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experience of race, in the curriculum and in their own lives, in an environment that used community organising techniques to create a brave space. As a consequence, we are seeing a reduction in awarding and attainment gaps. “A third area involves thinking about whether assessments have a meaningful impact on the world. A number of our modules include real life client briefs, working with charities committed to equity and diversity, sustainability and social justice, so that students can feel they’re making a difference.” Sven Stromann, former Mannheim Business School diversity manager, now director of the school’s Alumni Relations and Career Development Office “Diversity management at Mannheim is relatively new. My colleague Bettina Meltzer and I started it a few years ago, but diversity and inclusion has always been ingrained within our programmes. “In every single programme, we place an emphasis on teamwork, organising participants into MCTs, or multi-competence teams, usually made up of five people. These groups are composed of a diverse range of cultural, age, educational and work backgrounds. The idea is that they learn from one another. “A previous MBA class came up with this question: ‘Can we have a diversity workshop to foster better understanding?’ We collaborated with Mette Nørr-Gantzhorn, a great trainer from Denmark, who created a programme for us called Building Inclusion Champions. This workshop includes topics such as psychological safety and microaggressions and how it’s all connected with what’s going on in the business world. With this training, students can move into the corporate sector with a much better understanding of how to foster an inclusive environment at work.” Sharon C Brooks, executive director of diversity, equity and inclusion, Insead “One of the main things we do is raise awareness around why we need to focus on diversity and the different ways in which we want inclusivity to be a top priority for the school. We want to make sure that all perspectives, ideologies and identities in our community feel that they belong, have a voice and are being heard. “It’s a matter of coming to a common understanding across many different cultures about what DE&I means and what it includes. We need to build systems of accountability so that
recent report from international professional services conglomerate PWC on corporate reputation investigated the ways in which DE&I strategies impact upon the public perception of companies. The study considered how it defines their ability to grow, attract the talent pool they desire and their capacity to perform at a high level. The findings strongly suggest that a comprehensive DE&I strategy has become a necessary foundation upon which a company must be built, impacting critically on whether or not it can survive in the future. An effective DE&I strategy goes beyond legal compliance and seeks to take an intersectional approach, adding value to an organisation, contributing to the wellbeing and equality of outcomes and impact on all employees. This includes such elements as age, caring responsibilities, colour, culture, visible and invisible disability, gender identity and expression, neurodiversity, physical appearance, political opinion and socio-economic circumstances. Ambition’s panel debate, organised in association with BlueSky Education, heard from a range of international business schools who expressed their opinion on DE&I-related issues in the academic environment, from measuring impact and overcoming challenges to ensuring goals are aligned with current and future business requirements. What specific initiatives have you seen implemented at your business school that have had a measurable impact on increasing diversity and inclusion among both students and the teaching faculty? “The first key area is encouraging staff to think about diversity and education while making it impossible to avoid in terms of processes and systems. Disrupting some of our processes and systems in a subtle way has allowed us to introduce a greater range of cases and resources in our teaching, without having to re-engineer everything. “The second involves students and staff talking to each other and sharing lived experiences. One of the things that ended up being a best practice case for the Office for Students (our national quality and regulating body), was a session called Conversations about Race. This involved students and staff talking with each other about their Sally Everett, vice-dean of education at King’s Business School
24 | Ambition | MAY 2023
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