Quotas and Qualifications: The Limitations of A Corporate View of DEI

• In Event: 50220 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 9: Racialized Organizations

Abstract

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has become a popular initiative that can be found across various social spaces, spanning from corporate settings to government and education settings. DEI’s popularity has fluctuated in response to various social events. For example, we saw an increased demand and focus on DEI following the summer uprisings around George Floyd’s death and now we are seeing the rapid elimination and demonization of DEI by the Trump administration. This may leave many wondering where the future of DEI stands and the strength of its original conceptions that allowed it to so easily be torn down. As we see these important policies rapidly being torn down, it is important to interrogate how DEI has been conceptualized and practiced in social spaces. This study contributes to our existing understanding of DEI by analyzing how small socially responsible entities (L3C’s and B-corps) view, discuss and practice DEI. My preliminary findings come from 25 semistructured interviews with business leaders. My interview script was focused on the values that underlie these individuals businesses and the way they carry those out in their practices such as hiring, business partnerships and financing. Two prominent themes appeared from our initial findings 1) whiteness as a credential was influential in many of the ways socially responsible business leaders approached and understood their hiring practices. 2) Many businesses were eager to implement DEI as a standard in their organizations, but it was more interpreted as a quota rather than as a value that was meant to be transformative or challenge the status quo. Overall these findings demonstrate the permanency and limiting nature of viewing and acting on DEI from a corporate perspective and highlights the urgency of a necessary transformation in our intentions and goals for DEI.

Author

• Monserat Rodriguez-Rico, University of Illinois-Chicago