It is theorized that command-and-control structured organisations and top-down managing people leadership approaches have proved incapable of meeting the heightened demand for innovative productive output required to help organisations gain a competitive advantage edge, and ultimately, long-term survival. The emerging ‘knowledge economy’ enterprise structural model, in contrast, due to its devolved collaborative processes, facilitates the creative expression of all workplace participants and, in turn, frees leaders from the legacy of unrealistic and onerous individualistic transformational expectations. Furthermore, the adoption of a relationship-centred approach to leadership enables the diversity of skills and abilities of individuals to flourish along with the enterprise itself. Therefore, the coupling of participative relational leadership practices with the integration of a deliberative diverse identity design approach as documented in Leadership and Diversity Management as the key enabler of economic and social sustainability for 21st-century organisations. Reflecting this integrative impetus, the investigative narratives that comprise this book will transcend the traditional business-case-versus-social-justice polarisation, which has marked ‘managing diversity’ programmes since their introduction, by blending analysis of organisational diversity factors with relational and distributed leadership studies material.

Leadership and Diversity Management is a timely exploration in light of the heightened requirement of business for novel solutions to meet the varied economic, ethical and social challenges organisations face, related to fast paced technological developments, increasing global market competition and associated environmental impacts and cultural inequality concerns. To this end, the numerous case study examples outlined will reveal how a more socially orientated form of leadership, in addressing the embodied (cognitive and emotional) needs of diverse organisational participants, will restore a level of humanity to the workplace that has been lacking in organisations throughout the industrial era.

Written for academics, researchers and policymakers alike in the fields of Leadership, Organizational Studies, Strategy and Workplace Diversity Leadership and Diversity Management is an excellent addition to the existing literature and will facilitate a deeper understanding of the connectivity factors that mark the post-industrial workplace.