161: Should DEI DIE?: Critiques and Responses to DEI Initiatives (13877)

The future of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is at stake. Critics argue that DEI interventions not only fail to achieve equality but also inadvertently perpetuate workplace discrimination. The backlash against DEI emanates not only from external stakeholders but also internal ones. For instance, health care personnel often lack confidence and feel unsafe when providing culturally responsive care to patients from historically marginalized communities. These tensions necessitate a reevaluation of organizational DEI goals and the identification of best practices to effectively achieve them. This professional development workshop (PDW) is structured as a dual-format session: a town square forum and a scenario planning exercise. The town square forum enables PDW participants to collectively take stock of recent developments that have triggered backlash against DEI. The PDW will then transition into roundtable discussions. At each table, participants will engage in scenario planninng, identifying critical uncertainties for a “prototypical” organization, developing plausible DEI scenarios, and discussing implications and strategies in response to anticiapted opportunities and threats. The PDW will conclude with a segment where the organizers facilitate a discussion aimed at integrating the scenarios generated at from across tables and making a comprehensive examination of DEI ideology and interventions. This PDW align with the Academy of Management 2024 theme “Innovating for the Future” since the organizers encourage participants to expand upon the innovations that can be embedded in organizations to address the societal issue of inequality. It draws primarily from the health care industry, but the takeaways may be generalizable to other industries.