PROGRAMME DEVELOPMENT
DEI & ESG initiatives take a back seat The feedback we received during our interviews with senior HR leaders is that DEI and ESG are important, but business acumen is needed to drive organisational performance and so competencies related to organisational success tend to take precedence. The interviewees indicated that specific targets and initiatives for DEI and ESG were often discussed at board level within their organisations. Moving down the organisation through the middle management layers, however, the focus is often on delivering results. This is not to say that these organisations sought to achieve results at all costs, but that the DEI/ESG initiatives might not always be front of mind. The implication is that, at least according to the data collected so far, DEI and ESG are not seen as key contributors to organisational performance. We know that diversity initiatives can be compliance-driven, but many companies have embraced the notion that they are also good for business. According to this dataset, that link might not yet be well established in the sample organisations who responded to the survey. Alternatively, a slow pushback on both DEI and ESG initiatives has been building for some time, so perhaps the survey results reflect a nascent dissatisfaction with such measures. Striking the balance in business education This leads us to the question of what we should teach within our MBA curriculum. The Telfer School of Management is a signatory to PRME, the principles for responsible management education. Accordingly, we integrate some of the UN’s sustainable development goals into our curriculum, many of which address ESG. We also provide a course specifically focused on governance that allows students to play the role of a board of directors who respond to a host of issues addressing governance, risk and compliance. We strive to make it clear that organisations are communal entities: they exist within a social fabric that needs to be cared for, even though we recognise that profits are important. In regard to DEI, our view is that the term itself is not important. What is important is the intent: fairness and decency in the workplace. This intention should apply to everyone, no matter their background. While the DEI term itself might eventually disappear, we know that the basic principles remain important and intact. With respect to ESG, as mentioned above, our course on governance, risk and compliance addresses topics related to the company’s reputation, its
ranked at 2.3 and leveraging diversity at 2.7; by contrast, emotional intelligence was ranked 3.4 and teamwork 3.9. The implications are that respondents ranked those competencies that enabled business results more highly than those related to specific DEI initiatives. As mentioned earlier, the ESG competency set was the lowest ranked overall. To capture another viewpoint on diversity and inclusiveness, we included one competency (the ability to prioritise diversity and diversity of perspectives, including when building teams and partnerships) in this set. The rankings for this competency and for ESG strategising (the ability to integrate ESG concerns into strategic plans) were 2.0 for the former and 1.7 for the latter. These findings strongly suggest that competencies related to delivering business results through well-developed relationship management, both inside and outside the organisation, are thought to be critical. Those related to DEI and ESG were not as highly ranked.
BIOGRAPHY
Gregory Richards is vice-dean of graduate professional programmes and director of the executive MBA at Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa. Prior to joining the university, he worked as a management consultant for a large software firm and also with the Canadian federal government. He has taught on MBA programmes since 1995 and is a Certified Management Consultant and Academic Fellow with the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes. Richards’ research focuses on the use of data to influence organisational outcomes, leadership in digitalised organisations and the process of digital transformation
ability to attract employees through values-based leadership and a recognition that an organisation’s impact extends well beyond the bottom line. Our conclusion, therefore, is that although the specific terms might no longer be in vogue, the overall principles they represent should be well integrated into EMBA curricula.
Ambition • ISSUE 4 • 2025 31
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