Research Note: Make DEI Function Again Pt1
Petar Vujosevic
Examining how wider culture impacts the workplace. Practical output: DEI & employer brand strategy research & training.
How did DEI get where it finds itself today?
TLDR;
The core issue facing DEI is that form has overtaken function.
This has lead to criticism of overreach and under-performance, which is why DEI is now being publicly questioned, by proponents and opponents alike.
In this essay we'll explore how DEI got to this place.
This is part V of a series that introduces new lenses through which to make more sense of the changing DEI, Talent & Employer Branding landscape.
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If you are reading this research note, you probably are aware that corporate DEI programs are under scrutiny.
And the critiques being raised —which we'll dive into—won't feel unfamiliar, whether deserved or not.
The aim of this essay is to deepen our understanding of how we arrived at this juncture, because any meaningful path going forward can only emerge from a clearer grasp of how we got here.
To achieve this, we must look back. Not at individual narratives, specific strategies, or tactical decisions.
Instead, we need to examine the worldviews that shaped the conditions in which these narratives, strategies, and tactics took root.
I'm jumping ahead a bit, but this is, in my view, the fundamental choice DEI now faces: is it prepared to explore epistemological blindspots that might limit its potential for truly impactful work?
With that being said, I invite you to travel back and see if the path laid out here makes sense as map going forward.
The growing discontent with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs is best understood as the byproduct of a larger, intertwined set of forces:
These three trends have shaped DEI initiatives in ways that have provoked the current critique.
1. Financialisation of Work:
The financialisation[1] of work has been a defining feature of corporate restructuring in recent decades.
As companies increasingly prioritise short-term profits and shareholder value, their internal operations—HR and DEI included—have been reoriented to support these financial goals.
The big shift has been from economies built around physical goods and services to one oriented around the production and manipulation of data, representations, narratives and ideas — whose correspondence to “truth,” or “the real world,” is ambivalent and contested.
Under this model, labour is commodified, with workers reduced to assets whose primary function is to drive efficiency and profitability.
Jean Baudrillard explored the nature and implications of the shift from physical production to figurative (re)production as the organising mode of society and work.
He predicted that, as this transition unfolded, many forms of physical production and exchange would be devalued.
This devaluation would occur in two senses: the economic significance of producing and exchanging material goods (or physical labor) would be significantly reduced relative to the creation of representations of those valued things.
The attention or compensation accorded to most physical goods, physical work, and the people who carry it out, would see significant declines.
Those engaged in figurative reproduction on the other hand—whether through data manipulation, branding, or public relations—are rewarded with significantly higher salaries, greater prestige, and more attention.
Our new economy thrives on the slippery, the symbolic, the ephemeral. Whether any of it corresponds to "the real world" has become, in many ways, immaterial—to the bottom line.
DEI programs, as part of this broader system, have become deeply tied to metrics and optics.
As long as progress can be demonstrated through numbers, the depth or authenticity of that progress remains immaterial.
2. The Growing Insularity of Corporate Leaders:
The financialisation of work has given rise to a new market in which many of us—myself included—now find employment: the knowledge economy.
This shift has had its benefits, particularly by opening up new pathways for minorities to enter corporate spaces in what is often a union-free environment.
A major consequence of these trends is the bifurcation of national economies. On one hand, there are relatively well-paying, stable jobs in knowledge industries—sectors that have experienced growth in wages, opportunities, and prestige.
On the other hand, there are shrinking or stagnant industries filled with less secure jobs, typically occupied by people without college degrees.
This divide has only deepened as globalisation has furthered the reach of the knowledge economy.
As a result of the increasing ephemeral nature of work, we've also experienced the rise of a distinct class of corporate leaders who are increasingly isolated from the broader workforce.
This begins in education. Prestigious MBA programs, for example, pull individuals from across the globe, requiring them to leave behind ties to family, community, and place.
These students form new, often temporary and superficial relationships, driven by mutual utility rather than deep connection.
Once they enter the workforce, these future leaders of the knowledge economy become concentrated in “superstar cities,”[2] hubs that are tied into global circuits of corporate elites[3].
Living in these cities fundamentally alters how people relate to others. Relationships become increasingly transactional, because the sheer volume of contacts, coupled with the transience of people’s lives and careers, makes it nearly impossible to meaningfully invest in any one person.
The longer these high potential knowledge workers remain in these elite enclaves, the more their worldview shifts toward abstraction.
Although many of these individuals have sincere aspirations to promote the greater good, their backgrounds, ideological commitments, and material interests systematically diverge from those of the general population and workforce [4].
As a result, many knowledge work leaders find themselves more aligned with their global peers than with their material [working] surroundings, especially if that surrounding did not ascend into the knowledge economy.
Their detachment from the everyday lives of most workers has profound consequences for how they view and approach DEI, especially as transnational corporations started exporting their processes, policies and people around the world.
For these corporate leaders, the values of performance, abstraction, and efficiency often take precedence over the experiences of their employees.
DEI efforts have become shaped by this worldview; emphasising symbolic gestures and identity markers rather than addressing deeper issues of economic inequality.
While these leaders may view themselves as champions of social justice, their understanding of inequality is often filtered through their elite experiences, lifestyle and tax bracket, leading to initiatives that fail to resonate with or materially benefit lower-wage workers [5].
So paradoxically, as companies became more characteristically diverse, their leadership grew more ideologically homogeneous, detached and isolated.
3. The Rise of Postmodern Critical Race Theory (CRT):
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CRT, like much of cultural criticism, split into roughly two approaches: the materialist and the postmodern. Materialist race critics focused on how economic, legal, and political systems impacted racial minorities.
Postmodernists, in contrast, turned their attention to discourse, aiming to deconstruct language, uncover implicit biases, and challenge underlying racial assumptions.
Initially, from the 1970s through the 1980s, materialist critiques dominated CRT. However, by the 1990s, postmodernism became the more influential approach.
This shift moved the focus from systemic, material issues like poverty and class to more abstract concerns about intersectionality, language, and discourse.
Essentially, CRT evolved from a focus on class (function) to identity (form).
With postmodernism gaining academic prestige in the 1980s and 1990s, DEI programs within corporations, nonprofits, and universities began to align more with this postmodern interpretation of CRT.
Over time, DEI initiatives increasingly emphasized issues like microaggressions, implicit bias training, safe spaces, and representation—focusing on individual identity and symbolic solutions rather than addressing structural or material inequalities.
While this approach has expanded discussions on race and identity, it has come at a cost. It has obscured the deeper, material causes of inequality that the original materialist critiques emphasised.
This postmodern turn in CRT dovetailed neatly with the financialised corporate environment. Instead of challenging the structural foundations of inequality, DEI programs—steeped in postmodern CRT—focused on issues like language, identity politics, representation, and "culture" change.
These are areas that can be tackled through performative measures, such as bias training or diversity audits, without requiring any fundamental changes to the economic structures that underpin corporate inequality.
In this sense, postmodern CRT provided an intellectual framework for DEI programs that could be easily co-opted by the financialised system and its leadership.
4. Critique
This convergence of financialisation, elite detachment, and postmodern CRT has generated several key critiques of DEI initiatives:
5. 2018-2022: age of impunity
Most people [employees] are “innocent of ideology”[6]. They do not pay much attention to politics.
Although they often have fairly stable voting preferences, their substantive political opinions are unstable (i.e., change a lot) and do not align very well with either the policy platforms of their favoured parties or the explicit ideological isms (e.g., “liberalism”, “socialism”, “conservatism”, etc.) in the culture.
The term "Great Awokening" refers to the period [roughly 2018 to 2022] of heightened social consciousness, often associated with movements like Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement, as well as broader conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
During this time, many corporations responded to outside social pressure by adopting DEI initiatives aimed at addressing discrimination and promoting inclusivity. In many cases, those initiatives did lead to a meaningful raising of awareness.
Also during the same period, corporate and academic activists took control of defining & implementing DEI programs and narratives[7]. Narratives that were much more polarising in nature.
For most corporate/knowledge workers, who naturally skew liberal and did not want to risk the wrath of cancel culture, this meant that they went along with whatever was proposed.
Once you become aware of these phenomena, it is not hard to review DEI programs and find that the criticisms of being overly prescriptive, dogmatic, or promoting ideas that many non elite and non graduate employees find controversial or not applicable (e.g., all white employees are privileged or the idea of "white fragility") to hold [at least some] merit.
Companies enforcing these initiatives without allowing employees to question or discuss them openly might be seen as engaging in ideological enforcement without checks or balance, leading to a feeling of "impunity" in the ability of DEI leadership to impose social norms.
All this lead to the over-arching criticism of today that DEI initiatives have reached a point of being immaterial to daily work/life and not subject to any meaningful accountability. Or worse, that they have reached a stage of absolute impunity [8].
6. At the intersection of the same or something new?
Obviously there was good work done during the era of postmodern CRT by companies such as Textio, GapJumpers and others [9].
And for better or worse, there is renewed critical analysis being done re: DEI.
On the one had there is a "counter movement" out of Silicon Valley, MEI, that seems to have picked up some steam. [10]
Also within the tribe there is the internal "refocusing" from DEI [Diversity, Equality, Inclusion] to EDI [Equity, diversity and Inclusion].
Equity-driven efforts have seen a surge of interest and uptake, particularly as they serve as a clear contrast to the framework of "Anti Racism".
The issue is that at it's core, Equity-based EDI is:
Is that a reason to not explore or pursue it? And does not mean there is no agency to change going forward?
No..If there is an awareness of the underlying factors that have lead to the current state of DEI.
In upcoming essays, I'll share ideas on how to counteract potential blindspots and create that agency.
For now, I hope this essay will have provided you [as it has me, writing it] with more clarity as to how we got where we are.
And perhaps it might start an internal conversation to explore if and how your DEI worldview and programs have been impacted by the forces we explored.
Footnotes