Is DEI built on dodgy data? (Ft. Alex Edmans)

Is diversity, equity and inclusion really good for business – or did we conflate it with being ‘the right thing to do’? Has the HR industry been gaslit by fancy consultancies and self-proclaimed experts selling us DEI-related products and services with big claims, but small measurable outcomes? And why are so many DEI professionals allergic to questions about evidence?

In this interview with Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School, and author of May contain lies: how stories statistics and studies exploit our biases – and what we can do about it, we discuss:

- Why is this such a taboo topic – and what happened when Alex first started challenging the orthodoxy that demographic DEI (specifically, race and sex) leads to better business outcomes?

- When did a supposedly causal link between DEI and business performance become accepted wisdom – and why was it such an easy ‘sell’ to HR professionals and senior executives? 

- What are the flaws in the data and the conclusions we see being drawn from it? Which reports should we believe – and which should we bin?

- Why is confirmation bias so powerful when we see data we like – and why are we so weird when we see data we don’t like?

- Did McKinsey deliberately mislead HR professionals, to sell their own, expensive business solutions? What lessons should we take from this, about the difference between reports which are really just marketing materials, versus more robust academic studies? 

- How can HR professionals feel more confident when scrutinising data, and reduce the likelihood of straying from sound evidence? 

- If the link between demographic diversity and business performance is weak (at most), what sort of diversity is good for business? 

Enjoy the episode!

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Alex's website and book: MayContainLies.com 

Alex's academic paper: (Diversity) Equity and Inclusion - Edmans, Flammer and Glossner, 2024 

Alex on the McKinsey reports