At the heart of the successful management of people in organisation, is understanding of diversity and inclusion. Research shows that the widespread failures of organisational inclusion and progression practices to remedy previous biases. Indeed some have suggested these efforts may be counterproductive and merely strengthen bias and resistance against changes (Dobbin and Kalev, 2016). Organisations therefore need to look again at their policy and practices and use evidence to develop more successful interventions.
Your assignment is to create a short training intervention for an organisation designed to increase inclusion and reduce discrimination and bias. (You can pick the organisation you are designing this intervention for. We are more interested here in the evidence-based practices and materials you include rather than your choice of organisation.)
Your proposed intervention should include the following minimal elements:
I. What is meant by the (term/ phrase) self-serving bias?
II. How does self-serving bias affect individuals and their behaviour towards others?
a. in society
b. in organisations
III. How might organisational practices
a. create,
b. support and
c. deepen gender, age and/or ethnic-related disparities in terms of (fair treatment and equal opportunity, chances promotion and voice)?
d. how do these practices influence self-serving bias the stereotypical attribution present in organisations and embedded in un-reflexive assumptions within work organisations and society at large?
IV. What steps can an organisation take to address such self-serving biases?
V. In preparing for this presentation, what have you learnt from this exercise about your own biases towards others? In the light of these insights, how would you now act differently, in say a leadership or management policy-making position or situation?
The presentation you should include reference to appropriate theories and frameworks from the study of Human Resource Management and organisational behaviour. There is a folder of additional resources to help you on Moodle. You should use Harvard style referencing in the final slides.
The assessment of your group work will comprise two elements: A recorded group presentation on zoom with its accompanying slide deck PDF , and information aggregated from your individual rating’s of each members’ contribution to the presentation. This rating includes four elements:
Planning and organising of the group’s task;
Assisting content of the presentation including theories and ideas and their quality control
Supporting and helping others in the team
Developing and delivering the final presentation.
