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Scholarship on workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is voluminous. Nevertheless, there is relatively little work that examines DEI from an organization development and change (ODC) or systems perspective. As a result, there is no unified framework ODC practitioners can use for DEI diagnosis and intervention. The purpose of this chapter is to review the ODC literature with respect to DEI and propose a diagnostic Context-Levels-Culture (CLC) framework for understanding and addressing diversity-related challenges in organizations. We also present a case example of how this framework can be used in DEI consulting, including implications for future research and practice.

Data indicate that today′s business organizations are focusing on diversity as a way of increasing their effectiveness and competitiveness. There is every indication that women will be an increasing percentage of the workplace at all levels. Previews the important role women play as members of diversity consulting teams. Gender‐balanced consulting teams model gender diversity, help clients see women as credible resources, and women consultants model effective skills in confronting female‐biased behaviours. Women′s inclusion in consulting teams can also help balance interpersonal support for personal growth and communication styles which offer greater flexibility and effectiveness to both organizational and individual clients. While citing supportive research, also uses anecdotal support from diversity consultants.

Highlights the main features of qualitative research conducted with 32 successful women consultants in organization development. The format is multifaceted, including tables, poems, and text, to reflect the commitment to the deep feminine in the research process and results. Part One discusses the conceptualization of the study, grounded in the women′s voices perspective and four research questions, the findings and a case example. In‐depth interviews explored the women′s responses to the changes they experienced, the challenges they encountered, the contributions they made, and the lessons they learned over the past 15 to 20 years as second‐generation women OD consultants. The data analysis revealed four overarching themes contained in the distillation of the study: women doing the work of consulting as part of their inner journey in the context of oppression, helped and hindered with their relationships with both men and women. Part Two examines implications in terms of two voices in OD, problems with women′s invisibility, a fuller understanding of authenticity, and healing for women and the field.

Provides a postmodern view of consultants′ experiences with diversity. Calls into question the relationship between what becomes a “diversity category” and the other differences that remain background. Looks at the political and economic system that sustains the categories of diversity in public housing consulting. Advocates a postmodern approach which includes the authors′ voices and the voices of the residents in the writing of organizational change.

Introduces the articles selected for the special issue and their purpose. Over the next decade, consulting is likely to become an increasingly attractive career option for many women. Reviews research related to the topic of women in consulting and highlights some of the critical opportunities and challenges facing women in the consulting industry. The five articles selected for the issue provide multiple perspectives on the unique experiences and contributions of women in the field of consulting.

Reflections on gender and OD over a 50-year career as a scholar, an OD practitioner, and a woman managing a complex life and career.

My journey in OD has spanned 50 years which is also about as long organization development has been around. In this essay, I will reflect on my experiences with special attention to issues of gender. I will also mention some issues of concern that confront us as OD scholars and practitioners, especially the balance between thinking and doing. As I describe my experiences, I hope they will lead to an appreciation of all that has happened in just 50 years! My experience is not everyone’s experience. I make no claim to that. I hope that some of the issues I raise resonate with you, or fill in some blanks, or lend a different perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to study current problems of implementing Diversity Management (DM) in businesses and presents a concept for measuring and estimating a value for diversity interventions.

An intellectual capital approach is used to identify a matrix of problems while implementing DM. To address the accounting problem for DM, advantages and disadvantages of the Diversity Scorecard are discussed and issues that require further conceptual development are identified.

Understanding DM as a part of intellectual capital helps solve accounting problems. The tests of the concept of Diversity Impact Navigator show that measuring DM at this stage requires a simple design, that using key indicators forces diversity interventions and that the process of valuation increases the understanding of DM by all stakeholders and thus its economic legitimation.

A newly developed concept helps solve the problem of measurement and valuation of DM. The paper presents the first test results.

This chapter critically evaluates opportunities and challenges associated with developing diversity and embracing inclusion of cyber security talent in a multinational consultancy firm and offers recommendations on how to optimize inclusion of young talent in this sensitive business area within a multinational company. Drawing on one of the author's experience as a young cyber security professional with a non-technical background, entering the profession through a consultancy graduate development programme, this paper offers a unique perspective on how to enhance cohesion in diversity across linear and non-linear routes into cyber security.

While the scope is limited to cyber security talent in early careers, the competency-based approach means that recommendations around developing diversity and embracing inclusion can be applied to young talent in other business competence areas. Each recommendation can be used as a building block to influence and shape future equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) strategy in consultancy.

Those entrusted with leading corporations and organizations into the 215t century face profound changes. They must address severe competitive pressures, globalization of markets, and deregulation, as well as an increasingly sophisticated, diverse customer base. All this is taking place as the workforce is becoming more diverse and its values and expectations are changing in fundamental and challenging ways. As a result, it has become clear that leaders of organizations must quickly develop business strategies and manage performance in significantly more creative and flexible ways.

This analysis draws on interviews with 19 self-identified US diversity consultants and 94 diversity statements posted on corporate websites. The findings challenge existing literature that characterizes the business case for diversity as monolithic and wholly problematic for the way it constructs understandings of human difference. The authors accomplish this using metaphor analysis to demonstrate how business case arguments incorporate three metaphorical systems for thinking and speaking about human differences – as asset, as liability and as possibility. Given this diversity of metaphors, the business case does not construct human difference in a monolithic way, but in a variety of ways that both challenge and sustain problematic treatments of difference. The authors argue scholars and practitioners should attend to these nuanced difference within the discourse of the business case, and more carefully consider how these metaphorical systems both enable and constrain the design and execution of diversity work in organizations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The analysis draws on two data sets: initial interviews with 19 self-identified US diversity consultants analyzed using metaphor analysis. To triangulate findings, the metaphorical framework was applied to 94 diversity statements posted on corporate websites.

Business case arguments operate according to three root metaphors of human difference: human difference as asset, human difference as liability and human difference as possibility. This challenges existing literature that treats the business case as a monolithic discourse.

This analysis offers the three metaphorical system and highlights the “constrained capacity” of each. This framework offers an analytical and practical tool for scholars and practitioners, enabling them to more thoroughly understand and respond to their unique organizational and socio-historical context. It also provides a way to analyze how concepts of difference are mobilized across social and historical contexts.

The findings offer the “constrained capacity” that is, the strategic limitations and possibilities for practitioners who use the business case in their diversity work. This enables more skilled and ethically informed diversity initiatives.

The findings offer insight into the subtle ways that hierarchies of human difference embedded in US history are subtly reinforced and made present through language. This enables social justice workers to better challenge problematic constructions of human difference and create new understandings when needed.

This piece makes two significant original contributions to existing literature. It offers more nuance to both critical and uncritical analyses of the business case by showing the diversity of business case assumptions about human difference as demonstrated in three different metaphorical systems and highlighting the constrained capacity of three different metaphorical systems. It offers unique analysis grounded in contemporary discourses, but correlated to historical systems of thought. This enables empirical identification of how certain types of thinking about human difference move across socio-historical contexts.