on the issue. Any company that wants to be productive in modern times must embrace diversity, especially gender diversification (Fine et al., 2020). As a result, organizations need to have an in-depth understanding of current perspectives and behaviors, which discourage an organization from attaining focused objectives and ascertain that every employee is active in established corporate diversity programs (Ng & Sears, 2020). Subsequently, the most productive companies are willing to develop and sustain inclusive and diverse communities in their strategic plan (Ng & Sears, 2020). For these reasons, this work will focus on the influence of gender balance and diversity on a business’s growth to offer updated information on the issue.
1.2 Theoretical Framework
The leading theory underpinning this study is Equity Theory. Equity Theory is grounded on the notion that people are usually motivated by fairness in every aspect of their lives, particularly the workplace (Adams & Freedman, 1976). Thus Equity Theory posits that when an individual recognizes an inequity between a peer and themselves, they will have to adjust their work to make the situation fair based on their perception. This theory is directly applicable to gender diversity in the workplace. For example, if a female employee learns that a male counterpart is typically doing the same job but being given more money, she will also choose to do less work to create perceived fairness. In its application in gender diversity, the higher a person’s perception of fairness (equity), the more encouraged and motivated they will be in their work. Subsequently, a person will likely be demotivated if they experience perceived unfairness (Ryan, 2016). However, it is worth noting that in places of work, people are not ready to welcome the idea of gender diversity. Therefore, organizations that work with diversity must consider and establish the best ways to introduce the concept of gender diversity in the workplace for it to be accepted by everybody (Fine et al., 2020). Thus, the key to successfully implementing gender diversity is through fairness, as established in this theory.
Another theory that is used in this study, together with equity theory, is resource-based theory. This theory is focused on the heterogeneity of performance within organizations (Barney & Clark, 2007). The perspective sees organizations as entailing an array of resources, including generally four categories. These categories are financial capital, corporate capital resources, and physical capital (Barney & Clark, 2007). It is clear from this theory that the resources attribute held by a given company can determine their performance heterogeneity because resources can either inhibit or facilitate a firm from conceiving efficiently and enacting business strategies. Thus, rare, valuable resources and are only available to a specific company can act as a source of competitive advantage (Barney & Clark, 2007). For a firm to grow, it needs to have the potential to exploit the full competitive potential of some of its valuable, inimitable, and rare resources (Zhao & Fan, 2018). However, such ability always resides in the structures, practices, and procedures of a firm.
Resource-based theory denotes that companies exploit and acquire resources for growth in the setting of product market competition. Managers typically receive resources to implement and conceive a market product strategy, which is anticipated to have the highest value in the future (Fine et al., 2020). The closer the company’s anticipations are to the actual strategy’s values, the more values are the firm’s resources. The primary reason why alignment between actual value and expectations is essential is that companies that underestimate the diversity value make adequate investments in diversity management (Wieczorek-Szyma?ska, 2020). Conversely, organizations that overestimate their value of diversity always invest heavily and, in the process, overinflate their cost. Based on this theory, gender diversity can be a rare, inimitable resource, enhancing the competitiveness of a firm. A study by Lewellyn and Muller-Kahle (2020) grounded in resource-based theory, empirically has shown that gender diversity is associate positively with the growth of a business. In this study, the approach will show that gender diversity, if managed as a resource leads to lower turnover levels and that gender diversity management practices positively interact with innovation strategies leading to higher growth and increased market performance.
1.3 Statement of the Purpose
The research identifies and measures the impact of organizational gender equality and cultural diversification in business growth. The study then identifies the elements for the success or failure of diversity initiatives and offers decision-makers recommendations. Therefore, the study will promote discussion in gender diversity, which has been ignored historically.
1.4 Research Questions
These questions are addressed in order to support the thesis for this study:
i. Why is diversity in the workplace a historical issue which maximizes a company’s obstacles?
ii. How can diversity affect the efficiency of organizations?
iii. Which methods could corporate managers place in motion to help ensure that cultural diversity is a positive factor in the corporation?
iv. What are the reasons encouraging and capable of influencing companies to devise and enforce strategies, processes, and activities on equality?

1.5 Significance of the Study
The research contributes updated information on workplace diversity and its impact on business growth in contemporary times. The study shows how workplace diversity is important to an organization using resource-based theory because it results in increased profits and employee incentives. The anticipated results also intended to show that gender balance is a female issue and a significant challenge mainly for the industry. The main reason is that gender balance is often influenced subconsciously, leading to implicit discrimination, which establishes unforeseen and unseen obstacles for workplace equal rights. Unlike other studies, this study primarily identifies and measures the impact of organizational gender equality and culture diversification on companies using Equity Theory. The theory identifies the factors needed for a diversity initiative’s success or failure and offers decision-makers suggestions. Therefore, the study result would enhance discussion in the domain that has been ignored historically.
The study is essential for various stakeholders concerned with diversity management in the workplace. The findings will be relevant to managers as they would review them to understand better the impact of adopting gender diversity and its influence on an organization’s growth. Therefore, they will establish the best approaches to incorporating gender diversity, specifically from the study’s recommendation to enhance production and development in their organizations. The study is also significant to policymakers who are responsible for gender balance within their countries. The findings will help them establish policies that will aid organizations in implementing gender diversity to give equal chances to both women and men. Finally, the study is relevant to academicians because it contributes to the existing body of knowledge through a different perspective, which entails focusing mainly on gender diversity using updated information.
1.6 Definition of Terms
Diversity: The quality or practice of involving people from various social and ethnic backgrounds and of varying sexual orientation or genders.
Gender Diversity: Gender diversity is a broad term used in describing gender identities, which shows an expression of diversity’s past the binary framework.
Diversity Management: The term denotes coordinated actions to promote greater employee inclusion from various backgrounds into organizations ‘activities.
Discrimination: Discrimination in this context is the prejudiced or unjust treatment of a different group of people, mainly based on age, sex, and face.
Globalization: The term refers to the speedup of exchanges and movement throughout the world. In this case, the exchanges and movement involve capital, cultural practices, good and services, and human resource.
Equity Theory: This is a theory aimed at ensuring that the distribution of various resources is fair to every partner.
Resource-Based Theory: The theory is a managerial model used to determine the strategic resources that a company can exploit to have a sustainable competitive edge.
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