Employee Perceptions of Organizational Practices: Tailored Versus Turnkey Diversity Programs

Marsh, Victor L

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Employee Perceptions of Organizational Practices: Tailored Versus Turnkey Diversity Programs Public Deposited

Analytics

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/m326m2809

Abstract

Why do some firms produce tailored diversity practices, while others copy turnkey approaches? Using a multi-case, inductive study of six growing mobile technology firms in the San Francisco Bay area, this dissertation integrates the private interview accounts of executives, Black and Latino/a employee affinity group participants, and several incumbents of the chief diversity officer role, a role which turns over frequently. The firms shared many characteristics and also had the same “inclusion first” diversity philosophy, expressing determination to retain the minority employees that they had already as taking priority above new recruitment efforts. Despite all their similarities, they differed substantially in their diversity-promotion choices. Specifically, I found that the main antecedents of diversity practice tailoring are (1) borrowing power from line executives; (2) effectual autonomy search to enable experiments with new practices; and (3) joint design sprints among the diversity-promotion coalition – handling design quickly rather than assuming that scarce executive time will always be available. Quantitative tests of this theory showed support for a reliable employee perception about whether programs are tailored, and awareness regarding design sprints as their antecedent process. While existing literature focuses on pressures from outside the firm driving diversity program choices, the result of these studies is a view of processes inside the firm that drive decisions to tailor rather than copy and paste standardized diversity practices.

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