Title: Diversity, social capital, and leadership practices: building inclusive learning organisations

Authors: Adalberto Aguirre

Addresses: Department of Sociology, University of California Riverside, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, California 92521-0419, USA

Abstract: Despite the increasing diversity of US society, educational and economic organisations have been slow in developing leadership practices that respond to diversity. The association between diversity and social capital in organisations has received relatively little attention. The Pathways program is discussed in this paper as an example that treats diversity as a social force in order to develop leadership practices that make learning organisations inclusive of diversity. The argument is offered in this paper that treating diversity as social capital results in ||leading for diversity|| – building learning organisations based on trust and cooperativeness.

Keywords: diversity; social capital; leadership practices; organisational culture; learning organisations; civic culture; organisational homogeneity; organisational heterogeneity; organisational learning; trust; cooperation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMDM.2008.019785

International Journal of Management and Decision Making, 2008 Vol.9 No.5, pp.526 - 542

Published online: 30 Jul 2008 *

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