Despite the U.S. population’s growing diversity, managerial roles are still predominantly held by white men. While the largest firms have been pledging to recruit and train Black workers for over 40 years, there has been little increase in Black representation in managerial roles during this timeframe. In a 2021 analysis, Black employees held only 7% of managerial roles despite comprising 14% of all employees. Women have difficulty attaining leadership roles despite evidence that “women are more likely than men to lead in a style that is effective.”’
This mismatch between corporate commitment to diversity and tangible outcomes raises critical questions about the efficacy of management practices for achieving diverse representation. Our research, published in Business Horizons, examines the degree to which specific management practices are associated with increased (or decreased) diverse managerial representation and how often organizations implement each practice.
How Do Management Practices Impact Organizational Diversity?
Our research draws on data from Dobbin and Kalev across 806 organizations collected between 1971 and 2015, examining the effect of management practices on diverse representation in managerial roles. We extend beyond their work by examining how frequently each management practice is utilized in organizations. Contrasting interventions’ effectiveness and prevalence of use in organizations provides crucial insights into why organizations are not making greater progress toward diverse representation.
Effective Practices for Enhancing Management Diversity
Hiring Chief Diversity Officers and maintaining diversity task forces are the most effective management practices. Both practices have the advantage of creating formal accountability for promoting diversity. Having jobs explicitly focused on DEI ensures that DEI remains a strategic priority and empowers employees to make meaningful changes. Despite their impact, paid diversity roles are only utilized by 10-20% of large employers and are decreasing in prevalence as organizational support for diversity programs has become politically polarized.
Formal mentoring, family-accommodating practices, targeted recruitment, empowering training, and setting diversity goals were each effective in advancing diverse representation but were also not widely implemented.
Mentoring fosters career success by providing coaching on work-related goals, facilitating developmental assignments, and having someone advocate on mentees’ behalf.
Family-friendly practices (childcare, flextime, and parental leave) can accommodate the disproportionate work-life challenges experienced by women and people of color. In heterosexual married couples, women spend substantially more time on caregiving than their husbands, even among couples with egalitarian earnings. Relative to white parents, Black parents are more likely to quit a job, turn down a job, or change jobs due to childcare challenges. Ensuring that employees are not stigmatized for utilizing family-friendly practices is imperative for these programs to increase diverse representation.
Targeted recruitment, empowering training (training that teaches managers and employees to foster DEI rather than scolding them to avoid harassment and discrimination), and setting diversity goals each involve employees as change agents, encouraging them to cultivate a diverse and inclusive workforce. By treating employees as well-meaning citizens rather than offenders, employees are more likely to monitor their behavior and direct efforts toward increasing workforce diversity.
Notably, organizations implement family-friendly practices with moderate frequency, while other effective practices, such as targeted recruitment, empowering training, and setting diversity goals, are implemented infrequently.
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