Diversity at Work

The Practice of Inclusion

Bernardo M. Ferdman, Bernardo M. Ferdman

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118415153
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Gestion des ressources humaines

Diversity at Work: The Practice of Inclusion

How can organizations, their leaders, and their people benefit from diversity? The answer, according to this cutting-edge book, is the practice of inclusion. Diversity at Work: The Practice of Inclusion (a volume in SIOP's Professional Practice Series) presents detailed solutions for the challenge of inclusion—how to fully connect with, engage, and empower people across all types of differences. Its editors and chapter authors—all topic experts ranging from internal and external change agents to academics—effectively translate theories and research on diversity into the applied practice of inclusion. Readers will learn about the critical issues involved in framing, designing, and implementing inclusion initiatives in organizations and supporting individuals to develop competencies for inclusion. The authors' diverse voices combine to provide an innovative and expansive model of the practice of inclusion and to address its key aspects at the individual, group, and organizational levels. The book, designed to be a hands-on resource, provides case studies and illustrations to show how diversity and inclusion operate in a variety of settings, effectively highlighting the practices needed to benefit from diversity. This comprehensive handbook:

• Explains how to conceptualize, operationalize, and implement inclusion in organizations.
• Connects inclusion to multiple dimensions of diversity (including gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, social class, religion, profession, and many others) in integrative ways, incorporating specific and relevant examples.
• Includes models, illustrations, and cases showing how to apply the principles and practices of inclusion.
• Addresses international and multicultural perspectives throughout, including many examples.
• Provides practitioners with key perspectives and tools for thinking about and fostering inclusion in a variety of organizational contexts.
• Provides HR professionals, industrial-organizational psychologists, D&I practitioners, and those in related fields—as well as anyone interested in enhancing the workplace—with a one-stop resource on the latest knowledge regarding diversity and the practice of inclusion in organizations.

This vital resource offers a clear understanding of and a way to navigate the challenges of creating and sustaining inclusion initiatives that truly work.

Part One
Frameworks for Understanding Inclusion

CHAPTER ONE
The Practice of Inclusion in Diverse Organizations: Toward a Systemic and Inclusive Framework

Bernardo M. Ferdman

In the last twenty years or so, organizations have considerably expanded attention to diversity at work; this has been accompanied by growth not only in the number and range of diversity practitioners, but also in the interest in diversity shown by organizational and other psychologists, by specialists in organizational behavior and human resources, and by other scholars, researchers, and practitioners. What is the role of diversity at work? How can organizations and their leaders best manage and leverage the range of differences in the workforce in ways that lead to positive outcomes for the organizations, their members, and other stakeholders? What conditions can maximize the benefits of diversity? These and similar questions permeate both practitioner and academic discussions on diversity.

Research and practice suggest that diversity—the representation of multiple identity groups and their cultures in a particular organization or workgroup—by itself may not necessarily result in positive benefits without the presence of additional conditions. Inclusion has emerged as a core concept in relation to diversity; in particular, it is now considered by diversity practitioners as a key approach to benefit from diversity (see Ferdman & Deane, Preface) and is in many ways at the forefront of contemporary diversity practice. Yet how inclusion relates to diversity, what inclusion is, and how it operates are not always clear or precisely specified. In this chapter, after briefly discussing its relationship to diversity, I develop the concept of inclusion and its various facets, as well as its manifestation in individual and collective behavior and in organizational practices.

Inclusion involves how well organizations and their members fully connect with, engage, and utilize people across all types of differences. In this chapter, I argue that the core of inclusion is how people experience it—the psychological experience of inclusion, operating at the individual level (and often collectively as well). This experience of inclusion is facilitated and made possible by the behavior of those in contact with the individual (such as coworkers and supervisors), by the individual's own attitudes and behavior, and by the values, norms, practices, and processes that operate in the individual's organizational and societal context. Thus inclusion can involve each and all of the following: an individual or group experience; a set of behaviors; an approach to leadership; a set of collective norms and practices; or a personal, group, organizational, or social value.

The terms diversity and inclusion are now often used together and inextricably bound—as in “diversity and inclusion (D&I) practice” (for example, Hays-Thomas & Bendick, 2013), “Office of Diversity & Inclusion” (for example, http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/diversity-and-inclusion), or “chief diversity and inclusion officer”; indeed, one can often see D&I used as a singular noun. In many ways, diversity and inclusion are now often treated almost like two sides of the same coin. Yet in spite of (or perhaps because of) this usage, the distinctions and relationships between them are not always sufficiently specified. Related to this, there has been a great deal of work focusing on diversity, but much less on inclusion. Because there is a growing area of professional practice in organizations commonly referred to as diversity and inclusion (or D&I), more conceptual and practical clarity regarding what inclusion means and how it can be cultivated in diverse organizations and groups will be helpful not only in providing more coherence to this growing field, but also in establishing a foundation for more effective practice and a basis for empirically testing its assumptions.

Inclusion as the Key to Diversity's Benefits

What is the connection of diversity and inclusion? Why are they tied so closely together? To varying degrees, diversity is a fact of life in work groups and organizations. Inclusion is grounded in what we do with that diversity when we value and appreciate people because of and not in spite of their differences, as well as their similarities. More important, it involves creating work contexts in which people are valued and appreciated as themselves and as integrated and complex—with their full range of differences and similarities from and with each other. Essentially, inclusion is a way of working with diversity: it is the process and practice through which groups and organizations can reap the benefits of their diversity.

Diversity at Work

What makes diversity so important? On the one hand, much of the focus in the field of diversity in organizations has been on reducing or eliminating undesirable, unfair, and illegal bias and discrimination and on increasing equity and social justice (Ferdman & Sagiv, 2012). On the other hand, many theorists, researchers, and practitioners (for example, Davidson, 2011; Ely & Thomas, 2001; Ferdman & Brody, 1996; Mor Barak, 2011; Page, 2007) have emphasized the benefits that individuals, groups, organizations, and societies can derive from diversity. This understanding forms the foundation for many organizational diversity initiatives.

In the United States and elsewhere, much of the focus on and work on diversity in organizations began in the context of efforts to expand social justice and civil rights across lines of race, gender, age, disability, and other dimensions of identity that had often formed (and in many cases continue to form) the basis for systematic exclusion and discrimination. As societies and organizations expanded the degree to which members of previously excluded groups were represented in different institutions, in different types of jobs, and at various hierarchical levels, issues of authenticity and effectiveness became more important. In many cases, members of previously excluded groups were not willing (or able or allowed) to assimilate to dominant norms and styles as a price of admission or promotion; in other cases, the quantity of newer members made intergroup differences more notable; and in still other cases, people who were already members but had needed to blend in and perhaps submerge aspects of themselves to be accepted began to be more willing to “come out” regarding previously hidden differences. These processes have meant that, as diversity has become more discussed, recognized, and valued, we seem to find and see more and more of it, along a greater number of dimensions.

Simultaneously, it became clearer that these differences, when viewed and managed as potential assets, could bring substantial benefits to organizations. Because diversity is not simply about supposedly superficial demographic facts or labels, but rather about identities, cultures, and the varied meaning and ways of thinking about and approaching situations that these represent (Ferdman, 1992; D. A. Thomas & Ely, 1996), theorists and practitioners developed descriptions of organizations that treated differences more positively. Cox (1991), for example, distinguished among monocultural, plural, and multicultural organizations, and R. R. Thomas (1990) discussed the importance of creating work environments “where no one is advantaged or disadvantaged … [and] where ‘we’ is everyone” (p. 109). Miller and Katz (1995), based on earlier work by Bailey Jackson and others, described a path from exclusive to inclusive organizations. Holvino (1998; see also Holvino, Ferdman, & Merrill-Sands, 2004) described the differences and transitions between monocultural exclusionary organizations, transitional compliance-focused organizations, and finally truly multicultural organizations, which “seek and value all differences and develop the systems and work practices that support members of every group to succeed and fully contribute” (Holvino et al., 2004, p. 248). Similarly, D. A. Thomas and Ely (1996) described what they called the “learning and effectiveness paradigm” or later the “integration and learning perspective” (Ely & Thomas, 2001) for addressing diversity in organizations; this approach involves viewing and treating cultural and other identity-based differences as resources from which the whole organization can benefit and learn, rather than as something to be ignored for the purpose of avoiding discrimination or highlighted solely for the purpose of accessing niche markets.

In spite of the many arguments for the benefits of diversity at work (for example, Cox & Blake, 1991; Stahl, Mäkelä, Zander, & Maznevski, 2010), scholars have also pointed out that diversity can be associated with negative outcomes. Mannix and Neale (2005), for example, reviewed research on diversity in teams. They summarized the premise of their work as follows: “[T]here has been a tension between the promise and the reality of diversity in team process and performance. The optimistic view holds that diversity will lead to an increase in the variety of perspectives and approaches brought ...