Making Diversity Work: Building Inclusive Organizations

Course goals

Course objectives:
Upon successfully completing this course, you are able to:

1. Recognize, reproduce and characterize the main concepts, theoretical approaches and empirical findings in the field of diversity and inclusion in organisations.
2. Apply evidence-based insights to analyze concrete D&I policy and formulate possible improvements.
3. Critically reflect on processes related to diversity and inclusion within the work teams in the course.

Link between assessment tools and course objectives:
Objective 1 will be assessed in a multiple choice exam. The questions vary in level of difficulty and asses the degree to which students are able to recognize, reproduce the material (lectures and literature). Objective 2 is assessed in the work groups. In these work groups, individual and group assignments assess whether students are able to apply the material to concrete practical cases by analyzing the cases and formulating possible improvements. In addition, students’ ability to reflect on team processes related to diversity and inclusion (objective 3) is tested through self-assessment.
 

Content

Today’s workplace is increasingly characterized by a diverse workforce. Diversity in demographics (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity) as well as in expertise, work styles, and skills can be highly beneficial for organisations. For example, diversity benefits creativity and innovation, which are essential to high performance in many work settings. However, many organisations fail to reap the benefits of diversity when they only focus on the numbers (hiring employees from diverse backgrounds) without working to build inclusive cultures. In this course, students will learn about the benefits as well as the challenges of building diverse and inclusive (D&I) organisations. The course is grounded in social and organisational psychology. In addition, students are introduced to a multidisciplinary approach on D&I (e.g., drawing on economics, law, gender studies, media studies, and sociology to name a few) to gain a multilevel understanding of how to promote D&I at the institutional level (e.g., which laws, organisational structures, AI systems promote or limit D&I?), the experiential level (e.g., why do people resist D&I policies? What is it like to not feel included at work?) and the symbolic level (e.g., how is power and status in organisations symbolised? How diverse is an organization’s board and why does that matter?). In work groups, students will analyze existing D&I initiatives and develop a theoretically sound and evidence-based approach to change these. Moreover, students will practice with effective ways to manage and stimulate D&I in their own work teams.