Understanding Diversity As Social Responsibility

Nowadays, in the corporate world, the social responsibility and the business case for diversity, equity, and inclusion has never been more aligned. More than just maximizing profits, it’s about companies being accountable to themselves, their stakeholders, and their consumers.  

Gain a greater understanding of diversity as a corporate social responsibility with Professor Alvin B. Tillery, Jr., Academic Director in the Leading Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion online short course from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University.

Transcript

Corporate social responsibility is a self-regulating business model that helps the company be socially accountable to itself, its stakeholders, and its consumers.

What we’ve seen in recent years is a growing connection between a desire to be socially responsible and a desire to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. On first glance, the corporate social responsibility case for diversity, equity, and inclusion seems quite different from the business case for diversity, equity, inclusion, which stresses the maximization of profits and also team performance internally. But what I want to say is that there are often ways in which the corporate social responsibility case and the business case can line up very well together.

Given how much the millennial and Gen Z generations value diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the growing focus on marketing to those groups, companies will soon find that the corporate social responsibility case and the business case are increasingly aligned. There are also times when the business case for diversity can translate into social responsibility.

Take for example, Intel. In 2017, they announced that they were going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in scientific education at historically black colleges and predominantly Hispanic-serving institutions. While initially driven by a desire to recruit more diverse, scientific talent to its own company, there is no guarantee that all of these millions of dollars will end up sending workers to Intel. Instead, what Intel has done with this effort is likely strengthen scientific education for two underserved communities. So here we can see how an initiative that started out of the business case for diversity is going to have a broad ripple effect in terms of social responsibility and boosting minority education in the United States.