Are Diversity Programs Merely
						Ceremonial? Evidence-Free Institutionalization

Dobbin, Frank; Kalev, Alexandra

doi:10.4135/9781446280669.n32

Cited by 35 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 103 publications

(108 reference statements)

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“…Going forward, efforts to understand differences in career advancement should examine both speed of advancement and promotion rates (e.g., Gorman & Kmec, ; Jones & Makepeace, ; Smith, Smith, & Verner, ; Yap & Konrad, ; Zeng, ). Our results also contribute to the literature that studied the effectiveness and limits of institutional pressures in reducing gender inequality in the workplace (Dezső et al, ; Dobbin & Kalev, ; Gregorič, Oxelheim, Randøy, & Thomsen, ).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 74%

“…More generally, our finding complements the papers that looked at the effectiveness of institutional pressures to reduce gender inequality in the top executive ranks. These papers showed that diversity innovations had limited effectiveness either because corporations unknowingly used ineffective practices (Dobbin & Kalev, ) or intentionally adopted “symbolic” innovations with very limited effects (Dezső et al, ; Farrell & Hersch, ; Tinsley et al, ). In accordance with these studies, we also show that actions to demonstrate gender diversity in the top executive ranks are often symbolic because they stop after a woman gains access to these top positions; they are only effective for those promoted internally, and they are often granted to women who are of higher ability than their male counterparts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gender differences in speed of advancement: An empirical examination of top executives in the Fortune 100 firms

Bonet

Cappelli

Hamori

2020

Strategic Management Journal

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Research summary We examine the advancement of women in executive roles in the ranks of the 10 highest executive positions in the Fortune 100 companies in 2001 and 2011. We find that women executives secured top executive positions faster than men, controlling for relevant individual attributes, and that the advantage of women with respect to men grew with the number of years they spent in the organization. The female advantage disappeared once companies had more than one high‐ranking female executive. We make use of several tests to assess possible unobserved differences between men and women executives, including the case–control technique from epidemiology. Our results are consistent with institutional pressures accelerating women's advancement to top executive positions, but they also reveal the limited effectiveness of such pressures. Managerial summary Employers interested in increasing the diversity of their executive ranks should pay attention not only to who is in those jobs but also how long it took them to get there. In our study, women in top jobs got there faster not just because they were better but because they moved through previous positions faster and skipped steps in job ladders. This suggests how diversity at the top can be enhanced without having to wait for more diverse cohorts in lower‐level jobs to slowly advance. The fact that faster advancement slowed once there were a few women in top jobs suggests that support for advancement was indeed a company choice, unfortunately one driven by public appearances.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender differences in speed of advancement: An empirical examination of top executives in the Fortune 100 firms

Bonet

Cappelli

Hamori

2020

Strategic Management Journal

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“…While this may be genuine in some cases, cultural awareness training often exists symbolically as a corporate ‘tick-box’, or perhaps even as a protection against litigation [33, 44, 45]. One view is that organisations adopt diversity training mechanisms for ‘ceremonial’ purposes’, with full knowledge of the weak evidence base [46]. This is to give the appearance of organizational legitimacy and alignment with contemporary social movements.…”

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is to give the appearance of organizational legitimacy and alignment with contemporary social movements. Others proffer that diversity initiatives are facilitated by genuine advocates, who ignore or discount the evidence in their zeal for change [46]. For many workshop instructors, there is a strong financial incentive to persist with workshops that have little long-term utility, given the widespread demand for perfunctory training.…”

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural awareness workshops: limitations and practical consequences

Shepherd

2019

BMC Med Educ

123

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Cultural awareness training for health professionals is now commonplace across a variety of sectors. Its popularity has spawned several alternatives (i.e., cultural competence, cultural safety, cultural humility, cultural intelligence) and overlapping derivatives (diversity training, anti-racism training, micro-aggression training). The ever-increasing reach of cultural awareness initiatives in health settings has generally been well intentioned - to improve cross-cultural clinical encounters and patient outcomes with the broader expectation of reducing health disparities. Yet the capacity of cultural awareness training to accomplish or even impact such outcomes is seldom comprehensively scrutinized. In response, this paper applies a much needed critical lens to cultural awareness training and its derivatives by examining their underpinning philosophies, assumptions and most importantly, verification of their effectiveness. The paper finds cultural awareness approaches to be over-generalizing, simplistic and impractical. They may even induce unintended negative consequences. Decades of research point to their failure to realize meaningful outcomes in health care settings and beyond. Broader expectations of their capacity to reduce health disparities are almost certainly unachievable. Alternative suggestions for improving cross-cultural health care interactions and research are discussed within.

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“…Although organizations are told that they cannot discriminate, they are not actually given evidence‐based strategies to prevent discrimination and create equal opportunities. They are left to their own devices to solve the problem of employment discrimination (Dobbin & Kalev, ). In medicine, practitioners realized long ago that evidence‐based practices are critical to sound intervention.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mixed Signals: The Unintended Effects of Diversity Initiatives

Dover

Kaiser

Major

2019

Social Issues Policy Review

143

142

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Organizational diversity initiatives-programs and policies intended to increase the fairness of organizations and promote the inclusion, hiring, retention, and promotion of underrepresented groups-are ubiquitous. Despite the widespread implementation of diversity initiatives, several empirical investigations point to challenges associated with these initiatives. We suggest that one of the challenges hindering the effectiveness of diversity management involves the unintended signals that these initiatives send. Specifically, we review social psychological evidence that the mere presence of diversity initiatives can have unintended consequences through the communication of (1) fairness signals, (2) inclusion signals, and (3) competence signals. The presence of organizational diversity initiatives may lead to a presumption of fairness for underrepresented groups, making discrimination harder to identify and litigate. Conversely, these initiatives may lead to a presumption of unfairness for members of overrepresented groups, increasing the likelihood that traditionally advantaged groups will perceive themselves as victims of discrimination. The presence of diversity initiatives may increase the attractiveness of organizations to underrepresented groups who anticipate inclusion, but increase felt exclusion and threat among overrepresented groups. Finally, the presence of diversity initiatives may signal that underrepresented groups need help to succeed and are thus less competent than their advantaged counterparts. Researchers and practitioners should note the potential unintended

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Are Diversity Programs Merely Ceremonial? Evidence-Free Institutionalization

Cited by 35 publications

References 103 publications

Gender differences in speed of advancement: An empirical examination of top executives in the Fortune 100 firms

Gender differences in speed of advancement: An empirical examination of top executives in the Fortune 100 firms

Cultural awareness workshops: limitations and practical consequences

Mixed Signals: The Unintended Effects of Diversity Initiatives

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