ROUNDTABLE REVIEW
that diverse and inclusive organisations are more efficient, more creative and more able to stay attuned to the needs of society. “I’m very proud to say that at Essec we have around a 50/50 female-to-male composition on the executive committee. We need to lead the way in what we teach, but also in what we do.” Sharon C Brooks “Intersectionality is crucial. We’re going to have to think about how all aspects of diversity and demographics are integrated in business and understand how they’re connected, so we’re able to address and solve diversity and inclusion challenges in that way. “Second is sustainability. It is impossible to think and talk about diversity without also thinking about the impact sustainability and access to environmental resources have on different communities. “Lastly, there is a growing push from employees. Employee activism is an extreme way to frame it – realising that business decisions are going to need to be responsive to bottom-up decision-making and demands, not just top‑down from leadership. Whether it’s responding to what has been characterised as ‘quiet quitting’, or reckoning with different employee and customer demands in response to current events.” Sankalp Chaturvedi “Representation questions will remain, so we have to be careful about how we approach that and how we can structurally embed such questions to create a systemic change. The idea is simple: it has to become part of life and there will be always people who believe in it, but there will also be people who are ‘bystanders’. “Unless we embed DE&I structurally, those bystanders will not become active allies. The goal is to create an inclusive community, whether we’re talking about leaders or the staff community itself, because our design should be a reflection of what we want the future to look like. “And these things should be evidence-led; measurement, accountability and transparency will become part of the discussion of how we come to communicate the inclusive ambitions and principles that we set.”
“This year, we also launched a day of workshops open to all members of the school’s executive committee. This involves in-depth DE&I training for leadership and key members of the community. “Having faculty members with specific expertise on diversity issues is important; we already have a few and are in the process of recruiting more.”
How do you envisage the DE&I agenda developing over the next three to five years?
Sven Stromann “I think in some areas, it needs to turn from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must have’, that’s probably the biggest thing. We need more women in the workforce and in leadership positions; a business school is one of the places where that starts. “If we only have about 30 per cent of our graduates who are women, how are we going to get there? We really need to work hard on getting more women into the programmes and having more females in the pipeline as candidates.” Sally Everett “In the UK, there are fewer than 30 black female professors across all subjects. I’d hope that in five years’ time that figure is significantly different, because it is outrageous. It involves going back to our leadership teams, businesses and workplaces. I don’t think we can look at the diversity of workplaces without looking at ourselves in terms of our make-up. “The DE&I agenda needs to be part of a business-as-usual process, including promotion and probation criteria and quality assurance, right from the beginning. It’s got to be integrated throughout every module and it needs to be in how we teach and in everything we are as a business school, otherwise I don’t think we will survive.” Anne-Claire Pache “We need to move from a place where diversity and inclusion is a way to do good, to a place where diversity and inclusion is a strategy to do well. We have a lot of data that supports the fact
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| 29 Ambition | MAY 2023 | 29
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