EXPLORING THE NEXUS BETWEEN DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT POLICIES AND PERFORMANCE: A STUDY OF SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN RIVERS STATE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18623/rvd.v22.n7.4481Keywords:
Affirmative Action, Employee Engagement, Cultural Diversity, Decision-Making Quality, ProductivityAbstract
The study was on diversity management policies and practices. The specific aim of this study was to investigate the degree to which employee engagement is affected by affirmative action and the impact of cultural diversity on decision quality. A survey was used for the study. The respondents were individuals who were both owners and managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across various industry sectors in Rivers State. The study used purposive sampling. Three hundred and fifty questionnaires were distributed and subsequently returned. Regression analysis was used to test the research hypothesis. The results indicated that affirmative action exerted a significant positive effect on employee engagement (β = 0.924713; p-value < 0.01) and that ethnic diversity significantly enhanced decision-making quality (β = 0.975945; p-value < 0.01). The study indicated that diversity management policies had a big but mixed effect on how well an organization did. Affirmative action was the main reason why employees got involved, ethnic diversity was the best way to improve decision-making quality, and diversity strategies like training and flexible work arrangements were considered necessary ways to boost productivity. The study recommended that SMEs should view affirmative action not merely as a compliance or regulatory obligation, but also as a strategy-oriented catalyst for engagement, morale, and productivity. SMEs need to make a conscious effort to use the ethnic diversity of their teams to make decisions and put investments into communication and integration programs to assure that no language- or social origin-related problems slow things down.
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