This forum of senior women in finance and accounting explored how diversity can be encouraged and fostered and how finance functions can play a role in making organisations more diverse.

The Pearl Initiative collaborated with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) on a roundtable breakfast session on 21st January 2015 in Dubai, focused on the benefit to organisations of greater diversity in the workplace.

This forum of senior women in finance and accounting explored how diversity can be encouraged and fostered and how finance functions can play a role in making organisations more diverse. Building on research from the ACCA on ‘Building a better business through finance diversity’ and ‘The business case for diversity management’ the forum also heard from Pearl Initiative regarding some initial findings from our research on how to strengthen the pipeline of women through to executive and board levels in GCC organisations. The Pearl Initiative will publish the full outcome of this ground breaking research in the coming few months.

In today’s evolving and challenging financial function, diversity means much more than equal opportunities and goes much further than gender, ethnicity or social equality.  It is also about diversity in the ideas, skills and capabilities that people from all ranges of backgrounds, experiences, ages, geographies and cultures can bring to the finance function.  Companies may have teams that look different, which is good for the CSR reports, but the more important factor is to have a team which is going to think and work differently too.  When expanding overseas, new markets bring their own customs, culture, regulatory environment and governance standards, which need to be considered and integrated into existing corporate models.

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