Background: Globalization has changed the market in ways of creating new opportunities as well as new challenges for organizations and has given rise to a global phenomenon called workforce diversity. The phenomenon appeared as a result from the constantly changing marketplace where people as part of a worldwide economy, live and work in foreign countries. Thus, as global markets emerge, and workforce demographics shift, workforce diversity inches closer to becoming a necessity instead of a banner that businesses wave to show their commitment to embracing differences and change.  Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine and to provide a better understanding of how diversity is managed through inclusive practices and policies, and how employees perceive these practices.  Method: The research is based on a qualitative case study. The primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews. The respondents of the interviews were both managers and employees in order to get the two different perspectives. Two managers and six employees were interviewed.  Findings: The empirical findings showed that managers’ perspective of inclusion practices differs much from how the employees perceive inclusion practices of a diverse workforce. The main findings were that the stated inclusion practices at The University are not perceived among the employees. One example was that some of the employees feel like they were excluded at The University. Moreover, some of the employees stated that people that are not ethical Swedes are not treated the same nor get the same opportunities. Another observable issue was that The University rarely speak English and all documented information is in Swedish, which mean that not all employees receive the information needed.

Nowadays, organizations have to deal more and more with cultural diversity concerning their workforce due to globalization. The challenge for these organizations is to manage the cross cultural workforce in an effective way. Therefore, they have to have skills and the necessary knowledge in order to conduct cross cultural management. For this reason, the purpose of this study was to investigate how a cross cultural workforce could be managed effectively. In order to get insights into what differences exist between employees of different cultures, what kind of problems can arise out of these differences and how these problems can be overcome through cross cultural management, a qualitative research approach in form of a case study was conducted. Hereby, interviews with three managers including two head of departments were conducted. These interviews have used the frame of reference as foundation including well-known theories like Hofstede, Inglehart, the eight value orientations, McGregor and some other theories. The statements of the interviews were evaluated and analyzed in order to find answers to the research questions stated in the thesis. The findings of this study show that the management team at LTU is not necessarily focusing on cross cultural differences as the impact is less negative than expected. However, conflicts that still arise do not really seem to have bad consequences at LTU. Therefore, these conflicts can be fixed relatively easy by applying the most important variables connected to encountering cross cultural challenges in the frame of reference. These are: human skills, good communication, creating unity, respect, empathy, body language as well as harnessing differences. Especially the personal attitude as well as the human skills of managers and employees play an essential role.

The main objective of this thesis was to analyze the diversity management in a chosen company from the management's perspective. Also the main goals, values and activities of this system were analyzed. The chosen company is an IT global company that has subsidiaries all around the globe; these subsidiaries each have their own small, local adaptation of diversity management. After the diversity management was analyzed from the company's perspective, the other objective was to analyze the perception of its employees. These two outputs were compared to each other afterwards and key findings were discussed. Quantitative methods, which were partially supported by own experience in the company, as well as informal interviews with its employees, were used for the research. A quantitative research with 93 respondents proved that the diversity strategy in the company is developed, however still some room for improvement has. In the end of the thesis recommendations, based on a SWOT analysis were carried out.