Impact Podcast | Are DEI efforts in business losing ground?

KANINA BLANCHARD: Exclusive insights, actionable strategies, and ideas that ignite change. You're listening to the Ivey Impact Podcast from Ivey Business School.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Hello and welcome to Dialogue with the Dean, the inaugural series on the Ivey Impact Podcast. I'm Julian Birkinshaw, Dean of the Ivey Business School. And in this series, I sit down with Ivey's leading faculty to explore their groundbreaking research and discuss the pressing issues shaping business and society today.

Today, we're tackling a topic that's sparking debate in boardrooms and headlines alike: diversity, equity and inclusion - DEI. As some companies pull back on DEI efforts, the big question remains: how can leaders create workplaces where everyone can thrive? And can inclusion be more than a checkbox, but a core driver of innovation, engagement, and long term success?

To guide us through this discussion, I'm delighted to be joined by Zoe Kinias, Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour, Sustainability, and the John F Wood Chair for Innovation in Business Education. A thought leader in this space, Zoe will share key insights from her research and practical strategies to build more inclusive organizations.

Zoe, welcome to Dialogue with the Dean. It's a pleasure to have you here.

ZOE KINIAS: So happy to be here with you.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: So, you joined Ivey in 2023 from INSEAD, the world's leading business school based in France and Singapore. So, what brought you to Ivey?

ZOE KINIAS: Oh, thanks for asking. Several factors brought me here. But I'll start a couple steps before, if I can. Now, my education was actually in psychology. My PhD is in psychology. And very early on, I decided that I wanted to have more of an impact than I could have if I were to stay within that more narrow scope. And who has the most influence are the global business leaders. So, I was very drawn to the impact that I could have. Hence the international roles and really striving to connect with, learn from, and educate those international business leaders.

So, the reason I came here then is I was first interested in being back in North America. So there was a little personal element to that. But this role, the John F Wood Chair, was one that really drew me to Ivey. And the reason for that is that it has a lot of impact, impact within the business education world, and then also in connecting with how businesses are educating and developing their talent as well.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Excellent. Thank you. So, we're going to dive straight into one of your research studies as a way of kind of opening up the whole issue, because there's lots of issues to unpack here around DEI. And it's a paper, an academic paper, called “Stereotype Threat and Women's Work Satisfaction.” And you coauthored it with Clarissa Cordon in the UK. Now, what's the problem you're trying to address here?

ZOE KINIAS: So first, there's the big picture of the issue that we're trying to address. And although girls and women do very well academically, all the way through until there's sort of these tipping points where we start to see some challenges, women are still dramatically underrepresented in the top leadership positions of the world, businesses, government, etc…

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: The lay person will say, I get it. In other words, we know women are as smart as men, and the evidence proves it, perhaps even smarter in terms of academic grades. But many women choose to have children. And it's not surprising that taking a year or five years out from the workplace slows down your career. Now, that is a factor. I think we'd all agree. And yet that's not your focusing on. How do we kind of categorize all the different reasons why women haven't succeeded?

ZOE KINIAS: So, when we think about this, there are both the biases that decision makers and evaluators and people in general are making. So, if you believe that women are not as good of leaders as men, even though they're smart, then that can be a challenge. And lots of people can hold those views on relatively conscious or unconscious levels. We may hold them and not even realize. So, there's the decision maker’s bias kind of challenge. And then there's also the psychological experience for women, relative to men, which is where my research focuses.

But I just want to underscore one thing that you said in the introduction that I absolutely loved, and you mentioned that we want everyone to be doing the best that they can for our organizations and in our organizations and for our society. And that's something that really is a thread that goes through all of my interests.

I mean, how can we help people perform to their best? And that's everyone. So my interest in this is particularly centered on those who might not have the opportunities to perform and contribute as much as they could, and as well as they could.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: So, there's this range of structural factors in the workplace, this range of almost like psychological kind of things going on, which actually hinder women's ability to rise up through the workplace.

So, let's dive into the specific aspect that you focused on. You talk about stereotype threat, I think is the word. What is a stereotype threat?

ZOE KINIAS: So, stereotype threat… You've set this up beautifully actually. So, there's a system that has inequity in it. And then there's an individual within that. And Claude Steele coined this term in the 1980s actually. And the way he describes it is he says there's this thing in the air that gets under the skin. And so, people can become aware that their groups are negatively stereotyped. They can be then concerned about confirming those negative stereotypes. And this tends to happen for women and members of racial and ethnic minority groups or other groups. And it's interesting because anybody can experience this if their group is negatively stereotyped with respect to something. It's just that when we think about the inequity in our organizations, in our society, sort of this system level, it matters most for those who are systemically disadvantaged.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: And, so individuals who are systemically disadvantaged lose motivation, or they somehow feel that it's not worth it? Or perhaps they won't be able to succeed and then their behaviors changes the result?

ZOE KINIAS: So that can be part of it. There's two paths through which stereotype threat or identity threat is a sort of broader umbrella term can be problematic. The first is exactly what you've described. If someone says you don't want me here, you don't expect me to do well, I'm just going to sort of step back a little bit and remove myself from this unpleasant situation. We actually see in engineering, women particularly enter those first jobs and have a tendency to do that. They'll say, you know, this is just too brutal. I didn't sign up for this. I don't want to live like this. I'm going to do something else so that can happen.

But the other thing that can happen, which I find almost, I mean, the first is heartbreaking, but the part that I find even more heartbreaking is that that concern about confirming a negative stereotype can sometimes be motivating for people. These are the ones that say, no, I'm going to show you, you're not going to push me out. I'm going to show you how good I am. And so, for those people, sometimes they they're able to overcome. And so, we see those stories of success sort of against the odds. But what can also happen for those people is that their added pressure of concern about confirming the negative stereotype then makes it a little too much. It's like you have all the challenges and in those stretch situations, that one more challenge makes it too hard, right? And so that's it can make the same game, not the same for everyone.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: And a lot of this stereotyping effect is happening sort of subconsciously. And it's not like people are actively making life difficult for any particular group. It's just way the way the culture is.

ZOE KINIAS: There doesn't have to be anything intentional happening for this to occur. You're absolutely right.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: So that's the problem that you kind of focusing on. And then tell us a little about the study, because you obviously were looking at the various support mechanisms, the various strategies that are available to organizations to help overcome this. So, what were the factors, and which ones ended up being the most important?

ZOE KINIAS: So, this paper focused on social support. And when I'm talking about social support this can be offering practical guidance. It can be offering emotional support sort of a shoulder to cry on. It can be helping to navigate a difficult situation. So, both practical and more, softer or, or sort of social aspects of social support. And we looked at different factors, including formal mentors, informal mentors. We looked at role models, we looked at peer support, and we looked at supportive supervisors. These were the five that we investigated in this particular study.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: And which ones, as a fellow academic, I mean, yeah, some of them are statistically more important because they all sound like they're important. The question is which ones make the biggest difference? And what was the answer.

ZOE KINIAS: So, the factor that did not affect was the formally assigned mentors. The informal mentors, the role models, the peer support, and the supportive managers were all beneficial for women in this study.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: I read that the role models was particularly important. Is that right?

ZOE KINIAS: Yes, that's right, that's correct. So, the role models and these were identifiable role models. So, we can think about people who may be shared demographic characteristics and also ones that just feel interpersonally that we can connect with whatever their demographics. It was very powerful.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: So, one very obvious sort of takeaway is let's make sure that we have some powerful, influential role models within our organization that others can look up to.

*Instrumental Break*

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: The other paper that you gave me to read in advance, we're calling “Building Teams that Lift Others Up.” And my sense is that that's a little bit more kind of prescriptive. It's a little bit more okay. As a leader, what are the things that you can do to actually provide greater support for women in this case? Tell us a little bit more about that study.

ZOE KINIAS: So actually this study is one where we look at how we get support for women. And so this is taking a step from where the women are the main focus of how do we help the women to succeed in this challenging situation to how do we make the situation better for them? So it's raising, we can sort of think of it as taking the onus off of women to fix the situation for women and saying, how can we get everyone to be more supportive?

So, in this paper we also look at social support, but sort of from the other side of what happens when people receive social support for then providing support for others. So not how are they doing themselves, but how do they support others?

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: So, peer support essentially? What can I do as a colleague to help my colleagues feel better?

ZOE KINIAS: As a colleague and as a leader. So, of course, people who are more senior within their organizational systems are able to have even greater impact.

But anywhere we are as students, as starting our careers and as very senior leaders, we have opportunities to engage in trying to help others.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: And you use this term “felt support” I think is the word. What is it felt support? I mean I think we can intuitively guess but…

ZOE KINIAS: This is a process by which people walk through their lives, generally feeling a bit more secure, a bit more stable because they feel that others will be there when they need them. And this is something that's a little bit stable over time, but also can shift a little bit, into adulthood.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Right. But now I just want to dig into a little bit more about this, because sometimes people will say, what you're saying is we want a workplace where everyone's nice to each other, and that we don't criticize people when they do things wrong. I mean, that's not quite right. I mean, it is possible to have felt support whilst also actually being quite disciplined and quite performance focused.

ZOE KINIAS: Absolutely. In fact, I might be a bit critical of someone who would not give the critical feedback someone needs. Providing strong social support can also be saying, I think you're on the wrong path right now. I think you should do a course correction and improve the way you're planning this aspect of a project or this aspect of your career. If we just sugarcoat things and we don't get to the best products, and that's not good for people's careers or for the organization, of course.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: So perhaps this is too much of a tangent, but as a leader of people who you want to do a good job, you want to provide them with support, you want to give them the feeling of psychological safety is another term that we all use. We should continue to hold them to account and give them feedback. And when they're not doing their job and trying to make sure that they understand how they can improve.

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JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Let's move now to your role as the Chair of the John F Wood Centre. This was a generous gift from John Wood, an HBA graduate from 1964. Tell us a little bit about what that Centre does. And then we'll dive into a couple of specific examples.

ZOE KINIAS: Yes. Happy to! So the Centre is very nicely aligned with my own goals.

There are three main purposes for the Centre. The first one, as I mentioned before, is broadening access to business education, particularly the case methodology. And this is with a focus on high school students. So, the idea being that if we have more people aware of this way of learning and that this is an opportunity for them, we can have a positive impact on society. So that's the first one.

The second one is to innovate business education, particularly with respect to the case methodology. And then the third one is about building a community within Ivey and also beyond to the global level for innovating business education, particularly with respect to the case method.

And we had our first Wood Centre Symposium last May on this topic. We'll have our second one, in June 2025. And in that, we're talking about how to create opportunities for change and building a community of change and how different organizations and business educators are focused on doing that.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: We can't talk about innovation in learning without acknowledging technology.

I mean, is the Wood Centre also experimenting with artificial intelligence and other ways of bringing technology to bear on the learning experience?

ZOE KINIAS: Absolutely. So, we're having conversations more broadly with Ivey on artificial intelligence. We had our first “Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT” event, for our faculty a little bit ago. And I want to thank the Carey School for letting us use their title on that one.

So, that's the AI space. But my own interest has been with virtual reality learning, actually. So, I have research and also we're developing a pedagogic tool, that we're in the process of starting to pilot now actually. So more on that to come.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Exactly. And that does indeed take us into another story.

But certainly, one that's very important to Ivey. I'm personally very excited about figuring out the best ways of harnessing new technology, but without losing the high touch case method.

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JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: in the final section, I want us to acknowledge the current political context, which is a challenging context on many dimensions. And we are absolutely seeing, unfortunately, a lot of organizations pulling back from their DEI targets. I mean, they're literally saying, we're no longer going to report on this stuff now. I'm guessing you find this very upsetting or at least, frustrating. What is going on here? I mean, I have no problem kind of acknowledging that Donald Trump's presidency is upsetting the applecart in many areas, and it's being led from him.

But, why do you think organizations are responding in the way that they are?

ZOE KINIAS: So, the first thing I'd like to say is that I don't see all organizations withdrawing in this way. So, I just want to acknowledge that there are some that are not changing what they're doing. They're really saying, you know, we have a solid program in place. We're not going to shrink due to threats. So, I want to make sure that folks don't think everyone is shrinking in this state. But I think there's also some re analysis.

Several things going on. Some are still even doubling down saying we are committed to this. This is real. I'm recording something with an organization next week, actually, that's saying we still want you coming. We're still doing this for thousands of employees within our organization. We are not we are not backing down.

But then we've also got the ones that were only doing DEI because they wanted to tick a box and they thought that was the right thing to do. And so I think those folks find it an excuse to say, okay, I don't have to do this anymore. I didn't want to do it any way. I don't have to do it anymore.

And then there's this, this other category of organizations that I think is really deeply considering how they do DEI and how they can do it well. And it’s funny, we've been using the phrase or the acronym DEI because some folks are saying maybe we should move away from using that acronym and say, what is it really?

And I think you opened with it that this is a way for everyone to perform to their potential, to contribute as much as they can, and to help the organization and help society. And so, when we frame it in this, in that way, which is fundamentally what it is, right, and talk about it in that way and, and communicate it more clearly in that way and, and identify the ways that enable us to do that, that don't ignore the systemic imbalances and the systemic biases. Is there is a way that I see lots of organizations that are motivated and trying to figure out, like, how can we rework this in a way that helps us to move forward.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Yes, I agree with that. I mean, it's very hard to argue against the basic principle that we want to be accessible to all. We want to create an environment in which people feel safe and so forth. And unfortunately, we have got to a place where even the phrase DEI has become a little bit tainted. And this happened in many, many aspects of the business world, So I do want to ask you about this: a question I've received many times is have universities become too woke? Now, we might even want to define what we mean by woke. You know, unfortunately, people are usually using it as a negative, as a pejorative term. I mean, what does what does woke actually mean? Let's just start with that.

ZOE KINIAS: So, my understanding of this term is that it actually means aware. Why would I want to be asleep to what's happening around me is, is something that I've been hearing a lot.

But I think that when people, either are concerned about losing their own privilege, they see a zero sum game, which it's not. But I think that those defenses and that that fear can, can be stirred and that can be part of the challenge.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: So what should my answer be when I get that question?

ZOE KINIAS: So, I have a view, and you may want to edit this in your own communications, but Frank Dobbin shared with me, he's one of the leading scholars sociological background. He said, we will have gone far enough when our leaders, and if we sort of think about the business school or the educational environment, represent the people we say we serve. And we're not there. I don't know any universities that represent the people they are intending to serve or that we say we're intending to serve.

And so, when we've gotten that far, then we can say where we can rest right now.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Exactly. Yeah. And I'll bring it back to Ivey then. And last question for you on that, because, we had a new MBA course just arrived just recently. We now have 40% of the class are female. Now, you might say it should be 50, but I can remember when I was an MBA student here, it was probably 15%. So I think we, Ivey, are making good progress. In terms of gender balance. Our younger programs, our HBA and MSc, these are actually 50/50. So, we're making good progress. But your point is, you know, we shouldn't sort of stop until we've got to a point where gender is no longer an issue. We don't even feel the need to report the percentage.

Is that right? I mean, is that is that the way to think about it?

ZOE KINIAS: So, I would say that definitely with respect to gender, and I think that particularly in those segments of our context where we have gender balance already, we want to be thinking about other elements of identities and, and other ways of analyzing, because just looking at gender, I think is a mistake.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Yeah, absolutely. And obviously we can look at racial inequalities and we can also look at socio economic differences. It is a fact that business schools, and this isn't Ivey, it's all business schools. We you know, we tend to cater people who are wealthy and connected, even though we have generous scholarships. And so, I think, you know, one of the things I've been pushing and will continue to push is accessibility. I want Ivey to be more accessible as a place of learning,

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JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: A couple of last thoughts then, or perhaps even just either a summary or sort of things you'd like people to take away, in terms of either what they can do themselves as leaders in their organizations. And then perhaps, a thought also, on what Ivey should be doing better or more of.

ZOE KINIAS: So first, for the business leaders, I think that really appreciating the value of social connection is one of the main takeaways from my recent research. And so, we can think about that both in terms of the support we provide. But as managers and leaders we can't be the individual support for everyone within our organizations. And so then how can we help other people to, how can we create contexts in which people will support each other in stronger ways rather than try to cut each other down? And Satya Nadella is a wonderful example of this.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: the CEO of Microsoft.

ZOE KINIAS: Yes. That's correct. And when Microsoft was stagnating, you probably remember this whole story. Microsoft was stagnating. He stepped into the role. He started listening and trying to correct a culture that had become really aggressive and competitive and cutthroat, and to build it into something that would be more supportive. And he practiced that himself. So, wherever we are within our organizations, we have the opportunity to influence those that are within our reach.

And so I would really encourage folks to do that.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: And it does build nicely on one of Ivey's strengths, which is around leader and leader character. And obviously a leader who leads with integrity and respect and humility is all else equally likely to get better out of his or her people than one who does not.

And so to Ivey. What should we be doing more of at Ivey, just to finish with that?

ZOE KINIAS: What should we be doing more of? So, I know you're very excited about extending the reach of our influence more internationally, more broadly. And I do think one of my aspirations for Ivey, coming from an international background myself is Ivey has some excellent things going here, but we're a little bit more contained than I think we necessarily want to be. So, I think broadening our reach more internationally would be a wonderful goal for us to strive for.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Thanks. So, we will close there. Thank you very much.

ZOE KINIAS: Thank you.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: You've been listening to Dialogue with the Dean from Ivey Business School. A big thank you to my guest, Zoe Kinias for sharing her insights and time today. And of course, thank you for tuning in.

Be sure to join us for our next episode where I'll be speaking with Zhe Zhang, Assistant Professor of Marketing, about the surprising impact of nicknames, how they shape branding, workplace dynamics, and why they might be hurting your business strategy.

Until next time, goodbye.

KANINA BLANCHARD: This was Dialogue with the Dean, an Ivey Impact Podcast series. For more insights from Ivey, including thought leadership on critical issues and additional podcast episodes, visit IveyImpact.ca or subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Thanks for tuning in!