What Diversity Protects: Organizational Conditions and the Content of Anti-Discrimination Policy in Korean Firms

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 30: Diversity and Discrimination Policies

Abstract

This paper asks not whether firms adopt diversity policy, but what those policies contain. Using panel data from 1,760 Korean establishments, we disaggregate diversity formalization across ten anti-discrimination categories to map the topography of inclusion in Korean firms. Female executive presence alone suppresses formalization — a token trap in which appointments substitute for policy. Profit-sharing systems and organizational innovation reverse this: where performance-based fairness or cognitive diversity is institutionalized as organizational logic, women executives become genuine change agents. The findings reveal stratified inclusion: the organizational boundary of acceptable diversity tracks the boundary of legal mandate, and rarely exceeds it.

Authors

• Soohan Kim, Korea University

• Jiyeon Lee

• Juwon Park, Korea University