Performance through Diversity and Inclusion

4 Exclusionary forces

Widespread social practices that inhibit inclusion

Why is it that diversity has proved so challenging for organizations? To answer that question, this chapter brings together evidence from several different academic fields to identify exclusionary forces that workgroups, teams, and organizational members experience when attempting to turn diversity into beneficial outcomes. The challenge of achieving sustainable inclusion, with its attendant equity and performance benefits for workgroups, is complex. Due to this complexity, the limitations and lack of progress of many well-intended approaches are no surprise. Here, as illustrated in Figure 4.1, we introduce the exclusionary forces as a set of practices that some or many ...