& Research Paper Delivering Effective Diversity Management Through Effective Structures Nigel Bassett-Jones, Reva Berman Brown * and Nelarine Cornelius Oxford Brookes University, Business School, Wheatley, Oxford, UK The premise of this paper is that for effective diversity management, it is essential that an organization has in place factors that create effective structure, including workplace equality processes and programmes. In order to demonstrate this viewpoint, research was undertaken in a communications-intensive firm by means of the extensive exam- ination of documents and corroborative interviews. The findings were obtained by means of Beer’s Viable Systems Model (1985). The research assumption was shown to be the case — the major finding indicates that effective diversity management is dependent on appropriate structures and systems to support the communication and implementa- tion of arrangements to create and sustain workplace equality. Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Keywords diversity management; workplace equality; viable systems model INTRODUCTION Members of organizations are likely to be creative and innovative when they consider themselves to be fairly treated and listened to. Diversity in the workplace gives rise to multiple perspectives that result in questioning of the status quo, and a critical approach to resolving organizational problems. As a consequence, an essential precondition for effective diversity management is workplace equality because people will only challenge in an environment in which they believe that their views and ideas are respected and given equal consideration. In the absence of workplace equality, the potential to generate multiple perspectives to deal with problems is denied, and organizational effective- ness is diminished. The order of the paper is as follows: the next section discusses Diversity Management, and the second, Workplace Equality. The third section introduces Beer’s Viable Systems Model. The fourth section describes the Research Site, and the fifth, The Research Design, explaining the investigative methods employed. The sixth section provides the Findings of the study, and the final section draws the threads of the argument together. Systems Research and Behavioral Science Syst. Res. 24, 59^67 (2007) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI :10.1002/sres.762 * Correspondence to: R. B. Brown, Oxford Brookes University, Business School, Wheatley, Oxford OX33 1HX, UK. E-mail: revbrown@brookes.ac.uk Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.