Performance through Diversity and Inclusion

This book provides practical guidance for managers, leaders, diversity officers, educators, and students to achieve the benefits of diversity by focusing on creating meaningful, inclusive interactions. Implementing inclusive interaction practices, along with accountability practices, enhances performance outcomes for the organization and improves equity for members of historically underrepresented and marginalized groups.

The book highlights the need to challenge existing approaches that have overemphasized representational―that is, numerical―diversity. For many decades, the focus has been on this important first step of increasing the numbers of underrepresented groups. However, moving beyond representation toward a truly inclusive organizational culture that produces real performance and equity has been elusive. This book moves the focus from achieving numerical diversity to achieving frequent, high-quality, equitable, and productive interactions that enable individuals to leverage their distinctive talents and provides the steps to do so. The benefits of this approach occur at the individual, workgroup, and organizational levels. Real-life examples of good inclusive practices are provided from across the for-profit, nonprofit, and governmental sectors and in various organizational contexts.

The book is ideal not only for those charged with diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in organizations but also for organizational leaders and managers who can create and/or support the implementing of inclusive organizational practices and also for postgraduate and undergraduate students studying human resource management, organizational behavior, management, or diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Ruth Sessler Bernstein is Assistant Professor of Nonprofit Management at Pepperdine University, USA. Her research, which focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusion and nonprofit governance, has been published in Nonprofit Management & Leadership, Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and the Journal of Business Ethics.

Paul F. Salipante is Emeritus Professor at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, USA, with engineering and business degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Chicago. His publications cover training for disadvantaged workers, equal employment opportunity (EEO), employment conflict, nonprofit governance, and evidence-informed management.

Judith Y. Weisinger is a scholar, educator, and consultant. She has most recently served as Associate Professor of Management/Business at New Mexico State University and Mills College, USA, and as Visiting Associate Professor of Management at Bucknell University, USA. Her research on diversity, equity, and inclusion and on cultural knowing has been published in Nonprofit Management & Leadership, Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, the Journal of Business Ethics, and the Journal of Management Inquiry.