Prelims

Half Title Page

CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES IN EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION: STRATEGIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Series Page

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

Series Editor: Mustafa F. Özbilgin

Recent Volumes:

Title Page

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION - Volume 9

CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES IN EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION: STRATEGIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

EDITED BY

BERK KUCUKALTAN

Trakya University, Turkey; Heriot-Watt University, UK; and University of Bradford, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL.

First edition 2024

Editorial matter and selection © 2024 Berk Kucukaltan.

Individual chapters © 2024 The authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: www.copyright.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80455-090-8 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80455-089-2 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80455-091-5 (Epub)

ISSN: 2051-2333 (Series)

Dedication Page

I dedicate this book to my parents, and to everyone who has contributed to my life.

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Figures

Tables

List of Abbreviations

About the Editor

Berk Kucukaltan completed his PhD in Business Management at Brunel University London, with the Dean’s Prize for Innovation and Impact in Doctoral Research in the Brunel Business School. He holds the Associate Professor title in Turkey and has a Fellow role in the UK. His research interests stretch across organisational performance, digital transformation strategies, strategic decision-making, logistics management, innovation and technology management, and entrepreneurship subjects. In practice, he has an active mentorship portfolio for both the start-ups and the established businesses. In academia, in addition to his editorial board memberships in several journals listed in the Web of Science (WoS), he has a large number of publications in ABS-listed/WoS-indexed journals and in widely-known conferences.

About the Contributors

Deniz Palalar Alkan is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Yeditepe University, Istanbul. She has earned her Baccalaureate degree from Florida Atlantic University majoring in International Business and Trade. She got her Master’s degree from Lynn University and PhD from Istanbul University. While attending Florida Atlantic University, she volunteered to work with students with disabilities. After obtaining her Bachelor’s degree, she started to work at several international banks including Citibank N.A. and global insurance brokerage firms. She has been an instructor since 2011 and currently teaching courses including Leadership, Business Management and Entrepreneurship at Yeditepe University. Her areas of interest are organisational behaviour, leadership, and diversity.

Aylin Ates, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Strategy at the University of Strathclyde Business School, Glasgow, Scotland. She is closely involved with business practice and policy through research projects, professional education programs, and various speaker and advisory roles. Aylin has published 55+ research outputs in relation to small and medium enterprise (SME) strategy and performance management. Her award-winning research appeared in international conferences, media, and academic journals and books such as the International Journal of Operations and Production Management, the Journal of Business Research, the International Journal of Production Research, Production Planning and Control, the European Management Journal, the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, the International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management and the Emerald book series in Strategic Responsiveness as well as Interorganisational Collaboration. She is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management (established in 1952 and published by Emerald).

Cihat Erbil, PhD, is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Business Administration at Ankara Haci Bayram Veli University in Ankara, Turkey. His research interests are in the areas of critical management studies, organisational sociology, and diversity. He uses the critical realism perspective in his works to reveal asymmetrical power relations and make disadvantaged and underrepresented individuals and nonhumans visible by voicing them.

Dimitria Groutsis is a Leading Scholar in the field of migration, labour mobility, and cultural diversity in the business context. Her innovative, evidence-based, policy-driven work has appeared in leading national and international peer-review journals, and book chapters and she has co-edited and co-authored several books. Her consulting role sees her working with the Diversity Council Australia, the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Australian Institute of Company Directors, the Australian Institute of Human Resource Management, Media Diversity Australia, large corporate sector partners and key stakeholders in the government and non-government sectors. Dr Groutsis has received several competitive external research grants, with total funding of over $2 million dollars, including an ARC Linkage grant, examining Syrian-Conflict refugees: settlement, employment, and education outcomes. Most recently, Dimitria has been awarded the University of Sydney Research Accelerator grant (SOAR) (2019–2020) and the Thompson Fellowship (2020–2021). She has and continues to serve as Associate Editor on several journals and she has served as the convenor of the Gender, Diversity, and Indigeneity stream (ANZAM) from 2015 to 2019. She is Director of the Migration, Ethno-Racial, Cultural and Intersectionality@Work Research Group, and Academic Director of the Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) Program, University of Sydney.

Sertan Kabadayi is Professor of Marketing at the Gabelli School of Business, Fordham University in New York, NY. Dr Kabadayi’s research interests focus on the Transformative Service Research (TSR), with topics including refugee well-being and service inclusion. He has published more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals including, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Journal of Service Management, Journal of Services Marketing, Psychology and Marketing. Dr Kabadayi currently serves as the Co-Chair of the American Marketing Association’s Services Special Interest Group (SERVSIG) and the Associate Editor of Journal of Services Marketing, Service Industries Journal, and the Journal of Creating Value. He also serves as the Project Officer of ServCollab, a non-profit organisation that seeks to serve humanity by reducing suffering and increasing well-being through collaborations with different stakeholders.

Rifat Kamasak is Professor of Management and Strategy at the University of the West of England, UK. He also holds board membership positions in several companies listed on Istanbul Stock Exchange. He worked in the food, confectionery, carpet, textile, aluminium, metal, retailing, trading, and consulting industries for nearly 20 years. He has done research, consultancy, and training at a large number of organisations and run his family’s traditional hand-made carpet business. Having completed his Bachelor’s degree in Economics and his Postgraduate Diploma in International Management at the University of Istanbul, he received his MA in Marketing from Middlesex University London, MA in Management from Durham University, and MSc in Applied Linguistics from the University of Oxford and PhD in Management Studies from the University of Exeter (2014). His primary interest areas are strategic management, knowledge, and innovation and diversity management.

Damla Koroglu has obtained her Bachelor’s degree in the Business Administration and Psychology at Hacettepe University. She subsequently started her Graduate education in Istanbul University, School of Business. From that time onwards, she has been working as a Research Assistant at Istanbul University and continues her PhD studies in Management & Organisation. Her field of work includes behavioural finance, woman issues, industrial and organisational psychology. She spent a year as a Visiting Researcher in Germany and Spain. She has a published book about Burnout Syndrome.

Olivia Kyriakidou is the Coordinator of the MSc in Organisational Psychology at the American College of Greece. Her current research interests are focussed on the field of equality, diversity, and inclusion at work with a special interest in the remaking of the contemporary world of work and employment due to artificial intelligence, technology, and automation. Her most recent research project involves the exploration of the impact of the growing diffusion of automation and artificial intelligence on specific groups (such as women and people from various ethnic and racial groups) in the workplace. Dr Kyriakidou has been widely published in several international journals, such as Organisation Studies, Millbank Quarterly, Social Science and Medicine, and Work, Employment and Society. Olivia has served as Associate Editor for European Management Review and as a member of the editorial board of several academic journals.

Peter McKiernan is Professor of Management in the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at Strathclyde Business School. Also, he is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Management at the Brussels School of Governance, VUB, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Notre Dame, Australia. He has authored, edited, or co-authored 10 books, and his research has been published in leading academic journals. Peter’s main research and practice are on how organisations learn about how their future might unfold and how they might prepare their current strategies to cope. The British Academy of Management (BAM) honoured him in 2016 with their Lifetime Achievement Award and again in 2022, with their highest award for outstanding leadership and contribution to the profession (the Cooper Medal). In 2013, CEEMAN honoured him with their Institutional Champion of the Year award. He has been President of the BAM, and President of the European Academy of Management.

Mustafa F. Özbilgin is a Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Brunel Business School, Brunel University London. His research focusses on equality, diversity, and inclusion at work from comparative and relational perspectives. He has conducted field studies in the UK and internationally, and his work is empirically grounded. He is an engaged scholar driven by values of workplace democracy, equality for all, and humanisation of work.

Ozlem Ozdemir is an Assistant Professor at Regent’s University London. She holds a PhD in Family Businesses and Women’s Entrepreneurship, which she completed at the University of Chester, Faculty of Business Enterprise and Lifelong Learning. Before starting her academic life, Ozlem worked 15 years as a Research and Development Manager for public and non-profit international organisations. She started her academic career as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Chester and moved to Loughborough University London Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship as a University Teacher. She has several research studies on entrepreneurship, cross-cultural management, and family business. Two book chapters were published in The Palgravia Encyclopaedia of Interest Groups and Handbook of Cross-Cultural Marketing (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar). She also joined several international and national seminars and presented her research studies on entrepreneurship and family business management.

Tom Pfefferkorn is the Director of the Global Incubator at Edinburgh Business School, overseeing an integral part of the University’s commercialisation offering. He is an Assistant Professor, a fellow of Advance HE (FHEA), a member of CMI, a serial entrepreneur, and a technology consultant. Tom’s research combines the fields of Business Management and Cognitive and Behavioural Science, studying the dynamics between organisational controls, human behaviour, and business performance. In his PhD thesis, Tom investigated the role of performance measurement systems and performance management practices in directing management attention in business organisations. Tom has been awarded for his excellence in research and practice by various public and private sector bodies (i.e, ELUPEG, James Watt Scholarship, British Academy of Management). Tom is co-founder of the EBS Consultancy Bootcamp, a continuing professional development accelerator and knowledge exchange platform for business students to work in the capacity of management consultants with real business clients.

Julian Randall is currently Honorary Professor at Edinburgh Business School. His specialist research subject is the management of change. Following his PhD at the University of St Andrews, he has served in four Scottish universities. He previously ran his own management consultancy company for 17 years working in the Government, Oil and gas and retail sectors. He has authored four books on the management of change and has published in Organization; The Journal of Organizational Change Management, and The Journal of Change Management. He won the best full paper award in the Organisational transformation and change stream at the British Academy of Management Conference in 2019. He will shortly publish his fifth book based on current research into the work of internal change agents entitled Agency, change and learning. He is currently working with his colleagues in setting up an Institute of Work-based Learning at Heriot-Watt University.

Florian Scheuring is an Assistant Professor at Edinburgh Business School and a member of the Centre for Logistics and Sustainability. He completed his PhD in Business Management at Heriot-Watt University, exploring the influence of port community members on a port community’s performance through a social capital lens. His research interests stretch across a range of topics, including performance management, stakeholder relationship management, logistics, supply chain collaboration, and work-based learning. Florian is part of the Operations Management and Logistics subject group, engaged in Undergraduate, Postgraduate and DBA supervision, and has taught Business Research Methods, Operations Management, Management in a Global Context, and Freight Transport and Warehouse Management. He is the Programme Director of the MSc Operations Management and manages the suite of Undergraduate Management Dissertations at Edinburgh Business School. Prior to his current role, he worked for Royal Mail in several capacities.

Meltem Yavuz Sercekman is Lecturer at the Brunel Business School, Brunel University London, UK. She completed her PhD in the Department of Management and Organization at Marmara University, Turkey. She holds a Master’s degree in Psychology of Work with a thesis on ‘mindfulness-based interventions and their reflections on organisations’ in the Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour from the University of Leicester, UK. Yavuz Sercekman is an accredited Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR) teacher and founder of the Mind Crafting Academy, which offers mindfulness-based training and consultancy services to institutions and individuals.

Akwal Sunner is a Strategy Consultant at MH&A where he specialises in strategy, innovation, and emerging technologies. He gained his Ph.D. in Innovation Ecosystem Strategy from the University of Strathclyde in 2022. Akwal’s research interests rest at the intersection between strategy, innovation, and ecosystems, with a specific focus on harnessing the power of innovation and emerging technologies to unlock strategic opportunities for public and private businesses.

Joana Vassilopoulou is an Associate Professor (Reader) in HRM and Director of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion and UN PRME at Brunel Business School, Brunel University London. Her research focusses on equality, diversity, and inclusion, gender and ethnicity at work, migration, and precarious work, from a critical and international comparative perspective. Dr Vassilopoulou has an established academic and professional record in the field of diversity and inclusion, is frequently invited to deliver talks and has organised and hosted the international Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) conference twice. Currently, Joana is an editor at the Work, Employment and Society (WES) Journal. From 2015 to 2020, she served as an Associate Editor of the European Management Review (EMR) and was a board member of the European Academy of Management (EURAM) and the UK National Representative of EURAM. She has published in edited collections and journals such as Work, Employment and Society, the European Journal of Industrial Relations, International Business Review, and the International Journal of Human Resource Management. She has a PhD from Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia and her Social Science/Sociology degree from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.

Baris Yalcinkaya is a Senior Digital Marketing Consultant and has been an Instructor at Yeditepe University, Istanbul. He is a certified Google partner and specialises in search engine optimisation and brand presence. He has been working for major service-oriented businesses such as travel and leisure, accommodation, restaurants, educational institutions, software, electronics, and surveillance industries in Turkey. He has been giving consultancy services, building strategies for organic results and social media engagement in addition to digital transformation frameworks for companies or brands.

Preface

Equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) is a complex domain that must be integrated across all organisational areas since these concepts nurture organisational activities at different levels. Considering the fundamentals of these concepts and managing them effectively in the workplace contribute significantly to organisational performance. Indeed, as including and managing diverse talent is a strategic move in competitiveness, organisations need to have strong human resources to achieve effectiveness and dynamism in their processes. In this sense, when diversity is successfully managed in organisations, employee productivity can be enhanced and employee satisfaction can be increased, which in turn, can lead to improved organisational performance. Accordingly, given these arguments, it becomes evident that the concept of EDI cannot be discussed without incorporating strategic organisational factors, especially in the compelling new business order. From this point forth, in today’s ever-growing digitalised and competitive business world, organisations strive to pay attention to their EDI approaches from different perspectives (i.e. technological and strategic).

With the recent changes brought by both Industry 4.0 on the technology side and the COVID-19 pandemic at the social end, how the EDI concept is approached in the workplace have remained vague since the primary focus of organisations has mainly been on the ways of surviving in profit. Under these circumstances, organisations have largely failed to fully integrate their strategic and technological developments relying on the principles of the EDI and, as such stunt the comprehension of the transformation of the EDI concept by means of contemporary approaches. In this respect, this book sets out to bridge the spread of disciplines in examining traditional and contemporary approaches in EDI from strategic and technological perspectives and aims to provide novel insights into the extant knowledge and practices in today’s digitalised business world.