What EDI initiative will produce meaningful change in your organisation? Good question.

"Of the hundreds of studies we examine, a small fraction speak convincingly to the questions of whether, why, and under what conditions a given type of intervention works," (Paluck and Green, 2009, p.339).

That was a review published 15 years ago. Surely, things are different now!

"The past decade has seen rapid growth in research that evaluates methods for reducing prejudice," (Paluck et al., 2021, p. 533).

Yay!

"However, 76% of all studies evaluate light touch interventions, the long-term impact of which remains unclear," (ibid. p. 533).

Oh.

So, what does work? For practical (middle-manager layer) applications of a recent meta-analysis by Costa (2024), listen to this episode.

References

• Costa, E. (2024). Examining the effectiveness of interventions to reduce discriminatory behavior at work: An attitude dimension consistency perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001215

• Guillaume, Y. R., Dawson, J. F., Otaye‐Ebede, L., Woods, S. A., & West, M. A. (2015). Harnessing demographic differences in organizations: What moderates the effects of workplace diversity? Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(2), 276–303. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2040

• Shea, C.M., Malone, M.F.F.T., Young, J.R. and Graham, K.J. (2019), "Interactive theater: an effective tool to reduce gender bias in faculty searches", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. 38 No. 2, pp. 178-187. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-09-2017-0187