Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in International Business: A Review and Research Agenda

Abstract

Increasingly, social movements are pushing international organizations to consider a more universal as opposed to local approach to global equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) responses. We review research on EDI in international business (IB) and in other business fields to understand how international business research could reframe the way international organizations manage EDI effectively across borders. Our review includes a text analysis that finds EDI research in IB emerged about a decade later than research outside of IB, that gender is the most studied diversity category, and that performance and institutional arguments are more common than moral or resistance arguments. We follow this with a narrative review, in which we find that IB research on EDI excels in modeling complexity and theorizing foundational mechanisms. We argue that incorporating the traditions of EDI research with IB theories can refocus IB research toward arguments that consider moral principles as well as performance, power differentials, resistance to EDI and the dynamic, contextualized nature of EDI in international organizations.