Diversity And Inclusion - Research: Why Managers Deny Inequity in Their Own Organizations - Sun and Planets Spirituality AYINRIN

 Diversity And Inclusion - 

Research: Why Managers Deny Inequity in Their Own Organizations  - Sun and Planets Spirituality AYINRIN

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Summary.   

All too often, managers deny the existence of inequities at their organizations and, as a result, resist implementing diversity initiatives there. There are two standard explanations for this behavior: Managers resist because they’re part of privileged demographic groups whose power is threatened by the initiatives, or because they’re ideologically opposed to them. The authors of this article, however, have uncovered evidence of an even more powerful factor: Managers resist because they identify with their organizations and therefore are prone to “motivated reasoning,” a phenomenon that makes it hard for them to view their organization in a negative light. The authors explain this phenomenon and provide readers with some tactics for combatting it.close

The success of diversity initiatives — which are designed to address social inequities and ensure that all employees are treated equally — depends on the support of those in positions of structural power: which is to say, managers. But even those managers who generally support diversity initiatives often deny the existence of problems at their own organizations and therefore resist such initiatives. Consider the response of Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, when two of his executives, both women, told him that the company was paying men and women unequally. Benioff later recalled his response during a 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl:

Benioff: I said, “That’s not possible here.” You know, it’s — it’s not possible.

Stahl: Why was it impossible?

Benioff: It’s impossible because we have a great culture here. We’re — we’re a “best place to work.” And we don’t do that kind of thing. We don’t play shenanigans paying people — paying people unequally. It’s unheard of. It’s crazy.

Benioff isn’t an anomaly in exhibiting that kind of denial. In 2020, when Michelle King, the director of inclusion at Netflix, interviewed 72 senior executives about the pay gap between the sexes, the majority of them — men and women alike — told her that at their organizations everybody has “identical opportunities, workplace experiences, and career paths.”

Given how much time and money companies are now investing in diversity initiatives (estimated at up to $15 billion by 2026), it’s vital that they understand what’s behind this kind of denial, so that they can better overcome it and put their money to good use. Practitioners, academics, and the popular press have tended to identify two explanations. Some managers, they argue, behave this way because they’re part of a privileged demographic group (usually white men), and diversity initiatives threaten their hegemony. Other managers do so, they argue, because they’re members of politically conservative groups that are opposed to the initiatives on ideological grounds.

There’s surely something to both of those explanations. But we’ve recently conducted a series of studies that suggest a different and perhaps more powerful explanation. Managers are resisting diversity initiatives, we’ve found, because … they’re managers.

“Not Here” Bias

Why would that be a problem?

Because managers identify with their company, in ways that lead them to consider the company’s good traits to be reflections of themselves. As a result, maintaining positive views of the company becomes vital to their sense of themselves, at times warping their perspective. This phenomenon, often referred to as motivated reasoning, is common. If you’re a sports fan, you know it well: Calls made against your team tend to be “bad.” Calls in your favor tend to be “good.”

In the context of the workplace, motivated reasoning prevents managers from recognizing problems in their own organizations even though they can easily recognize them in others. This form of bias, which can be called a “not here” bias, is precisely what Marc Benioff exhibited in the example cited above — he couldn’t believe that inequity was possible “here,” at his company. To be fair, his reaction was natural. After all, who wants to be responsible for a department or group where inequity is an issue?

In our research, across multiple studies, we asked respondents to indicate to what extent they believed inequity was a problem. In one survey, managers reported that inequity was 13% less of an issue in their workplace compared to non-managers. In a different survey, we found that managers scored only 2% lower than non-managers when rating inequity in other workplaces — but when rating it in their own workplace, they scored 17% lower.

Such differences have consequences. In a third survey, we found that because managers tended to diminish the importance of inequity as an issue in their own workplaces, they were 19% less supportive than non-managers of diversity initiatives that were intended to address the problem.

What to Do?

This poses an obvious challenge. Managers are the ones who have the power to implement and enforce diversity initiatives, but because they don’t recognize the extent of the need for these initiatives at their own organizations, they are less supportive of them.

To overcome that challenge, we recommend three courses of action, all rooted in findings that have emerged from our research.

Challenge default positive views.  

In one experiment, we divided a group of managers into two and then asked half of them to describe a typical day in the office and half of them to recall specific instances of inequities there. They were then asked to allocate a percentage of a hypothetical budget surplus to a diversity initiative. Those managers who were asked to recall inequities ended up saying they would allocate 30% more funding to diversity initiatives. (The effect was less pronounced among non-managers, where the question led only to a 10% increase.) Such differences occur, we believe, because asking managers to recall specific inequities challenges their motivated reasoning — it’s harder to maintain a positive view of your workplace when you’re forced to confront its inequities.

That’s precisely what happened to Marc Benioff at Salesforce. When told that inequities existed at the company, he denied it was possible. But, after his executives confronted him with specific examples, he acknowledged the problem and committed several million dollars to the alleviation of gender-based discrepancies. Salesforce has since then also adopted another effective strategy for addressing inequity: data dashboards, which record examples of inequities in compensation, development opportunities, promotions, and performance ratings. Organizations looking to garner support for diversity initiatives can require managers to engage with such data or examples on a regular basis.

Consider your “not here” bias.

In another study, we had participants read a short article describing our research on a “not here” bias, and then we asked them to describe the inequity in their workplace. Compared to a control group, we found that these managers rated inequity in their workplace as 10% higher (as opposed to 3% higher from non-managers). This suggests to us that regularly asking managers to reflect on how the “not here” bias applies to their workplace can help them apply the same standards they use for other companies to their own workplace.

Redefine what it means to be “good.”

Our research suggests that managers view their workplaces as equitable because they want to have positive views of their organization — and in their minds, “good” workplaces are those where inequity doesn’t exist. Such an outlook makes acknowledging inequity hard, even for people who believe in working against it. The solution here is to work to define a “good” organization differently — that is, as one that actively identifies, acknowledges, and combats inequity. Such a change can help managers align their perceptions and actions with their organization’s diversity goals.

* * *

Can managers perceive inequity in their own workplaces? Our research suggests that they often can’t — and that those with the power to implement initiatives designed to address inequity are therefore less likely than others to see the need for such initiatives. To address that challenge, companies will need to understand how managers can fall prey to “not here” bias and motivated reasoning, and how those problems can be countered using the tactics we’ve laid out in this article.

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