How Diversity Is Managed at Arab National Bank - Case Study Example

The paper 'How Diversity Is Managed at Arab National Bank" is a good example of a management case study. Diversity management has become an area of interest in the global world we live in. This paper presents an investigation of diversity management at the Arab National Bank (ANB) in Saudi Arabia. ANB is a bank that has 190 branches across Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom, and which has embraced mainstream banking in addition to Islamic banking. Additionally, the bank has ladies’ branches, which are staffed by females only. For the sake of this study, a mixed-method of a survey that includes questionnaires and interviews was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data respectively. The main objective of this study was to find out how diversity is managed at ANB. The subject of the research, therefore, concentrated on obtaining data from ANB branches that had mixed staff (i.e. staff from different nationalities, gender, and cultures) instead of those that worked in say, ladies’ branches or branches that offered Islamic banking services only.

From the research, it emerged that diversity management is a good concept on paper (and in theory), but has not been put into practice by the ANB management or felt by the ANB employees. For example, managers who were surveyed during the research indicated that recruitment is mainly based on competencies and skills that a job applicant has, as opposed to the need to make the organisation more representative of different cultures, genders, and/or religious affiliations. It also emerged that the human resource department at ANB does not have a diversity management policy. Incidentally, it also emerged that Saudi nationals were more aware of the absence of effective diversity management practices at ANB. This was a curious revelation especially considering that the three female respondents and the four non-Saudi respondents who featured in the survey did not seem to mind most of the practices that ANB had. The greatest gap in diversity management was however evident in the responses provided by managers surveyed for the qualitative data. They revealed that diversity management did not get priority at ANB as some other issues did (e.g. getting the right staff with the right competencies).