Equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives have been having limited success. Stephen Allen and Emanuela Girei offer a new perspective that may help tackle these failures. They encourage organisations to acknowledge that dynamics of exclusion are shaped by the legacies of colonialism, suggesting that the way to engage with these global dynamics is to explore the significance of ever-evolving ideas of “whiteness” to understand how inclusive an organisation is for employees.

Organisations’ initiatives for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) are often reported in the business press and by researchers to be ineffective. Some EDI initiatives even have negative effects on the potential to develop a diverse and inclusive organisation. More broadly, racism is endemic in many UK organisations, including in higher education and international development. In a recent journal article, we offer a new perspective on “whiteness” which we believe can help to tackle the failures of EDI activities and develop effective anti-racism strategies.

We suggest that when planning EDI initiatives, it is important for organisations to look outward and consider their broader historical, political and cultural contexts. Here we are referring in particular to the acknowledgement that dynamics of exclusion, discrimination and marginalisation (individually, organisationally and societally) continue to be shaped by the legacies of colonialism. Some scholars speak of coloniality, emphasising the persistence and even expansion of colonial logics in our current world. This is witnessed by the global inequalities and geopolitical asymmetries that inhabit our era, in which patterns of privilege and resource consumption can significantly depend on the lightness/darkness of peoples’ skin tones.

For many organisations, it might be difficult to picture how these global dynamics tend to affect their operations, but this reflection is necessary for tackling inequalities and asymmetries. This can be done by exploring the significance of ever-evolving ideas of “whiteness” to understand how inclusive an organisation is for employees. Here “whiteness” does not refer to skin colour as such, but rather to a dynamic, historically constructed social condition and worldview that rewards and gives privileges to those racialised as white.

Seeing “whiteness” as an ever-evolving social process implies two important corollaries. One is that we all, wittingly or not, play a role in shaping “whiteness” and any related forms of racial discrimination. The second is that we can acknowledge, explore and subvert such dynamics in our social world, including at work. While we cannot decide our skin tone and the meanings attributed to it, we can shape our interactions that contribute to the social world we inhabit. In this sense, EDI initiatives can become an opportunity to reflect on how “whiteness” is ingrained and shapes relations, rewards and hierarchies within an organisation, and consider how these processes can be transformed.

When members of an organisation reflect together on how “whiteness” is produced, EDI activities depart from simplistic narratives of victims and oppressors to build a fruitful dialogue in support of specific organisational actions. For instance, by exploring how “whiteness” is understood to be associated with the most powerful and successful people in an organisation, we can begin to identify how organisational processes and working practices (such as ways of recruiting, promoting and managing) work against those associated with “otherness”. This way, reflecting on “whiteness” can help move EDI conversations away from focusing on individual biases and differences, towards building collective awareness of how together we reproduce asymmetries, with the aim of identifying how we can address inequities.

Another key insight of our research is that reflecting on “whiteness” can be discomforting. As we state in our journal article, “for some, reflecting on White privilege and White supremacy might be discomforting because they fail to see their agency in the reproduction of such differences and superiorities.” However, this discomfort underpins productive ways forward and so differs from the “racial stress” that hinders possibilities for effective EDI approaches. This is because White people tend to be “ambushed and ensnared by whiteness“. As a fundamental step to understand how such patterns can be challenged in organisations, they need to consider how they are affected by particular social, organisational and political arrangements.

We also highlight two other important dimensions of discomfort. Firstly, in noticing and discussing “whiteness”, we become open to seeing “non-whiteness” or “otherness”, which means that we may be challenged by new voices and perspectives that we have not previously considered as offering valuable contributions. For example, theories and practices of business and management are often constrained to studying certain ways of managing, leading and organising that reflect a limited range of organisational contexts, often large multinational organisations that are headquartered in Western countries.

Secondly, we will become discomforted by our inability to comprehensively know how to ‘figure it all out’ and ‘resolve the problems’ of identities and associated inequalities in our organisation. However, by acknowledging our not-knowing, we are not suggesting that we can simply shrug our shoulders and seek solace in our ignorance. This dimension of discomfort highlights the necessity for an organisational dialogue on “whiteness” in which we assume and engage with the anxiety that we feel about what we encounter. Importantly, we need to avoid trying to tidy up complexities by grasping for imagined static (and secure) binaries and fixed categories of racial identities such as white/black.

In closing, we hope to have introduced how organisations can open up fresh possibilities for approaches to EDI by confronting and exploring “whiteness” through dialogue. Doing so will inform discomfort, but the various dimensions of discomfort are fundamental to making real progress on interrupting patterns of inequity within organisations, contributing to building more just and more inclusive organisations and societies.

• This blog post is based on Developing Decolonial Reflexivity: Decolonizing Management Education by Confronting White Skin, White Identities, and Whiteness, Academy of Management Learning & Education
• The post represents the views of its author(s), not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics.
• Featured image provided by Shutterstock
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