Moving societies and immobile organizational practices. The winding road of diversity management in Italy

In Italy, a concern with diversity management arose considerably later than in other western countries. It is mainly in the past decade that the concept of diversity management has spread beyond a narrow circle of experts and entered the broader academic debate and firms, where diversity-orientated personnel management initiatives have begun to gain ground, albeit sporadically and slowly, and to very different extents across the country. In this chapter – after an update on the changes in the labour market caused by the recent economic crisis and a brief summary of anti-discrimination legislation – our purpose is instead to conduct a reasoned analysis of diversity management in Italy by considering the persisting discrepancy in Italian firms between the regulatory level and everyday organisational practices. Moreover, in the final section, we offer suggestions useful for the introduction of a human resource management (HR) management able to go beyond mere labelling or rhetoric and address the challenges raised by diversity and rapid social change for Italian organisations today.