This Study empirically examined the nature of the relationship between Workforce Diversity Management and Corporate Performance of manufacturing firms in Nigeria. Despite efforts aimed at optimizing the performance of firms in Nigeria, a nation of many diverse people, not much appears to have been achieved. To address this lacuna, primary data was collected from Forty-two registered firms in South-South Nigeria using a five-point Likert-type scale questionnaire and personal interviews. The Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient at 95% confidence level and the Hierarchical Multiple Regression model were used to analyse the data. The findings revealed that the apparent low performance rate of the Study firms may be traceable to poor management of surface and deep level diversity. To optimize Corporate Performance therefore, it was recommended that managers should ensure that employees are “not at all” disturbed by issues bothering on diversity as raised in this paper
Keywords: Ethnicity, Gender, Nigeria, Workforce diversity
