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Variety Management and Diversity Management as a Response to Complexity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2021

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Summary

Abstract

The present paper compares variety management and diversity management as management approaches responding to the complexity of an organisation's functioning. Applying the systematic literature review method, the authors analysed 32 texts on this subject. An analysis of the key words constituted a basis for determining the framework of selected texts reflecting the scope of specificity of the studied approaches to management, including their entanglement in the entirety of management processes. Subsequently, an analysis of the abstracts and an analysis of the content of the selected texts were carried out to establish their typology and orientation towards a particular sector or region, as well as research methods followed by their authors. Thanks to this, it was possible to make a more comprehensive comparison between variety management and diversity management. The conducted analyses showed a far-reaching divergence of subjects in the examined approaches. Despite both of them being oriented towards management in complexity, they focus on completely different issues. Consequently, the authors formulated a proposal to integrate these approaches in order to achieve synergy of complexity management processes.

Keywords: variety management, diversity management, complexity management

Introduction

Complexity is currently regarded as a ubiquitous term employed to describe numerous phenomena of a highly heterogeneous nature. It reflects difficulties in solving problems with characterising a specified occurrence or with identifying laws which a given phenomenon is subject to. Predicaments with understanding complexity illustrate the universal dilemma related to the question about the main barriers to comprehending complexity: whether these are cognitive limitations of man, or whether they are rooted in the nature of complexity itself, which, in its essence, implies the mentioned limitations. In the literature on the subject, different types of complexity are mentioned. Among those of greater importance, it is possible to distinguish complexity marked by description length, algorithmic complexity, complexity as logical depth, complexity as a degree of variation of a physical object, and effective complexity. For the purposes of interpreting the phenomena studied in research on management, the last two conceptualisations are particularly helpful.

The complexity theory forms theoretical groundwork for subsequent considerations of complex issues of organisation management.

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The Future of Management
Volume One: Entrepreneurship, Change and Flexibility
, pp. 251 - 264
Publisher: Jagiellonian University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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