Corporate culture is the collective behavior of people who are part of an organization and the meanings that these people attach to their actions. Organizational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other internally, as well as with clients and other stakeholders. Enabling an inclusive culture is highly advantageous in capturing the value of diversity.
Characteristics of Inclusion
Inclusive cultures are focused on values that empower open-mindedness, promote healthy conflict, value new perspectives, and avoid judgmental attitudes. The primary threats to an inclusive culture are groupthink, discrimination, stereotyping, and defensiveness.
Inclusive cultures
Inclusive cultures accommodate a variety of perspectives.
An inclusive culture may include a variety of tangible elements, such as acceptance and appreciation of diversity, regard for and fair treatment of each employee, respect for each employee's contribution to the company, and equal opportunity for each employee to realize his or her full potential within the company. An organization may also adhere to a policy of multiculturalism, integrating diversity into the mission and vision statements and various other internal policies.
Paradigms of Diversity Management
With this in mind, the question of how to integrate these concepts into the organization's culture is the primary concern for management. Creating an inclusive culture means not only stating support for it via various corporate-wide outlets, but also working towards an ideal level of open and inclusive behavior. Culture is a matter of organizational behavior because it is inherently about how people act (mostly subconsciously), and thus requires a great deal of energy and effort to alter.
The following paradigms are a result of extensive academic research by experts in diversity. The list below can be seen as a linear progression in achieving inclusion, the first being the simplest and least effective and the last being the most complex and most effective:
- Resistance paradigm: In this phase, there is a natural cultural resistance to change and equity across diverse groups. This paradigm requires extensive managerial efforts to overhaul, and corporate policies must be put into place to create a structure for corporate inclusion.
- Discrimination-and-fairness paradigm: In this phase, the organization focuses simply on adherence to social and legal expectations. The diversity team and inclusion culture primarily come out of human resource and legal professionals fulfilling minimum requirements, so they are still fairly weak.
- Access-and-legitimacy paradigm: At this phase, management has successfully elevated the culture from acceptance to active inclusion. Now the organization is looking at the overall benefits derived through diversity and utilizing them to capture maximum competitiveness.
- Learning-and-effectiveness paradigm: In this final stage, management has successfully integrated inclusion in a way that is proactive and learning-based. Groups are designed to not only capture the innovative and creative aspects of diversity, but also to share diverse skill sets and grow in efficacy through the learning process.