Empowering Diversity: The Role of Leadership in Inclusion in the Organizational Context

Introduction

In recent decades, the world has also faced problems related to the movement of people, for which globalization and wars are partly responsible. The result is the displacement of large numbers of individuals from their home territories, whether as immigrants (legal and illegal), temporary workers or refugees. Thus, societies and organizations are increasingly heterogeneous (Kuknor & Bhattacharya, 2020).

Given this scenario, it is not difficult to conclude that we are facing a complex reality with multiple challenges, namely in terms of the integration/inclusion of newcomers to host societies. And for this social inclusion, the integration in the workplace is a fundamental dimension, in which leadership can play an important role. Among the various approaches to leadership, we argue that the inclusive leadership and the responsible leadership approaches can contribute decisively to the integration of individuals in the work context and, consequently, to their social integration.

First defined in 2006, inclusive leadership is understood as “words and deeds by a leader or leaders that indicate an invitation and appreciation for others' contributions” (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006, p.927). Several authors have reflected on inclusive leadership and presented new definitions, making it difficult to find common ground among the various conceptualizations, as each one of them focuses on and values different aspects of leadership (Randel et al., 2016), ranging from the contributions of workers to the organization (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006), to the availability, openness and accessibility of leaders (Carmeli et al., 2010), or to the leader's behaviours as promoters of the workers' sense of belonging, namely through the promotion of shared decision-making (Randel et al., 2018).

Responsible leadership has also been the subject of research by several authors, who have proposed different definitions, from which two main perspectives stand out. The first perspective views leadership as an ethical phenomenon, while the second is associated with the notion of responsibility in leaders' actions (Roque & Ramos, 2019; Roque & Ramos, 2021). According to the first perspective, leadership can be seen as “a values-based and through ethical principles driven relationship between leaders and stakeholders who are connected through a shared sense of meaning and purpose through which they raise one another to higher levels of motivation and commitment for achieving sustainable values creation and social change” (Pless, 2007, p.438). For the second perspective, leadership can be viewed as “the consideration of the consequences of one's actions for all stakeholders, as well as the exertion of influence by enabling the involvement of affected stakeholders and by engaging in an active stakeholder dialogue” (Voegtlin et al., 2012, p.59).

What kind of leadership promotes the creation of more inclusive environments? The answer to this question will be anchored on two theoretical approaches: inclusive leadership and responsible leadership. Therefore, this chapter begins with a review of the literature on inclusion and diversity in the workplace, inclusive leadership, and responsible leadership, in academic databases, such as Social Sciences Citation Index, Emerging Sources Citation Index and SCImago. The objective was not to carry out a systematic review of the literature, but to find the most relevant articles to understand the role of leadership in successful inclusion in an organizational context. Subsequently, we seek to demonstrate how these two approaches can contribute to building a set of effective practices (in the sense of requirements or premises that must be put into practice) to incorporate the diversity and achieve the goal of inclusion/integration in the work context.