The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off

Diversity, like corporate social responsibility, is one of those buzz concepts that managers love to promote, despite not knowing how it fits into a company’s strategic vision. Here, consultants Kaplan and Donovan (DRIVEN: A Field Manager’s Guide to Sales Team Optimization) provide a textbook approach to the “diversity and inclusion” (D&I) topic, down to key takeaways and discussion exercises. The book opens by making the business case for inclusion, moves onto the psychological underpinning of bias and its effects on business, and finishes with two practical chapters on “change strategies.” Real world examples, like the fact that Facebook only recently added a female executive to its board or H&M’s misguided use of “all blond mannequins in its Thirty-Fourth Street store and all brunettes in its Harlem store,” enrich the argument. Less convincing are fictionalized anecdotes and examples—Kim, a typical senior manager, or Sarah, a generalized first female engineer with a civil engineering firm. Similarly, the discussion exercises feel contrived and are too brief to expose the complexity of the issues. Despite these quibbles, it’s rare to find a business book that so soundly hits the zeitgeist while also capably applying the best social sciences research to an important topic. (May)