Chapter 1: Breaking the Zero-Sum Game: Transforming Societies through Inclusive Leadership

In contemporary times, rapidly changing demographics due to increase in women and ethnic minorities joining the workforce has incited changes in how organizations address and tackle with diversity and its frameshift processes. Other drivers of diversity across organizational workforce include disability, age, sexual orientation and race. These combine together in creating the need to appreciate both the diversity of our workplace and the world at large, especially in response to the globalization trends in the recent times (Salib, 2014).

Contemporaneously, there exists a strong shift in global economic power from industrialized Western nations to the developing East, along with the increasing population and diversity in countries like Canada, which has created complex social environments. This also has mounted much pressure on leaders to meet their respective organizational goals — while fostering the effective achievement and advancing the development of their constituents at the individual level (Bishop & Mahoney, 2009; Lugg & Shoho, 2006; Salib, 2014).