General Aspects and Perspectives of Immigrant Diversity in Organizations

Abstract

More than 10% of the world's working-age population are migrants. Migration issues are particularly relevant in Europe, as 2.7 million people came to Europe in 2019 alone. According to the report “WWWforEurope”, the quantity of research investigating cultural diversity is on the rise, the authors of the report Dohse and Gold (2014) have also noted that cultural diversity affects critical economic variables - economic growth, innovation, and the social welfare. Therefore, Gelfand et al. (2017) argue that research on organizational behavior should include more theories of cultural diversity. There has been little such research in Lithuania, so this article aims to analyze immigrant diversity perspectives in Lithuanian organizations. The qualitative empirical research was conducted using expert interviews. Content analysis was conducted using NVivo software. The results show that Lithuania has a low level of immigrant diversity, but therefore there is currently a growing interest and awareness related to this topic. Immigrant diversity is occurring in international organizations, globally born companies, organizations expanding into foreign markets or organizations founded by immigrants themselves. Two types of organizations (according to immigrant diversity perspectives) were categorized: 1) monolithic organization (this type is more prominent, based on resistance and “discrimination-and-fairness” paradigms and highly related to the cultural context of the country); 2) multicultural organization (focus on “integration-and-learning” and “access-and-legitimacy” paradigms).