Diversity Management in Substance Abuse Organizations: Improving the Relationship Between the Organization and its Workforce

Abstract

Diversity management focuses upon an organization's success in understanding and attending to the needs of its workforce—a workforce that in recent years has become diverse not only in age and gender but also in race, culture, and ethnicity. The interdisciplinary nature of the treatment teams in substance abuse treatment programs lends itself to exploration of diversity management practices to improve the organization's relationship with its workers. The purpose of this paper is to explore diversity management within the therapeutic community offering organizational meta-cultural competency as skill sets needed for the social work manager.

KEYWORDS:

• diversity management
• therapeutic communities
• substance abuse treatment
• meta-cultural competency
• organizational meta-cultural competency