How public relations is managing the DEI retreat
New research examines how diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) shifted from a strategic asset to a political liability - and what that means for public relations practice.
Erica Ciszek of the University of Texas has published a useful framework to help corporate communicators make sense of how organisations are responding to political changes to DEI.
Since 2021 more than a dozen US states have enacted or proposed DEI bans. The Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action ruling has reshaped recruitment. Target, Bud Light and Disney have all been publicly called out for perceived wokeness.
Ciszek’s research, published in Public Relations Review, shows what this means for corporate communications and public relations practice. It is exactly the type of knowledge transfer that we need more of within practice to raise the quality of our advisory work.
How DEI moved from asset to risk
Ciszek tracks DEI through four overlapping phases:
Managerial issue - Recruitment pipelines, training programmes and the metrics to prove they work. Diversity valued for its contribution to performance.
Performative - DEI as visibility work, statements, campaigns, checklists and dashboards.
Radical - DEI as structural critique, rooted in social movements. Public relations practice both challenges and reinforces inequality.
Precarious - DEI as a risk issue, politically dangerous and institutionally disposable. This is the current moment in time.
The direction of travel from DEI as a strategic asset to a material risk is unmistakable. Indeed, Ciszek calls it out in the title of the paper - From managerial resource to precarious liability.
The challenging finding
The public relations function is supporting management in managing the rapid reversal and whiplash in communications functions.
Dismantling DEI hands the public relations function a new job. Someone has to manage the reputational and legal fallout of the retreat. Public relations, in Ciszek’s words, is reinforced as “an apparatus of risk management”.
If your DEI counsel has shifted from how do we advance equity to how do we manage exposure, you are living inside Ciszek’s argument.
The issue lands as a messaging gap between internal and external audiences, and for international organisations saying different things in different markets. In practice it means managing these different positions, rowing back on public statements and promotion, and a quiet shift in language in external communication and websites.
How to use the framework
The paper raises a number of important questions for your next management conversation:
Which phase of Ciszek’s framework describes your organisation? Is DEI a budgeted capability, a campaign or a line-item that has been deleted?
Has your counsel moved from advancing equity to managing risk? And what would it take to move it back?
Who benefits from how your organisation communicates about DEI and who bears the cost?
Look out for the Wadds Inc. mid-year research report this week. It’s a bumper summer annual edition before we head off on a break. The management retreat against the stakeholder perspective of organisations is one of the issues that we call out as having defined the first half of the year for professional communicators.
Have a good week ahead.
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