In public administration, the term diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) refers to programs and policies which encourage the participation and representation of distinct groups of people by considering the inclusion of distinct races, religion, age, culture, sexual orientation, ethnicities, ability, and people with disabilities (Grubbs, 2020). Diversity entails all characteristics that make a group different from another such as religion, race, ethnicity, age, mental ability, marital status, gender, physical abilities, and disabilities. Equity involves ensuring fair treatment and access of opportunities among people while also doing away with barriers hindering others from full participation. Inclusion involves building a culture that makes everyone feel welcomed to participate by extending invitations to every individual or group (Grubbs, 2020). This paper presents a discussion about the definition of the term DEI as used in public administration, how DEI impacts ethics and how ethics impacts DEI and concludes with how the information impacts my personal ethics.
Previous research argues that one way of making decisions that are more ethical within an organization is by ensuring that the organization has a diverse group of employees (Grubbs, 2020). This is due to the fact that a diverse workforce will have different ideas, beliefs, and values such that when properly managed it should be capable of creating various options and solutions solving ethical problems. As mentioned earlier, DEI is concerned with providing an inclusive working environment for everyone while offering equal freedom of self-expression and respecting everyone’s actions irrespective of their background (Grubbs, 2020). This builds a culture of togetherness which facilitates the accommodation of various behaviors of people from different backgrounds. In the long run, DEI gives all employees a sense of belonging which creates employee job satisfaction and morale that enhances employee productivity.
Successful implementation of DEI depends on ethical decision makers in organizations. Efforts made to ensure the adoption of DEI would not be a spotlight now if it were not for ethical leaders within the field of public relations and communications. Ethics has seen ethical leaders push for the development of policies and programs that offer an inclusive working environment for employees coming from different backgrounds (Grubbs, 2020). The fact that DEI programs are developed and embraced by ethical leaders means that positive results of DEI are attributable to the influence of ethical leadership. It is important to note that DEI efforts do not make institutions ethical but ethical companies are associated with a diverse and inclusive workforce.
In conclusion, ethical decision making has become an area of interest to both organizations and researchers. This is due to the fact that individuals in workplaces have been facing ethical challenges which often require them to make decisions. It is for this reason that ethical leaders began advocating for the adoption of DEI in organizations to provide a wide range of alternatives that an employee could choose from in case of any ethical issue faced. The main concept of DEI is to provide an inclusive working environment and programs that promote fairness and equal chances to all. This information has helped me learn that the term DEI and ethics are closely related because DEI creates good ethics among employees and good ethics among decision makers promote the adoption of inclusive strategies. Lastly, the existence of DEI programs in an organization does not make it ethical but instead ethical organizations make diverse DEI programs.
Reference
Grubbs, V. (2020). Diversity, equity, and inclusion that matter.New England Journal of Medicine, 383(4), e25.