Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) in Management Academies: State of The Art and Future Challenges

Abstract

Recent organizational literature and business practice have underscored the relevance of promoting the integration of diversity within groups and organizations, as well as of adopting an “inclusionary approach” to embrace both observable and unobservable dimensions of heterogeneity. It has been suggested that this approach is critical to unleash the potential benefits of a varied organizational environment, such as greater creativity, flexible problem solving, originality, but also participation, talent promotion and, ultimately, ethics and humanity (see Cox and Blake, 1991; Milliken and Martins, 1996; Pless and Maak, 2004). Similar to many other professional communities, the academic world has engaged in a debate on the importance of promoting diversity and inclusion. In this scenario, scientific academies have been placed under the spotlight given the critical role that they may play in shaping a fields' identity, communicating such identity to the external environment, as well as in monitoring their members’ conduct to ensure they conform with agreed principles and practices (Greenwood, Suddaby and Hinnings, 2002). In fact, the posture that such institutions choose to adopt toward diversity-related issues is likely to affect the diffusion of values of diversity and inclusion in the wider academic community. The present study aims to contribute to this debate, by reviewing and assessing the state of the art in the diffusion of the values of diversity and inclusion in scientific academies in the field of management. We adopt the lens of institutional theory, according to which the goals of professional bodies may be achieved through both: (1) the development of formal structures that help to gain a symbolic positioning (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Parsons and Bales, 1956), and (2) the exertion of proactive actions (Di Maggio, 1988). Focusing on the academies that are affiliated or associated to the Academy of Management, our research investigates both formal and substantial expressions of scientific academies’ strategic posture toward the core values of diversity and inclusion (D&I) by focusing on their mission statements and their policies and practices..