Qualitative study reveals human resource practitioners balance regulatory compliance with transformative inclusion, highlighting practical mechanisms for organizational diversity.
Key Points
To examine how human resource development practitioners translate diversity, equality, and inclusion policies into context-sensitive organizational practices within a small island state.
Conducted a qualitative study combining semi-structured interviews with human resource development practitioners and black-letter legal analysis in Malta.
Applied institutional and paradox theoretical perspectives to evaluate the tensions between formal compliance and transformative inclusion.
Practitioners expanded beyond standard compliance mechanisms, such as recruitment quotas and pay equity rules, by implementing inclusive leadership development, mentoring programs, employee resource networks, and cultural initiatives.
Organizations balanced tensions between European regulatory compliance and substantive, context-specific inclusion across intersectional factors including gender, disability, nationality, and LGBTIQ+ identities.