Culture chores: creating DEI culture
As this project began, one of the focal points was what charities individually and the sector as a whole should and should not do in order to advance DEI. In Section 5, we address some of the actions that can be taken.
As our research has developed, the question of what to do has been joined, and perhaps even surpassed in importance, by another critical question – that is, ‘If everyone thinks that diversity is such a good thing, why is there so little of it in the charity sector?’
This is a different order of question to what, practically, should be done for DEI. It focuses instead on deep-lying issues
of why charities and the charity sector have not made more progress.
The chief executive of one charitable foundation says that transformation means that we need to ‘change the systems, the norms and the culture of our sector – solutions that acknowledge and confront the reasons we choose not to change’ (Fitzpatrick, 2020).
A keyword in the quote above is ‘culture’. According to Sally Engle Merry: ‘Cultures consist not only of beliefs and values but also practices, habits, and commonsensical ways of doing things. They include institutional arrangements, political structures, and legal regulations’ (2006, p. 15). These elements come together to form what Raymond Williams called a ‘way of life’ (cited in Rothman, 2014). Culture is powerful to the extent that the famous management consultant and writer Peter Drucker is supposed to have said that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ (cited in Hymen, 2015). This means that strategic plans (NCVO, 2017) that fundamentally challenge prevailing culture of an organisation, a sector or a society tend to meet resistance and can fall by the wayside. For example, when publisher Penguin Random House pledged to better reflect society in its output, critics condemned the move as one that would drive down ‘standards’ (Flood, 2018) – reflecting a widely held belief that diversity and excellence are somehow at odds.
But the good news is that, though it takes time and investment, culture can and does change and institutions and leaders have their part to play, because, as Engle Merry says, ‘as institutions … change, so do beliefs, values and practices’ (2006, p. 15).
