Automated content analysis of cultural Diversity Perspectives in Annual Reports (DivPAR): Development, validation, and future research agenda.

Abstract

Objective: In this article, we present a digital tool (Diversity Perspectives in Annual Reports [DivPAR]) for automated content analysis of annual reports, designed to identify the presence of three cultural diversity perspectives—the Moral, Market, and Innovation perspectives—based on earlier work by Ely and Thomas (2001). Method: In Study 1, we describe the development and validation of the instrument, through an iterative procedure in which manual annotation of independent subsamples (n = 24, 25) by human coders was compared to the computer coding in subsequent rounds, until sufficient agreement was reached. In Study 2, we illustrate the type of data that the script generates, by analyzing the prevalence of the three perspectives in annual reports of 55 Dutch organizations over a period of 2 decades (1999–2018; n = 937). Results: Our findings confirm that DivPAR is sufficiently reliable for use in future research. In Study 2, we show that among Dutch organizations, the moral perspective is most prevalent, but the market and innovation perspectives are increasing in popularity. Conclusion: DivPAR can be used to analyze the prevalence and longitudinal development of diversity perspectives in organizational communication. It enables scholars to draw comparisons across different sectors, regions, or countries, to study how diversity perspectives correlate with societal developments, and to uncover the (lack of) relationships between diversity communication and diversity outcomes. Directions for future research are discussed at the end of the article.

Comparing cultural diversity perspectives among public service employees in the Netherlands in 2008 and 2018

“…This suggests that employee attitudes have aligned with the organization's more recent diversity management strategy, aimed at inclusion and promoting value-in-diversity. There also appears to be a noteworthy increase in the reported benefits of diversity for organizational reputation, which follows the positive trend of this type of perspective in organizational communication across different sectors in the Netherlands (Hofhuis et al, 2021;Jansen et al, 2021).…”

“…Put together, it appears that diversity perspectives of employees in the Netherlands public sector appears to follow country-wide trends regarding an overall increase in reported value-in-diversity beliefs in organizations (Heres and Benschop, 2010; Hofhuis et al. , 2021).…”

“…Finally, an important opportunity for future research lies in the fact that no data were collected on the underlying reasons why respondents perceived these benefits and threats of diversity differently across time points. For example, although value-in-diversity beliefs appear to be more commonly reported in 2018, more studies are needed to understand exactly how these relate to actual diversity initiatives (Podsiadlowski et al, 2013) or organizational communication regarding diversity (Heres and Benschop, 2010;Hofhuis et al, 2021). The same could be applied to perceived threats.…”

“…Heres and Benschop, 2010). A more recent study shows that in the way Dutch organizations communicate with their stakeholders, diversity management is often framed as a moral or ethical obligation, and the value-in-diversity perspective has been steadily gaining ground over the past two decades (Hofhuis et al, 2021). This may have been the result of an overall increase in cultural diversity in Dutch society across these years, which in turn has been correlated with more positive diversity attitudes in the general public (N emeth et al, 2020).…”

“…Ensuring close replication allowed for a direct comparison of diversity perspectives in the same organization across ten years [1]. The present study may be valuable to diversity scholars, since such comparisons across longer time scales are rare, and may provide new insights into the question whether diversity perspectives of public service employees have followed the positive trends that are reported in organizational communication (Hofhuis et al. , 2021) or whether they are more reflective of increasingly negative diversity attitudes expressed in the media and political discourse across this same period (Meer et al.…”