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What We (Don’t) Talk about When We Talk about Diversity


rss.shrm.org | Mikki R. Hebl, Naomi M. Fa-Kaji, Eden B. King

This is the second in a series of five articles funded by the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology Foundation (SIOP Foundation) to study anti-racism efforts in workplaces.

A recent research study we conducted examined the subtle messages conveyed by organizations’ discourse around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In our proposal, we investigated this question through three studies summarized herein: (1) an archival analysis of Fortune 500 companies’ diversity statements; (2) a qualitative interview study with Black professionals to understand the messages they perceive in organizations’ DEI discourse and the consequences of these messages for their psychological and work-related outcomes; and (3) an experiment examining the effect of a subset of the subtle messages identified in the other two studies on White employees’ support for DEI goals and initiatives. External circumstances required changes to the research plans; these are detailed below.


Study 1: Archival Analysis of Company Diversity Statements.
This study entailed searching for and compiling as many Diversity Statements as possible for each of the companies on the Fortune 500 list. Given the exploratory nature of this study, we developed an extensive coding scheme and had research assistants code each statement for a broad array of different features. We went through three rounds of coding, so each statement was coded by three research assistants. We were initially interested…


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