EXPRESS: Bridging the Divide: Integrating Merit and DEI Frameworks for Human Resource Management Practices

The recent backlash against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) creates a strategic paradox for hospitality and tourism (H&T) firms: the sector’s demographic and cultural diversity heighten the need for DEI initiatives even as such efforts face opposition. In response we develop a framework that reframes DEI as the process safeguarding procedural fairness to ensure merit-based outcomes. We integrate identity-blind personnel scholarship (e.g. validity and KSAOs) with identity-conscious DEI research (e.g. structural bias, and intergroup dynamics) to show how DEI practices mitigate bias that undermine merit. We further propose targeted moral appeals (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, purity) mapped to specific backlash mechanisms to strengthen perceived fairness of DEI-integrated systems. By grounding a moral appeal in shared standards of procedural and outcome fairness, this framework moves beyond the DEI business case rationale and provides pathways for future research.