Performance through Diversity and Inclusion

Performance through Diversity and Inclusion

by Ruth Sessler Bernstein, Paul F. Salipante, Judith Y. Weisinger
Released September 2021
Publisher(s): Routledge
ISBN: 9781000427080

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Book description

This book provides practical guidance for managers, leaders, diversity officers, educators, and students to achieve the benefits of diversity by focusing on creating meaningful, inclusive interactions. Implementing inclusive interaction practices, along with accountability practices, enhances performance outcomes for the organization and improves equity for members of historically underrepresented and marginalized groups.

The book highlights the need to challenge existing approaches that have overemphasized representational—that is, numerical—diversity. For many decades, the focus has been on this important first step of increasing the numbers of underrepresented groups. However, moving beyond representation toward a truly inclusive organizational culture that produces real performance and equity has been elusive. This book moves the focus from achieving numerical diversity to achieving frequent, high-quality, equitable, and productive interactions that enable individuals to leverage their distinctive talents and provides the steps to do so. The benefits of this approach occur at the individual, workgroup, and organizational levels. Real-life examples of good inclusive practices are provided from across the for-profit, nonprofit, and governmental sectors and in various organizational contexts.

The book is ideal not only for those charged with diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in organizations but also for organizational leaders and managers who can create and/or support the implementing of inclusive organizational practices and also for postgraduate and undergraduate students studying human resource management, organizational behavior, management, or diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Table of Contents
  7. List of Figures
  8. Acknowledgments
  9. Preface
  10. A reader’s guide to the chapters
  11. Part I Overview Leveraging the framework for inclusive interactions to improve performance and equity
    1. Introduction: The elusive goal: Diversity and inclusion for equity and performance
      1. The unrealized opportunity: Diversity with inclusion
      2. The stakes for organizations and societies
      3. The realities: Representation and legal compliance are not enough
      4. Sustainable inclusion
      5. Evidence-informed management for sustainable inclusion
      6. The evidence: Confounding effects of contemporary diversity efforts
        1. Effective approaches
        2. Ineffective approaches
        3. Being informed by evidence on diversity interactions
        4. Is lack of progress due to complacency?
      7. A practice-based approach: Why is it necessary?
      8. A practice-based, evidence-informed framework for leveraging diversity
      9. Addendum: Key terminology and language
      10. Notes
    2. 1 Doing better: Achieving equity and performance from diversity
      1. The ongoing evolution of diversity efforts
        1. Beyond training: Contemporary paradigms for managing diversity
        2. Combining business and social justice imperatives
        3. An emergent, refined understanding of inclusion
        4. Integrating knowledge to guide inclusive practices in organizations
      2. What have we learned?
      3. A more promising way forward
        1. A practical case about changing practices
      4. Notes
    3. 2 The framework: Improving performance and equity through inclusive interaction practices
      1. Structured practices for inclusive interactions
        1. Practice one: Pursuing a shared task orientation or mission
        2. Practice two: Mixing members frequently and repeatedly
        3. Practice three: Collaborating with member interdependence
        4. Practice four: Handling conflict constructively
        5. Practice five: Engaging in interpersonal comfort and self-efficacy
        6. Practice six: Ensuring equal insider status for all members
      2. Overcoming anti-inclusive practices that inhibit inclusive interactions
        1. Self-segregation
        2. Interaction discomfort
        3. Stereotyping and stigmatizing
        4. Making decisions based on implicit bias
      3. Note
    4. Part I Summary Leveraging the framework for inclusive interactions for performance and equity
  12. Part II Overview Moving from diversity to inclusion: Evidence-based guidance for making diversity and inclusion work
    1. 3 Designing structured inclusive interaction practices
      1. Practice 1: Pursuing a shared task orientation or mission
      2. Examples of pursuing a shared task orientation or mission
      3. Practice 2: Mixing members frequently and repeatedly
      4. Examples of mixing members frequently and repeatedly
        1. Space design
        2. Enculturation, not assimilation
      5. Practice 3: Collaborating with member interdependence
        1. Interdependent collaboration in cross-functional teams: Two examples
        2. Gender roles inhibiting collaboration
        3. Decision-making with respect to collaboration
      6. Practice 4: Handling conflict constructively
        1. Examples of handling conflict constructively
      7. Practice 5: Engaging in interpersonal comfort and self-efficacy
        1. Understanding interpersonal comfort and self-efficacy
        2. Examples of engaging in interpersonal comfort and self-efficacy
      8. Practice 6: Ensuring equal insider status for all members
        1. Examples of ensuring equal insider status for all members
      9. The interaction practices work together
      10. Notes
    2. 4 Exclusionary forces: Widespread social practices that inhibit inclusion
      1. Self-segregating as an exclusionary dynamic
      2. Interacting with discomfort: Anxiety and communication apprehension
      3. Stereotyping and stigmatizing
        1. Why is stereotyping common?
        2. Being socially produced, negative stereotypes and stigmatizing can be mitigated
        3. Organizational conditions that trigger stigmatizing
        4. Stigmatizing content
        5. Stigmatizing’s impacts on members of underrepresented groups
        6. Does information on an individual’s capabilities overcome stereotyping?
        7. Behavior based on implicit bias
        8. The nature and prevalence of implicit bias
        9. Seemingly small biases have large employment impacts
        10. Persistence of inequities
        11. Implicit bias and interactions
        12. When is implicit bias (not) triggered into actions and decisions?
      4. Conclusion: Refining our beliefs about achieving diversity and inclusion
      5. WORKSHEET and MEMO TO SELF
        1. SOCIAL FORCES OF EXCLUSION: PRESENT VS. COUNTERACTED
      6. Notes
    3. 5 The performance issue: How overcoming exclusion matters for workgroup effectiveness
      1. The question of inevitability
        1. Exclusion vs. inclusion in the performance of diverse workgroups
        2. Interaction processes in top management teams
        3. Managerial control over exclusionary forces through sets of practices
        4. Managing the right tensions: Avoiding too little conflict, avoiding the wrong conflict
        5. From moderators to managerially structured practices prolonged over time
        6. Managerial control with constructive tensions
      2. The question of efficacy
      3. The question of intent
        1. Cross-job collaboration
        2. A practical example: Inclusion from agile teams for software development
        3. The managerial prospects for informed, creative actions
        4. Strategic options for diversity
      4. Notes
    4. 6 Structured interaction practices for adaptive behavioral learning
      1. Cognitive adaptation by individuals
        1. Initiatives to facilitate psychological and behavioral adaptation
        2. From interaction discomfort to comfort: Cognitive and behavioral adaptation by individuals holding stereotypes
      2. Intergroup contact theory
        1. Are contact theory’s conditions necessary for prejudice reduction?
        2. Behavioral and attitudinal adaptation from prolonged, even vicarious contact
      3. Practice theory
        1. The reproduction over time of discrimination or inclusion
        2. To sustain diversity in organizations, the primacy of behavior over attitudes
        3. Organizational conditions stimulate performance-enhancing inclusive practices
      4. Individual enculturation into organizations
        1. Enculturation processes
        2. Avoiding narrow conformity while gaining individual and collective adaptation
        3. Personal-identity socialization
      5. Behavioral engagement
      6. Managerial application of knowledge on adaptive learning
      7. Notes
    5. 7 Merit, accountability, and transparency practices to address equity and performance
      1. Why do organizations need both inclusive interaction practices and merit and accountability practices?
      2. Accountability, transparency, and merit in the allocation of rewards
        1. Achieving accountability for reward decisions
        2. Belief that practices are meritocratic enables biased decisions
      3. Accountability for inclusive behavior
      4. Strategies for accountability and inclusion
      5. Notes
    6. 8 Sustainable inclusion: Multiple outcomes for individuals, workgroups, and organizations
      1. Processes that sustain disparities
        1. Common rationalizations vs. embedded practices in a vicious cycle
        2. Reproduction of inequities and unsustainable diversity
      2. Outcomes from three strategic options for diversity
      3. Achieving equity, or not
        1. Equity from recruiting and cross-job contact
      4. Achieving performance, or not
      5. Achieving skills, or not
      6. Achieving an inclusive culture and its benefits, or not
      7. Achieving commitment, retention, and sustained inclusion: The role of leaders
      8. Inclusion and the role of leaders
      9. Notes
    7. Part II summary Guidance for making diversity and inclusion work
  13. Part III overview Achieving sustainable inclusion: Multilevel outcomes
    1. 9 Case examples: Practices for inclusive actions and accountability
      1. Set 1: Achieving inclusion
        1. Al-Anon: Socializing into practices for high inclusion
        2. Nonprofit boards of directors: Progressing from diversity to inclusion
        3. Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA): Diversity and occasional inclusion
        4. Leadership fellowship: Reproducing high inclusion
        5. Coed service fraternity: Reducing prejudice through inclusive practices
        6. Lessons from Set 1
      2. Set 2: Creating inclusion in workgroups
        1. International joint ventures: Coping with differences
        2. Banking: Inclusion sustained by managers’ everyday practices
        3. Health Care: Structuring an organizational unit for inclusion
        4. Lessons from Set 2
      3. Set 3: Organization-wide inclusion
        1. Military base: Embedding inclusive behavior
        2. Civil engineering firm: Equal status from performance interdependence
        3. High-tech: Holding each other accountable for inclusive engagement
        4. Lessons from Set 3
      4. Achieving inclusion is practical
      5. Notes
    2. 10 Performance through diversity and inclusion: Leveraging organizational practices for equity and results
      1. Moving our organizations beyond representational diversity to inclusive practices
        1. Gaining leader and member support for change
      2. A case of creating opportunities: Guiding groups toward the Framework’s Inclusive Practices
        1. Who has the opportunity to generate inclusion?
      3. Anticipating the challenges
      4. Intentionally structuring inclusive interaction practices
        1. Opportunities and options for individuals in various roles
      5. Especially favorable opportunities for various organizations
        1. Newly formed workgroups
        2. Fostering diversity friendships
        3. Sectoral variations in inclusive practices
      6. Opportunities to generate and diffuse practical knowledge for inclusion
      7. Concluding thoughts on the process of moving forward
        1. A distinctive approach: Structure practices for inclusive interactions
      8. Notes
    3. Part III summary Sustainable inclusion for optimizing performance and equity
  14. Index

Product information

  • Title: Performance through Diversity and Inclusion
  • Author(s): Ruth Sessler Bernstein, Paul F. Salipante, Judith Y. Weisinger
  • Release date: September 2021
  • Publisher(s): Routledge
  • ISBN: 9781000427080