The Contructions of Inclusive Leadership in Academia
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2020-08-26
Language
en
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Abstract
With diversity alive in organisations, the importance of ensuring all individuals feel able to
express their full selves is key to unlocking a climate of inclusion. With leaders being viewed
as holding responsibility in creating a productive work environment, they are categorised as
one of the main influencers to facilitating inclusion. As inclusion is being viewed as the key
ingredient to unlocking diversity, it is becoming increasingly more desirable and sought after.
Although the value in inclusion is being increasingly recognised, how leaders can enable a
climate of inclusion through their own leadership behaviour is still vastly unknown. This
qualitative study looks into the accounts held by academic leaders around the perceived ability
to be inclusive in their leadership behaviour. All participants lead a team of academic
professionals and have been internally pre-identified as being inclusive. Academia holds an
often-individualistic way of working with reward systems that support this, therefore inclusion
can be viewed as polarising in comparison to academia. The main behaviours that leaders
valued in facilitating an inclusive environment in their teams was through creating a sense of
safety, investing in communication channels, being courageous, and emphasizing the
importance of equity. Further, the study brings forward the often-hidden contradictions that
leaders are faced with, especially in relation to the paradoxes that inclusivity brings.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen