Diversity, Public Relations, and Building Bridges

Thank you, Joachin Phoenix, for your comments at the BAFTA awards last Sunday night. “We send a very clear message to people of color that you’re not welcome here.”

Newsworthiness maxes out at about 48 hours, so although not quite hot off the press, your rebuke to the film and television industries—and yes, to yourself, as part of those industries—was both timely and appropriate. Fortunately, timeliness has a longer shelf life than newsworthiness.

Your message addressed the same lack of diversity that exists across industries, that is reviled sporadically in screaming headlines in the media, and yet continues to permeate key sectors of the economy, here and abroad.

In the world of public relations, this pervasive lack of diversity may appear counter-intuitive, given that for years, scholars have stressed the value to organizations of a diverse workforce. Karl Weick, a renowned sociologist, coined the term requisite variety. By that Weick meant that every organization should be comprised of representative ethnicities, races, and cultures, such that the makeup of the organization is consistent with the environment with which it interacts. A diverse workplace that is reflective of a diverse environment not only makes good sense because technology has turned the distant and remote into within reach and accessible, but because it also creates cultural interpreters who are windows to their own worlds.

Actors and other “creatives” are, by virtue of their professions, cultural interpreters. Mr. Phoenix, you underscored that even the arts world, and most blatantly, the entertainment/broadcasting industries, have flouted what are clearly rational approaches to balancing out the composition of their workforce. This includes some of those same “creatives,” the actors, writers, directors, technicians, producers, and others who bring an audiovisual work to fruition.

The “role” of diversity is a critical one beyond the arts world. Diversity is notably absent in hiring and promotion practices in many industries, which hold back minorities, the disabled, and others through subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination.  

So much for a justification for diverse organizations, which truly reflect subtle, meaningful and distinctive ways of doing things and ultimately engender greater respect for the “other.”

A while back, public relations professionals, recognized to some extent as managers of strategic value to the leadership of an organization, were dubbed “boundary spanners.” They were professionals who operated at the intersection of the organization and the environment. They brought back “intelligence” about the environment to the leadership and conveyed information about the organization to its publics.

In retrospect, it may well be that “boundary spanner” was too passive a descriptor for public relations’ role. Bridge builder seems more accurate a definition. Public relations practitioners, who operate within a technological universe where nearly everyone and everything is accessible and in a sense, fair game, have a prosocial responsibility to be proactively evenhanded, transparent, and ethical, to facilitate diverse representation among their employees and publics, and to build bridges that promote cross-cultural understanding and ultimately, harmony and respect leading to positive change.

Most recently, there have been a spate of articles and media commentaries that either celebrated diversity or decried the lack of it. Two commemorations since mid-January—MLK day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz--are stark reminders of the need to respect the differences among and unique contributions of diverse groups, as they have struggled for acceptance and tolerance in an often-brutal world. Public relations practitioners (and their leadership) should actively seek to build bridges among diverse publics. They need to solicit those publics’ participation within and outside their industries in ways that underscore their distinctiveness. If they do, they will be are more likely to benefit from talents and perspectives that will enrich and have impact on not only those industries, but others.