Diversity within Diversity Management: Volume 22

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the research presented in this edited volume.

This report is based on 13 chapters, which vary in terms of research approach, design, and method, yet aims to present different types of diversity in organizations.

The chapters shed light on existing practices promulgating the value of diversity, while opening the road toward diverse definitions of diversity. Contributors provide a critical reflection of the current discourse on different types of diversity around the world. Findings indicate that multinational organizations are regularly confronted with the absence of the necessary sensitivity on behalf of their top management team and spokespeople. Empirical studies advocate strategies that could potentially facilitate both organizations and immigrants to overcome a plethora of challenges.

The report summarizes and integrates novel insights on how organizations approach, view, and manage different types of diversity.

Reputational crisis negatively affects brands and companies. This chapter, based on a single case study, aims to explore how prejudicial corporate statements directed toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals have affected the Italian multinational Barilla S.p.A., as well as how the company responded both internally and to the market in order to attempt to overcome the highly damaging consequences.

This chapter uses a single case-study methodology, which constitutes “a research strategy that focuses on understanding the dynamics present within single settings to create theoretical constructs, propositions and/or midrange theory from empirical evidence” (Eisenhardt, 1989, p. 534). The case-study design was chosen as it has been demonstrated to provide a methodological tool for both theory generation and theory testing (Gibbert et al., 2008).

Conclusions from the chapter indicate that negative, incendiary, and oftentimes comments citing either religious or stereotypical-based ideology negatively impact both the consumers and its associated publics in terms of product branding or reputation image.

The study’s limitations, which rely primarily on a single case study and secondary research data, may motivate further investigative avenues, particularly as similarly referenced events continue to unfold almost daily, such as the study’s referenced incident with Philippine boxer Manny Pacquiao, as well as action taken by social media giants (Apple and Facebook) against the controversial media figure Alex Jones.

This chapter also looks at family succession roadblocks and navigating social media gaffes. These contemporary issues highlight challenges, strategies, sales and market share dynamics for the company, and suggestions for navigating the road ahead. The research concludes with possible linkages and insights for both ongoing management issues and potential areas for future research. Other findings indicate that rapid responses, particularly those citing concrete corporate policy changes or tangible actions, help to reverse and mitigate reputational damage, and contemporary approaches utilizing social media appear to buttress these efforts.

This case study of Barilla as well as other firms mentioned, such as Chick-fil-A and Nike (which have experienced parallel situational crises), indicates that in only the last five years of contemporary international business practice, MNEs are continually and at times unexpectedly challenged by the lack of sensitivity demonstrated by their owners and spokespeople who utter comments which may be seen by the public as potentially harmful to the LGBT community. This study hopes to illuminate this challenge while offering tangible solutions to turning around future, similar situational crises.

This chapter aims to evaluate the relationship between the representation of women on corporate boards of directors and its impact on firm financial performance.

This study utilized both a systematic review and a meta-analysis, using a sample of 40 published studies, which gleaned financial indicator and observation data from 28 different countries.

As indicated in previous studies, while positive, there was no significant correlation found between the number of women serving on the boards of directors and firm financial performance.

The heterogeneity between the various studies analyzed may present difficulties in making general conclusions. The chapter could also be subject to publication bias, as the selection criteria included may indicate a need for further peer review. Future meta-analyses should include data associated with other financial indicators.

This study shows how composition ratios of men/women serving on corporate boards should be addressed in terms of proving for a greater diversity of leadership perspectives.

Previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses have analyzed country environments as moderators for the relationship between the representation of women on corporate boards and firm financial performance. The present study evaluates possible differences between the impact of the number of women serving on the board of directors on a variety of financial indicators (ROA, ROE, and Tobin’s Q).

We aim to explore whether demographic groups of varying status positions differ in terms of their perception of work group members’ openness to deep-level and surface-level diversity. We also explore the effect that task group conflict and relational group conflict have on perceptions of openness to diversity.

Quantitative analysis of responses from 489 academics in multicultural university departments is applied. A comparison is made of different demographic groups based on age, nationality, and seniority with regard to perceptions of work group members’ openness to diversity. Specifically, we focused on perceptions of the work group’s openness to value dissimilarity (deep-level) and openness to visible dissimilarity (surface-level).

We found that there are indeed differences between demographic groups with regard to perceptions of the work group’s openness to value dissimilarities. No significant differences could be found in relation to openness to visual dissimilarities for any of the demographic sub-samples. We also found that there were differential effects of contextual adverse circumstances in the form of relational group conflict and task group conflict on the perceptions of the two types of work group openness to diversity.

The knowledge that different demographical groups perceive their peers’ openness to diversity differently is an important insight when decisions regarding diversity issues have to be taken.

Few studies have focused on perceptions of diversity. This is an important omission because individuals often act upon their perceptions, rather than on objective reality.

This chapter applies a model of Social Cognition to explain some of the underlying factors that influence unfair discrimination against immigrants in organizations.

It (1) presents a model of the attributes of immigrants that influence the categorization, stereotyping, job expectancies, and employment decisions about immigrants, (2) reviews the existing literature on biases toward immigrants, (3) offers hypotheses to guide future research, and (4) suggests strategies for overcoming unfair discrimination toward these individuals in employment contexts.

Our review of the research suggested that a number of factors influence unfair discrimination toward immigrants, including their country of origin, race/ethnicity, perceived danger, gender, socioeconomic status, education, and skill. However, most of this research has been conducted in social contexts, so we argued that additional research is needed to examine the relations between these attributes and employment decisions in work-related settings.

Our model suggests several strategies that can be used to overcome unfair discrimination against immigrants in work contexts. We outline these strategies in the chapter.

There are hostile attitudes toward immigrants around the world, which makes it difficult for them to gain and maintain employment. Thus, this chapter offers several reasons for these negative attitudes and strategies for overcoming them.

Despite the widespread negative reactions to immigrants around the world, relatively little theory and research has focused on unfair discrimination toward immigrants in work settings. Therefore, our chapter makes a unique and important contribution to understanding unfair discrimination toward immigrants, and suggests strategies that may help them overcome these problems.

Board diversity has been an important topic in corporate governance. Extant literature examines the overall diversity in the boardroom and its impact. However, since important decisions are usually taken by the committees, it is important to also examine diversity in committees. We use the Coca-Cola Company as the case study and examine its diversity in both audit and finance committees. Our goal is to raise the awareness of researchers, board nominating committees, and diverse directors themselves, as to whether diverse directors are placed in the right positions to allow them to contribute their diverse views and experiences.

We conducted a case study of the Coca-Cola Company using its proxy statement in both 2016 and 2018.

While Coca-Cola’s self-reported board diversity stood at 27% in 2016, and increased to 31% by 2018, the critical audit and finance committees showed a distinct lack of diversity. Focusing on gender diversity for the purposes of this chapter, we investigated two possibilities: (1) that the lack of committee diversity is due to the lack of finance and leadership skills of those board members who were from underrepresented groups, but this possibility does not seem likely, (2) that the presence of a female CFO removed the urgency to place board members from underrepresented groups on the audit and finance committees.

We provide a cautionary perspective on the implementation of diversity policies at the highest levels of an organization. The pursuit of diversity, like other admirable corporate goals, can degenerate into a check-the-box mentality. When this happens, diversity can become viewed as a substitute for real competency rather than a complement to existing competencies.

It is suggested that boards revise the recruiting and selecting process to include more female candidates, and be sensitive how and where those diverse directors can best contribute their perspectives and experiences.

This chapter provides an exciting opportunity to advance our knowledge of equality and diversity of students in higher education (HE). My main reason for choosing this topic is personal interest.

Critical race theory (CRT) and the social identity theory were used as analytical tools in understanding equality and diversity of students in higher education.

Managing equality and diversity of students in higher education can be done through the tournament conception, trial conception, leveling conception, remedy conception, and job-interview conception. The primary intrinsic limit to equality of opportunity of students in higher education institutions (HEIs) is the persistence of irreducible differences between families in their economic, social, and cultural resources. Policy can partly compensate for economic differences but can scarcely eliminate the potency of the family in cultural capital and social networks. Students from advantaged social groups enjoy more access to elite universities through the influence of policies. Disadvantaged students from social groups are excluded from accessing top HEIs. Students in elite universities enjoy more advanced educational opportunities than those in nonelite universities, and they are more advantaged to be placed in the job market.

Student pedagogic (content knowledge) and formative (evaluation) opportunities in HEIs may not be achieved when equality and diversity is dissociated from its academic content and reduced to access for the sake of access. Universities are expected to develop a repertoire of lecturing methods to enable students to learn (Gudmundsdottir, 1990, p. 47). Students constrained by financial considerations, or not given a choice, are not in a position to achieve equality and diversity in their choices of the benefits offered by HEIs as the constrains may limit them from having the necessary resources. Differences between the students’ contexts of learning may also place limit to their performance ability because of the differentiated contextual background. Recruit of students to universities should include students from diverse contextual backgrounds. In addition, universities ought to integrate diversity management with their admission policies and other strategic choices. The chapter focuses only on equality and diversity for students in HEIs. Again, it is limited by relying on the researcher’s experiences and literature review only. In addition, interviews with students and staff at universities were not done because literature reviewed gave more information from researches based on findings of other scholars.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) should engage students and listen to their needs for equality and diversity to be realized. Debate continues about the best strategies for the management of discrimination that comes in many forms depending on the perceptions of the individuals affected.

This chapter reviews previous research on allyship: non-minority individuals who choose to support minorities while working to end discrimination and prejudice. In particular, the focus of this chapter is on how allyship applies to the workplace. We argue that allyship can be a diversity management tool to help reduce workplace discrimination.

To explore this topic, we conducted a literature review on allyship in the workplace and synthesized previous research together. We examined research from both organizational and non-organizational settings.

Our review of previous literature is divided into three sections. First, we discuss what all entails allyship, including knowledge, communication, and, in particular, action. Next, we discuss the many outcomes previous research suggests comes from allyship (including benefits to other individuals, benefits to the overall culture, and benefits to the ally him or herself). Finally, we conclude with a discussion of who is likely to become an ally as well as the journey a person goes through to become a true ally.

This chapter can be useful for practitioners who wish to promote allyship within his or her workplace. Organizations that want to strengthen their diversity and inclusion climate can consider developing ally training programs and promoting ally culture. Additionally, this chapter can be useful for researchers who wish to study the topic. Currently, there is a dearth of research on allyship specifically within the workplace; this chapter can help future researchers identify areas for empirical exploration.

Social inclusion is a critical success factor for achieving community integration. An ideal outcome of social inclusion is that people can fully participate in the economic, social, and political life of their villages. This research identifies key aspects of community collaboration in setting up a telecommunication network in rural Mexico.

Under the perspective of a social business modeling view the research carried out 39 semi-structured interviews with residents of the Mexican village of Nochixtlán who benefited from a not-for-profit rural telecom initiative. The interviews helped to identify the main drivers of community collaboration.

Two barriers to the telecom initiative were found: public policies and market competition. Policy barriers included ambiguous government goals, unreliable delivery timeframes, and weak governance. Market barriers included lack of private suppliers, insufficient incentives to attract commercial providers, and lack of funds to set up proprietary infrastructure.

The application of face-to-face interviews with a relatively small number of individuals may restrain the generalizability of empirical findings. Yet, the use of analytical techniques, such as focus groups, might increase reliability for future studies.

Rural telephony does not simply depend on technical expertise to connect disperse towns and villages because strong social capital is also needed. Therefore, stakeholders should engage in active participation through the planning and operation of the network.

The chapter discusses how social inclusion and social capital can help to overcome technical and market barriers that deter the deployment of rural telecom networks. Community involvement is devised as a tool for assisting policy-makers in pushing social initiatives.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze gaps in effectiveness of Mexico’s labor legislation, in terms of equality in employment. Early adoption of progressive legislation should enable equal access for women, elder and disabled people to workplaces.

This chapter is based on an extensive review and examination of secondary data reports from reliable sources, as well as an analysis of primary data drawn from job boards operating in Mexico.

This study reveals a large gap between the legal framework and practice on diversity management in Mexico. Notwithstanding the existing legislation in Mexico to promote equity and equality in employment, age and gender are factors of discrimination in almost 60% of job offers. This study also shows that the intersection of different forms of diversity, such as gender, age, and disability, augment discrimination at work. Our analysis suggests that older women with disabilities suffer disproportionally from discrimination compared to older men and people with disabilities in general.

We outline practical implications for public policy and courses of action for managers interested in diversity management. Greater consideration should be given to those who face an intersection of factors related to discrimination.

This study contributes to the literature by exploring diversity management issues at workplaces in Mexico, which is an under-researched country. Furthermore, it attempts to combine macro-institutional and meso-organizational levels focusing on three characteristics traditionally related to increased marginalization: women, elders, and persons with disabilities. The results indicate that strong legal frameworks, though necessary, are not sufficient to ensure equality. Other crucial factors such as national and organizational cultural change, trust in government and enforcement mechanisms are necessary to improve diversity management practices.

We examine gender diversity in Spanish multinational companies to test whether their policies in the different countries (i.e. institutional contexts) in which they operate (mainly Latin American countries) are consistent with institutional norms.

After reviewing the relevant literature, we compare longitudinal gender employment data for some of the largest Spanish multinationals. We then extend the analysis to different organizational levels as well as cross-sectionally, to their Latin American subsidiaries.

While not universal, the largest Spanish multinationals show progress in their compliance of gender recommendations within their national borders, in spite of the voluntary character of the relevant legislation. In addition, their subsidiaries sometimes exhibit better gender proportions than the national averages in Latin American countries.

The study’s emphasis on some of the largest Spanish multinational corporations cannot be considered representative of all Spanish companies or of subsidiaries in those host countries.

This study may be of use for politicians, boards of directors, and other decision makers that need to be factually aware of the way these firms manage workplace diversity.

This study shows that some of the largest Spanish firms are slowly exhibiting responsible behavior with respect to female employment, both longitudinally and in their subsidiaries. The fact that this is not a consistent tendency lends support to the argument that existing legislation should have stronger normative pressures, such as fines and penalties for noncompliance.

Inclusive leadership is exhibiting signs of an emerging field of theory and practice. The purpose of this research is to systematically map this emergence and its various facets.

Citation information from 91 records on inclusive leadership were extracted from Scopus and analyzed using a series of citation and co-word techniques.

We identified six clusters of keywords that underpin the current state of research on inclusive leadership. We also unraveled a trend that suggests research on inclusive leadership is moving from a simple approach to leadership on healthcare and education to become a universally desirable style of leadership in parallel with the global increase in the importance of diversity and inclusion.

This study is the first attempt to develop a complete map of the domain of inclusive leadership. It also provides management researchers and practitioners with a tool for evaluating inclusive leadership publications and provides a systematic and objective means of determining the relative importance of the field in the development of the inclusive leadership research.

Bibliometric literature review (Meta analytic review)

The purpose of this chapter is to combine research findings around gender bias and the challenges women face in academia, and to present a unified conceptual framework. Ample research indicates that the issue is far from sufficiently addressed. Even in cases where policies are in place, mediocre outcomes are observed. Fewer women climb the ladder of academic progression all the way up to senior positions, especially in certain institutions and certain disciplines.

After thoroughly reviewing the literature, the authors integrate and organize the different multifaceted causes that appear to obstruct women in academia. They propose a scheme that divides between contextual and non-contextual factors, emphasizing their interplay.

Even when policies are in place, they appear to have limited results, because they mainly address isolated factors rather than taking a multifaceted, integrative approach.

Future research should further examine the interplay of contextual and non-contextual factors by combining multiple variables that contribute to gender bias in academia.

Policy-making should consider both contextual and non-contextual factors, thus providing more integrative solutions and taking a broader perspective on the issue.

Despite the ample and rising amount of research findings, there is no coherent framework to adequately include all the factors that contribute to gender bias in academia. By integrating and organizing the different, multifaceted causes already pointed out by previous findings, the authors hope to contribute to future research with specific variables to test and correlate, as well as to the formulation of more sophisticated policies.

This chapter of exploratory nature aims to provide an account of the reviewed literature and presents some empirical cases to come to conceptualize dogs as social actors with different legitimate roles in the working, social, private, economic, and family life of human beings.

This chapter is the product of a research inspired by the great interest of the authors on rising awareness of the importance of dogs in human working lives. For this, a purposive literature review took place; we consulted scientific studies databases, and also gathered information from market research agencies, and other general media resources. To have a more comprehensive view, and to respond to a specific question on dogs at the workplace, a selection of cases is used to illustrate. For the case studies, secondary data research was used, and individual, structured interviews were conducted and analyzed.

This chapter reviews the relationship between humans and animals. It identifies attitudes and perception toward animals, highlighting the evolution of the intimate bond and the deep relationship between dogs and humans. It describes some cases of dogs as working beings at the service of human functions and dimensions of the pet care markets. Finally, it presents some cases of pet-friendly work environments.

The novel contribution of this chapter is putting dogs in the management of diversity academic literature. In this study, we find that the role, meaning, and purpose of dogs in people’s lives (and in many cases in organizations) are being underestimated. Including and making visible the presence of dogs in the personal, work, and well-being of people represents challenges to be addressed by managers. Additionally, it represents challenges to think about and investigate the welfare of dogs that interact with human beings in productive environments.