{"id":3843,"date":"2025-07-08T15:56:48","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T15:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aomtodayprod.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=3843"},"modified":"2025-07-08T15:56:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T15:56:48","slug":"matching-diversity-efforts-to-organizational-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/matching-diversity-efforts-to-organizational-goals\/","title":{"rendered":"Matching Diversity Efforts to Organizational Goals"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher<\/a><\/p>\n

Criticism of organizations\u2019 diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives often stems from skepticism about leaders\u2019 true motivation for acknowledging their social responsibilities and all stakeholders\u2019 needs, not just shareholders. Critics fear achievement of business goals, such as maximizing profits.<\/p>\n

Academy of Management Scholar Quinetta Roberson<\/a> of Michigan State University said organizations approach diversity management in many ways. While she believes that much of the criticism of DEI is misplaced, she agrees that it\u2019s fair to question the motivation of leaders for publicly speaking about DEI issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll hear a lot about DEI best practices, and there seems to be an assumption that organizations should have diversity training, employee resource groups, or other initiatives without consideration for what the organization is trying to achieve,\u201d Roberson said. \u201cOur goal was to come up with a framework that organizations could use to determine their approach\u2014not every organization has to be doing all of the things and trying to change the world; if they don\u2019t want to do that, that is fine.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut acknowledging that we have this level of investment that we want to make, this is how we want to communicate it to stakeholders,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so using those two dimensions, specificity of communications about diversity management and scope of investment in diversity management, they can decide with what level of effort and intensity, they want to engage in diversity management.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than make a value judgment on organizations\u2019 DEI initiatives and messaging, Roberson said to analyze their effectiveness in the context of leaders\u2019 goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you take like the figurative approach, which is more about this expressed commitment to DEI, it\u2019s not about demonstrating it; it’s not about really putting many resources behind it,\u201d Roberson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a firm who may just want to look good for shareholders and customers, that is a reasonable approach, but there\u2019s a caveat of there isn\u2019t going to be a culture shift or some kind of deep change in the organization, which would be a more comprehensive approach to DEI, because those are about putting the resources and effort into making a change and actually thinking about \u2018what\u2019s the impact?\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeaders should ask themselves, how are we moving the state of the organization to make it better through DEI?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher Criticism of organizations\u2019 diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives often stems from skepticism about leaders\u2019 true motivation for acknowledging their social responsibilities and all stakeholders\u2019 needs, not just shareholders. Critics fear achievement of business goals, such as maximizing profits. Academy of Management Scholar Quinetta Roberson of Michigan State University said organizations approach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,60,72,74],"tags":[],"sp_smart_badges":[],"ppma_author":[70],"class_list":["post-3843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corporate-social-responsibility","category-diversity","category-ethics","category-hr"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMatching Diversity Efforts to Organizational Goals - Academy of Management Today<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/matching-diversity-efforts-to-organizational-goals\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Daniel Butcher\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/matching-diversity-efforts-to-organizational-goals\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/matching-diversity-efforts-to-organizational-goals\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Daniel Butcher\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/d1297a59039d9ca7bac9d9f0952e508c\"},\"headline\":\"Matching Diversity Efforts to Organizational Goals\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-08T15:56:48+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/matching-diversity-efforts-to-organizational-goals\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":395,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/matching-diversity-efforts-to-organizational-goals\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/04\\\/job-candidate-shakes-hands.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY\",\"DIVERSITY\",\"ETHICS\",\"HR\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/matching-diversity-efforts-to-organizational-goals\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/matching-diversity-efforts-to-organizational-goals\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/matching-diversity-efforts-to-organizational-goals\\\/\",\"name\":\"Matching Diversity Efforts to Organizational Goals - 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Critics fear achievement of business goals, such as maximizing profits. Academy of Management Scholar Quinetta Roberson of Michigan State University said organizations approach…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3843"},{"taxonomy":"sp_smart_badges","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sp_smart_badges?post=3843"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=3843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}