Diversity may seem self-explanatory, yet it may have different meanings in organizations with respect to different contexts. The term is first defined, followed by a historical background, and contrasted with its definition in today's environment. Diversity issues from the management and employee perspectives are finally considered.

Until lately, diversity in the workplace has been implied as the ongoing interaction between employees and employers with different cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds that have significant influences on the operations and management of an organization. However, recently, diversity has broadly been redefined as the collective differences and similarities of different dimensions. For example, diversity issues related to demographic characteristics of employees are different from those related to diverse functional issues such as marketing, research, manufacturing, finances, and so on ...