Definition

The diversity learning and growth perspective reflects a statistical summary of the organization's ability to maintain and enhance the capability of its diverse intellectual assets. It includes priorities to create a climate that supports organizational change, innovation, and growth. It enables the organization to ensure its capacity for long-term renewal by effectively developing and utilizing its diverse workforce for improved performance, a prerequisite for survival in the long run. In this perspective the organization should consider not only what it must do to maintain and develop the know-how required for understanding and utilizing its diverse workforce, but also determining what's needed to build a longterm sustaining infrastructure to enhance its core competency base. By doing so, the organization will be in a much better strategic position to satisfy its employee and customer needs as well as to sustain the necessary efficiency and productivity of its processes, which create financial value.

Intense global competition requires that organizations continually improve their capabilities for delivering value to customers and shareholders. Organizational learning and growth come from three principal sources: people, systems, and organizational procedures. Scorecards typically reveal large gaps between the existing capabilities of people, systems, and procedures and what is required to achieve breakthrough performance. To close these gaps, businesses have to invest in reskilling employees, enhancing information technology and systems, and aligning organizational procedures and routines (Kaplan and Norton, 1996).

Because know-how, to an ever-growing degree, is a perishable commodity, it will become increasingly important to decide which core competencies...