African Journal of Business Management pp. 072-076, July 2007 Available online http://www.academicjournals.org/ajbm ISSN 1993-8233 ©2007 Academic Journals Full Length Research Paper Critical review of literature on workforce diversity Ongori Henry and Agolla J. Evans University of Botswana, Botswana. Accepted 27, June 2007 Workforce diversity is a primary concern for most of the businesses. Today’s organisations need to recognise and manage workforce diversity effectively. Many articles have been written on this topic but there is no specific definition of workforce diversity. The main purpose of this article is to review the literature of workforce diversity. What is workforce diversity? What are the benefits of workforce diversity in organisations, what management can do to enhance work force diversity in organisations? What are the disadvantages of workforce diversity? .This questions would be main purpose of this article. Key words: Workforce diversity, disability, old age, human resource management, equal opportunity. INTRODUCTION Workforce diversity is a complex phenomenon to manage in an organisation. The management of workforce diver- sity as a tool to increase organizational effectiveness cannot be underscored, especially with current changes sweeping across the globe. It is argued that organizations that value diversity will definitely cultivate success and have a future in this dynamic global labour market (Jain and Verma, 1996).Workforce diversity management has become an important issue for both governments and private organizations. Its importance has mainly been brought about by the free movement of labour due to globalization and the fight for human rights by certain minority groups who feel excluded from the employment sector. The workforce diversity emerged mainly to further the availability equal opportunities in the workplace. This equal opportunity philosophy is aimed at ensuring that organizations make the most out of the difference from a diverse workforce rather than losing talent which might assist the organization to be more efficient and effective. The increased mobility and interaction of people from diverse backgrounds as a result of improved economic and political systems and the recognition of human rights by all nations has put most organizations under pressure to embrace diversity at the work place. Diversity brings with it the heterogeneity that needs to be nurtured, culti- vated and appreciated as means of increasing *Corresponding author. E-mail: ONGORIH@mopipi.ub.bw organizational effectiveness in this competitive world. Literature review The subject of workforce diversity has not been a major problem in Africa before as much as it is today. The concept of diversity management gained attention with globalisation and the need for more organisations to spread globally to reach customers across the world. There is an increasing need to understand more about workforce diversity, which is deeper than what we see at the surface level. This can give managers an understand- ing as to what can go wrong in a diverse team. The 1990s saw the development of a new trend in the form of workforce diversity mainly because of the liberalization and globalisation of markets (Jain and Verma, 1996). At the same time the liberalization of economies and struc- tural adjustment policies brought about by the Brentwood institutions opened the doors to free market economies especially in Africa. These free market economies brou- ght in the free movement of labour as a commodity which has resulted in the diverse workforce across the conti- nent. The privatisation of most of the state-owned enter- prises in sub-Saharan Africa also created an open door for migration of labour from all over the world. Work force diversity defined Broadly, defined diversity management as the systematic and planned commitment by the organisations to recruits,