The Most Common DEI Practices Actually Undermine Diversity

Although companies say they are promoting diversity, there is a clear gap in diversity in management positions. The authors investigate the impact of different management approaches on diversity representation in management positions and the extent to which each management approach is utilized within organizations, and reveal why organizations have not made significant progress toward diversity representation. Diversity training is widely used in organizations, despite being less effective in achieving diversity representation. In contrast, formal mentoring programs and targeted recruitment are effective in increasing diversity representation but are underused. In fact, there is a negative and strong correlation between the frequency with which management approaches are implemented in organizations and their effectiveness in achieving diverse representation. The article analyzes the approaches that organizations should utilize to achieve diverse representation and highlights the need to move toward approaches that increase diverse representation in management positions.