As diversity management has entered the lexicon of human resource management, whether effectively or symbolically, we have seen a greater interest in the accreditation and external recognition of related organisational efforts. This is reflected in increasing interest in corporate social responsibility more widely and in attempts to distinguish firms and employing organisations according to their engagement with such supposedly progressive activities.
Recognising organisations’ progress on diversity is part of a broader overall push to improve the social dimension of the economy. In the United Kingdom, specific awards have become key to the development and sustainability of diversity practices within organisations, with those that see themselves as committed to managing diversity and equality standards increasingly compelled to seek external recognition from a range of public and social bodies dealing with and pioneering these issues. Part of this drive is based on the argument that having a proactive diversity management programme can enhance productivity and that there is a business case for its development (Cox and Blake, 1991). However, it can be argued that these initiatives may be tokenistic and undermine a much firmer social commitment to equality and fair treatment of workers, irrespective of the economic outcomes (Noon, 2007). Nevertheless, for an organisation to be seen to have been externally validated and recognised is viewed as important as part of a broader developmental process. Furthermore, over time social organisations linked to combatting different forms of discrimination have accelerated the development of a range of accreditation schemes, awards, and social events to recognise and celebrate ‘best practices’. The use of sporting or Olympian grading narratives – such as ‘gold’, ‘silver’, and ‘bronze’ awards – has also crept into this process as a way of differentiating firms’ achievements, as well as the development of narratives around stand-out cases (Klikauer, 2023). These reference points are regarded as important for generating external diversity management benchmarks and marking different stages of internal progress.
Organisationally these award-seeking accreditation practices force management to move beyond rhetoric in specific areas such as recruitment or promotion, and to expose themselves to external scrutiny. In some senses, they represent a brave step, laying the organisation open to systematic scrutiny by external bodies with extensive knowledge and expertise in specific areas of anti-discriminatory practices for relevant demographics, and running the risk of criticism for failures in these areas. Furthermore, the increasing entry of organisations across the public and private spheres to the competitive arena of accreditation and awards is compelling others to engage with these processes, to such an extent that to not engage with them could be viewed as indicative of a lack of commitment or even as an admission of guilt.
There are several issues relating to the motives and procedures underpinning these institutional processes.
Firstly, these developments may involve superficial rather than substantive changes (Tayar, 2017). They may focus on specific aspects such as the symbolic representation of the organisation through adverts but fail to challenge internal biases and power relations. There may be specific human resource management practices that are highlighted in isolation of the organisational culture that exists and frames such practices – we come back to this later. In a high ranking university within the UK a successful application for an award regarding equality was opposed when submitted by the internal network of the very group it was meant to be addressing (Authors observations).
Secondly, the desire to avoid litigation or losing equality-related legal cases may lead firms to present accreditations or related awards as evidence of their progressive and diversity-related intentions. This shows the limits of self-regulation on matters of equality rather than stringent legal frameworks (see: Hart, 2010). It indicates how businesses may act out of a pragmatic self-interest. The increasing legal regulation of employment relations and use of legal avenues by workers (Kirk, 2022) is challenging UK organisations to provide evidence of their overall intentions and underlying commitments to equality and diversity at work although whether that evidence is indicative of a genuine cultural move towards equality is another matter. Without systematic developments in legal and enforcement frameworks regarding equality at work the risk is that the business case is, in itself, unable to sustain a genuine improvement of working conditions (Dickens, 1999). To some extent this links to an overall critique that what amounts to a purely symbolic shift in the language and practice of an organisation’s engagement with corporate social responsibility is often simply related to avoiding a decline in market reputation (Jones and Fleming, 2012).
The third issue is that such tokenism and brand-related crisis avoidance can actually diminish the need for diversity- or equality-related practices and cultures and discredit their importance. The impact of a cynical or instrumental approach can generate internal disquiet and even conflict. Workers are often aware of the development of new management initiatives that are primarily symbolic or are being developed for reputational purposes, and if such practices are exposed as effectively a sham, they can undermine future attempts to develop new initiatives and programmes. Some case studies have shown that despite an organisation’s superficial success in one area of equality accreditation, such as race, internal and independent investigations into subsequent events have found it to be institutionally racist (Project Team’s research). This raises the problem of piecemeal accreditation, whereby award-giving processes focus on a single area and fail to take a holistic view. The credibility of further actions by management and related internal organisations can then become seriously eroded. Moreover, the burden of accreditation may fall on specific groups of workers and professionals within an organisation most affected by the culture of exclusion within it, e.g., it is not unknown for women, ethnic minorities, and LGBT* staff to have to shoulder the bureaucratic burden of organising an accreditation process (Tzanakou and Pearce, 2019)
Fourth, during accreditation processes the focus may fall on specific issues (e.g., non-promotion of ethnic minority staff) and the way institutional responses are developed (e.g., the development of minority ethnic staff networks). Specialist external diversity and equality management consultants (often former human resource or diversity managers and former employees of social organisations linked to equality issues) can assist an organisation applying for some form of accreditation and/or award. However, these are often highly specialised and focus purely on the accreditation process without making substantial changes. The knowledge industry surrounding the accreditation processes and the related highly detailed bureaucratic mechanisms are not to be underestimated and can involve a level of acceptance of co-optation (Kirton, Greene and Dean, 2007). Indeed, this is a general problem within the management consultancy industry, with its tendency to work to client-based agendas (see Kirkpatrick et al., 2023).
It is for this reason that there is an increasing interest in ensuring that accreditation processes include internal stakeholders and worker representatives. The process of accreditation has many pitfalls and can be ambivalent, but it can also act as a catalyst for methodical internal reflection when not driven hierarchically from above. What is more, internal stakeholders may be drivers of the need and call for accreditation. This is not a concern solely with the way accreditation in diversity and equality management or practices are developed, but a much broader concern with the relative absence of stakeholders and democratic principles within the development of corporate social responsibility in larger multinational corporations more generally (Bendell, 2005; Reinecke and Donaghey, 2021).
Moreover, once an organisation has achieved a certain form of accreditation, it can use this to build a further set of insights and strategies for developing a genuinely progressive equality-based environment. This requires an open organisational culture that is not defensive but is concerned to use such processes as part of a more open and inclusive dialogue with the workforce. The role of open committees involving stakeholders, provisions for different voice mechanisms and representative structures, and a culture of sustained dialogue needs to precede and continue after the act of accreditation (Smith, et al., 2023).
In an age where progress on organisational matters such as equality and diversity seem to have become a form of competition between employers there is a need to ensure that these processes are part of a broader engagement and dialogue across a longer time frame and can ensure action on workplace equality which extends beyond employer-determined equality agendas. To this extent the question of accreditation in itself may indeed fragment and weaken initiatives for change unless they are linked to more systematic forms of dialogue and scrutiny within the organisation and beyond.
References
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Cox, T. H., & Blake, S. (1991). Managing cultural diversity: Implications for organizational competitiveness. Academy of Management Perspectives, 5(3), 45-56.
Dickens, L. (1999). Beyond the business case: a three-pronged approach to equality action. Human resource management Journal, 9(1), 9.
Hart, S. M. (2010). Self-regulation, corporate social responsibility, and the business case: Do they work in achieving workplace equality and safety? Journal of Business Ethics, 92, 585-600.
Jones, M. V., & Fleming, P. (2012). The end of corporate social responsibility: Crisis and critique. The End of Corporate Social Responsibility, 1-144.
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Tzanakou, C., & Pearce, R. (2019). Moderate feminism within or against the neoliberal university? The example of Athena SWAN. Gender, Work & Organization, 26(8), 1191-1211.