Take a close look at the representation of people sitting at the leadership table of your organisation and see what our ARC project has to say about why diversity and inclusion (D&I) policies have failed to bring about the promised change.
In a Lowdown article published in the May 20 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, McEwen, Pullen and Rhodes discuss how “the lack of progress towards equality might not just be the persistence of inequality or dependent on the good intentions of an organisation’s leaders”. They argue that in their current forms, the managerial practices of D&I can prevent structural change by muting the sound of dissent because they are geared to preserve a repressive status quo.
They conclude that:
“Moving beyond corporate inertia so that equality and diversity practice sheds its managerial project approach and embraces its political meaning is required. This means leading not as a distant and abstract management process, but in a transformational way with and for others.
Business schools can lead the way in this shift by helping managers and leaders understand that without this change, their good intentions and organisational equality regimes will remain as they are now: repressive rather than emancipatory.”
Read the full article “Management has hijacked the struggle for inclusion and diversity”.
You can also listen to Alison Pullen discuss these findings on 2SER’s Wide Open Air Exchange program from 6 June 2022.
Leadership Diversity through Relational Intersectionality in Australia 