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By Jessica K.

Editor's Note: October '24

Editor’s Note – October ’17: The Case for Diversity in Business

Diversity within the workplace has become highly emotive, so that scientific explanations for why people make hiring decisions has been largely discarded. Usually diversity is treated as a PR issue, rather than something that can reveal and unlock insights about the human mind. Consider the media storm that recently engulfed Google after an employee wrote a provocative memo criticizing the company’s diversity policies. From that example, it is clear that the topic has become toxic for many brands.

Though looking at diversity through a more scientific prism might be a better way of tackling the problem. Indeed, the idea that hiring can be a wholly rational process determined by a rational set of factors needs to be challenged. Management consultancies like to devise a set of rules for formulating business strategies, but if this was the only way of doing something then logically everyone would copy that protocol. In the same way, a company may think that having a board that is only made up of white males in their 50s and 60s, all of whom are graduates of Harvard and Yale, is the best way of doing business.

Such a board may be capable of delivering an excellent, prudent business strategy, but we can look beyond the demographic make-up to understand why it was set up in that way in the first place. It is certainly worth questioning why such a homogenous board exits in our varied, diverse world – and the potential limitations of this decision-making process.

For example, do the similarities in these people’s backgrounds mean that they are more likely to share the same thought processes and strategic biases? And are these biases valid for the type of company these people are running, or are they detrimental? Certain companies may benefit from having a board weighted towards a particular type of person, but equally they might not. Taking a more scientific view strikes me as being a more worthwhile way of thinking about this issue, rather than resorting to blanket moralizing.

The flip-side to these older, predominantly white corporate boards are the younger, more ethnically diverse boards running today’s fast-growing online startups. These businesses are focused on breakthrough innovations and market disruption, as well as a relentless focus on the customer, so in many ways it makes sense to prioritize younger, more diverse hires who share that spirit of entrepreneurialism.

That doesn’t mean, though, that these businesses aren’t missing out on other important skills and viewpoints if they refuse to look at older people with a wealth of business experience during the hiring process. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers here – but there are easy questions, like why is it so difficult to talk about diversity without people feeling uncomfortable? Or why is the narrative about this business issue so immature and incapable of separating the moral case from the business case?

The old adage that ‘visible homogeneity brings groupthink’ is obviously an oversimplification. We’re all individuals after all (I know I am!). The point is that homogeneity will bring a certain something – a certain way of doing things that might ultimately not be in the best interests of a business. That is why questioning and examining diversity is important. It forces companies to think again about the world and their place within it!

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