Beyond diversity management : a pluralist matrix for increasing meaningful workplace inclusion

Despite rapidly burgeoning diversity in the Canadian workforce, and demonstrable gains to be made as a result of increasing inclusion, organizations still struggle to create meaningfully inclusive workplaces. The traditional diversity management model has largely failed to fix this longstanding problem. A variety of research has identified successful strategies for increasing inclusion across disciplines such as social psychology, critical management studies, systems theory, and universal design. However, these overlapping strategies, as well as the commonalities of underlying structure, go unseen due to ideological and disciplinary siloing. Working from a foundation of theoretical pluralism, I present two linked ideas in this paper. First, I propose and justify a shift in language from the counter-productive <italic>diversity management</italic> towards <italic>meaningful inclusion</italic>. Second, using multi-disciplinary research I identify successful, broadly-applicable strategies for enhancing meaningful inclusion in the workplace, and describe an <italic>inclusion matrix</italic> of best practices that creates a practical road map organizations can use to enhance meaningful inclusion.

Author dc:creator

• Samuels, Shereen

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Walinga, Jennifer
• McKendry, Virginia
• Pardo, Patricia
• Vannini, Phillip

• complexity theory
• cross-cultural communication
• diversity management
• meaningful inclusion
• non-profit organizations
• theoretical pluralism

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10170/644

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.viurrspace.ca/server/oai/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=dim&identifier=oai%3Anull%3A10170%2F644