Diversity Decoupling in Top European Corporations: Myth or Fact?

Claudia Toma, Rik Janssens and Valérie De Cock

No 23-005, Working Papers CEB from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: Today many organizations make public statements to express their engagement with diversity, while progress in this domain remains low. In this research we examined the talk-walk decoupling in the domain of diversity by analyzing how the top 50 largest European companies formally talk about diversity and what information they disclose about diversity actions and metrics. Qualitative analyses on websites and official reports showed that diversity talk is omnipresent: 98% of organizations talk about diversity, 66% have a diversity page, but only 48% included diversity in their business core and only 8% have a clear definition of diversity. Symbolic diversity actions, such as external partnerships, are more represented (98%) than key internal actions such as diversifying the staffing (66%). The analysis of diversity metrics showed that transparency about the corporate workforce diversity is low. Gender is disclosed by all companies, while race, ethnicity and sexual orientation are disclosed by 16%, 38% and 6% of them. Importantly, quantitative analyses on gender indicate that the corporate diversity talk is negatively related to the percentage of women in the workforce. The results are discussed in relation with the diversity decoupling phenomenon.

Keywords: diversity talk; diversity actions; metrics; talk-walk decoupling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-06-29
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