Undelivered Promises From the HR Profession: A Plea to Return to a More Defensible Motivation for Embracing Diversity

This paper argues that HR professionals stand to ultimately injure their credibility by making continued unsubstantiated claims regarding return on investment from initiatives to increase workforce diversity. Building on Williams and O’Reilly’s 1998 original review of over 80 empirical studies concerned with various manifestations of diversity, this paper focuses on studies examining outcomes of gender and racial/ethnic diversity and includes studies omitted by Williams and O’Reilly and studies published since 1997 but before 2002. More significantly, the paper reviews the existing studies reporting the impact of gender and racial/ethnic diversity at the firm and group level of analysis. Finding little evidence of the ability of gender or racial/ethnic diversity to make measurable contributions beyond random chance at the firm or group level, this paper advocates that HR professionals reposition the drive for workplace diversity to proceed from a motivation for social justice and adapt concepts inherent in institutional theory.