Afsaneh Pourjam - Faculty of Tourism, University of Science and Culture, Tehran, Iran

While categorization of human beings into various subgroups in terms of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality and alike is not a new phenomenon but such a diversity in communities all around the world has drawn much attention to the issue in recent years due to the increasing importance of equality for governments and societies. Workplaces are among those contexts which are proposed to equality issues and are trying to deal with it utilizing different approaches among which creating spirituality in workplace is a noteworthy one. Tourism businesses are not an exception in this regard and are faced with the diversity challenge especially in terms of interaction between different cultures throughout the industry. Additionally, it seems that organizational outcome is influenced by level of diversity at the workplace. Therefore, this paper adopts a developmental descriptive-analytical approach implemented by documentary analysis to discuss the relationship between diversity management and organizational outcome and provides a theoretical model indicating how workplace spirituality (WPS) mediates the relationship between cultural diversity management and organizational outcome in tourism businesses since cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature and can be a source of competitive advantage for businesses as well.

Cultural diversity, Workplace Spirituality (WPS), Organizational Outcome, Tourism Businesses