Fourth variable: Diversity Management

The fourth variable, utilized as part of the new-conceptualization by the research, is the “Diversity Management”. This term is interpreted as all the actions (planned or unplanned) implemented by the CBC structures of municipalities to involve and influence the local actors who can be identified as “diverse”. A positive diversity management can stimulate and improve the CBC actions of a local authority and, consequently, contribute to the socio-economic development of the territory. This criteria can be developed as internal or external feature: internally a cross-border administration can hire citizens with different cultures, languages or backgrounds;

externally it can involve specific associations working with diversity of CBC projects.

Thus, within the meaning of diversity management as internal feature of local administrations, the author intends mainly to focus on the regard given to language

skills, genders, ethnicities, educational and social backgrounds; as external features the author concentrates mainly on the exploitation of cross-border networks (mostly of national-minority) and further specific knowledge. Particularly for the peripheral areas of South-East Europe, good diversity management can symbolize a relevant conceptual step: from diversity conceived as historical issue related to minorities, to a future development instrument of multicultural societies. Anyway, as it was highlighted in chapter II diversity presents unique challenges for management as it is linked to both positive and negative organizational performance outcomes (Mannix and Neale 2005).

The elements that the research uses for identifying the value of the fourth variable are:

1) gender diversity; 2) CBC language skills; 3) EN language skills; 4) ethnic diversity;

5) perception of diversity; 6) vision on diversity management in CBC; 7) planning and management of diversity management in CBC; 8) involvement of minorities – associations or individuals - in CBC projects (external collaboration for designing, implementation, networking). The final value is identified as positive only if the majority of these 8 elements result positively.

Variable 4: Diversity management

Korca Gjirokaster Vlore Bitola

Kriva

Palanka Struga Kjustendil Haskovo Ruse

Gender

diversity Positive Positive Positive Positive Positive Positive Positive Positive Positive

Vision

Korca Gjirokaster Vlore Bitola

Kriva

Palanka Struga Kjustendil Haskovo Ruse

Involve Table 4.6 - Fourth Variable, data (Own elaboration)

Looking at the data it can be noticed that almost all the cases have an excellent gender equilibrium referring to the employees working on CBC. Excluding the administration of Kyustendil which has a large male majority, the other cases obtain a positive code.

With reference to language skills – CBC language skills which takes into account the knowledge of and speaking bordering languages, and EN language skills which takes into account the knowledge in speaking of English as an international working language – the two conditions gain a positive result depending on the percentage of employees able to speak the corresponding CBC languages (1/3 of the total employees) or the English language (1/2 of the total employees). So, for instance within the municipality of Korca – an Albanian cross-border area located between FYROM and Greece – Macedonian or Greek speakers could represent a valuable asset to promote and improve CBC activities. The table shows that in this specific case there are 3 Greek speakers and 1 Macedonian speaker, plus 10 people who are confident in English. In general, within this condition the collected data prove that there is a good variety of speakers among the 9 different CBC structures.

The fourth element for the identification of this variable, ethnic diversity, measures the number of employees involved in CBC who belong to an ethnic local minority. This element registers a lot of differences among all the cases. Struga, which has an ethnic Albanian local majority, is the only Macedonian municipality who hired some people belonging to a minority group. Anyway, the municipality of Struga started to hire Albanian Macedonian people only after the Ohrid Agreement signed in 2001. Since this event the number of employees follows the percentages of the presence of local communities residing in the city. Bitola and Kriva Palanka, the other two Macedonian cases, have smaller percentages of ethnic minorities living on their territories; they do

CBC structures there are two cases which included employees with other specific ethnic origins: Korca (3 Albanian Greeks, 1 Albanian Macedonian) and Gjirokaster (1 Albanian Greek). Vlore, despite its large Greek minority, does not have any employee who belongs to this group. A similar situation is registered in Ruse where different minorities live but none is represented in CBC activities. Haskovo, however, has some Bulgarian Turks working on CBC. Anyhow it is also relevant to underline that the location of Haskovo can better exploit the presence of Bulgarian Turks in its staff thanks to the proximity of the kin-state of Turkey. Finally, reading the data of this element, it is relevant to emphasize the total absence of the Roma community which is not included in any of the 9 CBC structures. Only externally, as in the cross-border area of Korca, I noticed real collaboration and good activism of the Roma in transnational actions.

The next element, the perception of diversity, focuses on the view of the different CBC referents towards the concept of “diversity” and “multiculturalism”. All the interviewees answered with positive explanations and good examples of the “real” and not “political” local multiculturalism. Most of the interviewees, in particular in Korca, Struga and Bitola, distinguished between the national and the local political level stressing mostly on the relevance of the daily life and the “natural” multicultural environment of their cities. The CBC referent of Bitola has run over the national situation of the “Name Dispute” between FYROM and Greece saying that, at the local level, they can anyway work successfully on CBC. He has also referred to the circumstances of minorities in Greece affirming that there ethnic groups are not legally recognized; he admitted then that this dissimilar situation sometimes can create not straightforward behaviours.

The element “vision on diversity management in CBC”, sixth indicator for the creation of the variable of diversity management, aims to evaluate the approach that the 9 cross-border local authorities have towards the use or potential use of diversity management in CBC activities. As was pointed out in chapter II, Grix and Knowles (2002) - using Putman’s concept of social capital - declare that the Euroregions and CBC structures are

“a social capital maximizer” because they develop the level of trust relations amongst the people. The exploitation of good diversity management, in local authorities located in multi-ethnic borderlands, where diversity is one of the most relevant peculiarities,

would, therefore, give the border area better chances to act as real “social capital maximizer”. This is above all true if we consider the study of Malloy (2007, 2010) where she defines national minorities as “capacity builders” of cross-border regions.

Malloy emphasises five points of CBC carried out by the national minorities: Political, Cultural, Educational, Social Services and Economic cooperation. A constructive and mature long term vision on diversity management for CBC activities could, therefore, foster positive advantages in social, cultural and economic terms. Analysing the results and the data I noticed a general elementary vision on this specific concept and on its potential exploitation. Speaking on this topic, a lot of the interviewees have often brought back the conversation to the concept of “multiculturalism” without any rationalization of the relation between diversity management and CBC. Anyhow, some of the municipalities have demonstrated higher maturity on the topic than others. Ruse, Haskovo, Bitola, Kriva Palanka and Korca indeed showed positive interests in diversity and diversity management as reasons of a socio-economic development and not only as a mere opportunity to create common cultural events (Gjirokaster, Vlore, Struga, Kjustendil). Of course, festivals and intercultural meetings are the basic steps to enforce further transfrontier collaborations in different other fields, but they represent still a primordial vision on diversity management in CBC.

After analysing the different visions and perspectives, the last two elements try to examine the real actions realized for the use of diversity management. The interviews proved that there are no instruments for planning and managing diversity management.

None of the 9 cases has implemented any explicit control or strategy. Some of the people interviewed declared that they externally have involved some minority associations to develop specific CBC projects. Korca and Ruse organized a transnational event involving the Roma community, Gjirokaster the Greeks and Haskovo the Turks. However none have engaged minorities in projects with a socio-economic aim. Having a conversation with an expert of the Joint Technical Secretariat of Struga, it was interesting also to discover that there is not any criteria related or linked to the concept of diversity management within the evaluation criteria of the IPA CBC Programmes. The expert of JTS continued stating that considering the history of South-East Europe and the EU strategies in the region, primarily based on the concepts of security, democracy and economy (cf. the Stability Pact for South-East Europe -

1999 -and Regional Cooperation Council - 2008) it could be helpful to add as evaluation criteria a new concept capable of including the idea of “diversity management”. In this way municipalities and CBC structures would be encouraged to apply it in their activities. Following this analysis I add here below the final codification of the fourth variable, diversity management:

Variable 4: Diversity management

Korca Gjirokaster Vlore Bitola

Kriva

Palanka Struga Kjustendil Haskovo Ruse Gender

Table 4.7 - Fourth Variable, results (Own elaboration)