How leaders can become more committed to diversity management.

Abstract

Initiatives for diversity and inclusion should promote the representation and involvement of all employees in the organization and should be primarily driven by management. However, a leader’s commitment to diversity management cannot be assumed because some leaders are more committed than others. We explore commitment to diversity management for three entities: corporate boards, overall organizational culture, and among individual managers. Individual and group dynamics are explored within each level. We also explore commitment to diversity management among consulting psychologists and diverse managers. Finally, we identify actions a consulting psychologist could take to assess and improve managerial commitment to diversity.

The state of progress in diversity and inclusion initiatives: Perspectives for consulting psychology.

“…Janice Gassam and Nicholas Salter (2020)—both external consultants and one of them an academic—argue in their article for the benefits of external consultants as providers of DEI workshops in organizations, and they provide useful insights on what external consultants might do to help ensure that participants are open to the learning in such workshops. Theodore Hayes, Kathleen Oltman, Leah Kaylor, and Aishwarya Belgudri (2020)—a team led by practitioners working in the U.S. federal government—focus their contribution on the question of how to drive commitment to D&I work, particularly in corporate boards and among individual managers and as a key element of an organization’s climate.…”

The moderating role of workplace ostracism between employee training, employee participation and organizational commitment among bank employees

“…Attitudinal commitment suggests a person's identification with the goals of the organization and his/her readiness to work toward achieving those goals. However, for behavioral commitment, employees are perceived to be more loyal to certain organizational practices than the whole organization (Hayes, Oltman, Kaylor, & Belgudri, 2020). Compliance, identification and internalization are the three types of commitment identified by O'Reilly and Chatman (1986).…”

A summary of state of progress in diversity and inclusion initiatives: Consulting Psychology special issue.

“…Differences in definition and usage not only seem to reflect differences across industries and the experiences of the authors but also suggest how definitions have evolved with respect to specificity and application. Hayes and colleagues (2020) emphasize that a primary responsibility for consulting psychologists working with leaders and organizations on these topics may be to clarify terminology so that clients and practitioners have comparable, aligned expectations. It will be critical for consultants to be as precise as possible and operationalize these concepts (or disagreements) in order to move the field forward.…”

“…The authors in this special issue help us appreciate those different views in the ways each describe their work across contexts and industries and the insights shared from individual to corporate to policy. We begin with two articles demonstrating a broader review of current trends in two settings (government and academia) through the concept of diversity management (Hayes et al, 2020) and through the implementation of change in the hiring process (Cavanaugh & Green, 2020). We then move into two more personal examples: one written by the recipient of services alongside her consultant coauthor, describing both personal and large-scale change in a global company (Beba & Church, 2020), and the other describing the potential benefits and downsides of promoting change as an external consultant with respect to diversity and inclusion initiatives (Gassam & Salter, 2020).…”