If not who, then who? – an interview with Luciana Vilar Denardi
Previously published on Building Resilience
In complex times, organizations must urgently evolve through management of diversity. Certain navigational instruments can help us with this challenge.
By Celia de Anca, Director of the Centre for Diversity in Global Management at IE University.
In these days of lockdown, I dream of navigating the open seas, sailing over the waves accompanied by skilled sailors using the best navigational instruments, confident I will reach a safe harbor.
In this article, I’d like to share with you how I believe diversity can provide us with two basic instruments, which as part of a diversity navigation chart can help organizations weather the storm.
1. THE SEXTANT: DIVERSITY AS A MOVEMENT FROM THE INDIVIDUAL TO SOCIETY AND BACK
I am different from you in many ways, but only some of my differences are relevant. For example: for some people, my gender, my background or my education mean they can classify me in subgroups other than my interests or ideas.
Some of these subgroups are based on normative behaviors, for example: women are supposed to be empathetic, Latinos are supposed to be extroverts or people with a background in liberal arts are generalists. Whether I conform or not to those stereotypes doesn’t matter, since they can be imposed on me through categorization.
Therefore, the first rule for navigating diversity is to understand that there are two distinct processes at play. The first is group identification, by which we decide to identify with a certain group, along with its attributes and behaviors. The second is categorization, in which the process is external, imposed on us.
The diversity sextant helps us to understand that different diversity behaviors are often the product of categorization and are not a deterministic prediction of an individual behavior: the fact that I am a woman does not presuppose that I am empathetic.
Therefore, companies need to use this first navigational instrument to understand the pool of talent inside the organization and thus eliminate categorization or external entry barriers.
2. THE COMPASS: DIVERSITY AS A BINDING ELEMENT THAT CONNECTS OR SEPARATES DIFFERENT HUMAN AGGREGATIONS
One way to understand diversity is to understand what binds members of a specific human aggregation, or how teams operate in an organization.
Keep on reading on Building Resilience
About the author
Dr. Celia de Anca is currently the Director of Scief (Saudi Spanish Center for Islamic Economics and Finances) and the Center for Diversity at IE University, where she is also a professor of Diversity and Islamic Finance. She was previously the Director of Corporate Programmes at the Euro-Arab Management School (EAMS), Granada. She has also worked for the Fundación Cooperación Internacional y Promoción Ibero-América Europa. (CIPIE) and at the International Division of Banco de Santander. She has a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Boston), and from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. She holds a degree and PhD from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, with a comparative thesis on Islamic, ethical/ecological investment funds and on the London Market. She is the Author of Beyond Tribalism, Palgrave McMillan 2012, and co-author of the Managing Diversity in the Global Organization. Macmillan 2007. She had articles published in specialised journals, in addition to regular articles in the press. She was an external advisor of the Merrill Lynch’s Diversity & Inclusion Council up to 2009. She has been a member of the Executive Committee of IE Business School from 2006 to 2016. She is a member of the Ethics Committee of InverCaixa’ s Ethics Fund, Spain and a member of the International Scientific Committee of the University Euromed in Marseille, France. Member of the FAA Accreditation Panel for Islamic Finance (Malaysia) since 2017. She was named female executive of 2008 by the Business Women’s Association of Madrid. (ASEME) Her work is regularly cited by the most influential thinkers, among them; Zigmunt Bauman in his final book, Retrotopia . Her work received numerous distinctions, as the 2019 Highly Commended Award for the paper Spanish Women's Career Inhibitors 2007-2017, by Literati Emerald Publishing, and, the best article of Corporate Governance: An International Review in 2016. Dr. de Anca is listed among the 2013 thinkers50 ranking of global management scholars http://www.thinkers50.com/biographies/celia-de-anca/. Ms. de Anca is fluent in Spanish, English, French and Arabic.
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