Why Companies Keep Choosing Diversity Strategies That Fail

Most strategies devised by managers to increase organizational diversity have actually failed—or even backfired. Why? For example, why have executives at nearly all Fortune 500 companies chosen to use diversity training, despite the reality that this diversity strategy typically does not work—and has in fact been linked to less diversity with respect to ethnicity and gender?

Intuitions-at-Work Theory

In my new research on Intuitions-at-Work Theory (IWT), I propose the problem is not that all diversity strategies are doomed to fail, but rather that business decisions involving diversity are strongly driven by intuition, and that managers have flawed intuitions about diversity—especially regarding which diversity strategies will fail and which diversity strategies will succeed.

IWT, which integrates and synthesizes prior empirical findings by myself and hundreds of other researchers, suggests that "managers often choose diversity strategies that fail for the same reason they often choose motivational strategies that fail: their…intuitions are systematically biased toward strategies that feel 'salient' (rather than 'subtle'), strategies that feel 'positive' (rather than 'negative'), and strategies that feel 'certain' (rather than 'uncertain')—even when those strategies are suboptimal" (Daniels 2025).

Managers' Intuitions Are Biased

For instance, IWT proposes that managers tend to overvalue diversity training because it's highly salient: It jumps to the top of a manager's mind quickly and easily—and it "feels like" an intuitively obvious approach that "should" accomplish its goal of reducing demographic discrimination and, in turn, boosting diversity. In fact, empirical research reveals that conventional diversity training, on average, tends to fail or even backfire. In many cases, diversity training has triggered backlash, resistance, and anger—amplifying animosity toward those who are viewed as different. But time and again, executives have gravitated toward choosing diversity training, largely because it is so intuitive and salient.

Although executives overuse "salient" strategies like diversity training, they only rarely opt for "subtle" strategies like presenting diversity reminders to hiring managers immediately before hiring decisions are made—despite the fact that this latter strategy does boost organizational diversity. A diversity reminder is "a nudge just before [managers] make a hiring decision which prompts them to consider ways in which their organization is diverse [or] wants to be diverse." One of the paradoxes highlighted by IWT is that "powerful diversity strategies (e.g., diversity reminders just before hiring decisions) can feel too subtle to use" (Daniels 2025).

I call this a "salience bias." It is one of three systematic biases identified by IWT, along with a "positivity bias" (a bias toward strategies that feel "positive") and a "certainty bias" (a bias towards strategies that feel "certain" or reliable).

Due to the positivity bias, "managers appear to favor separate evaluation of candidates (evaluating each candidate individually) over joint evaluation of candidates (evaluating candidates side-by-side) because joint evaluation can lead to more decision conflict and feel worse, even though separate evaluation exacerbates gender bias and ultimately leads to less gender diversity compared to joint evaluation." Meanwhile, due to the certainty bias, "executives have been reluctant to use a strategy of anonymizing résumés (removing information like names and photos that could reveal an applicant's social category) because discarding information feels risky and unreliable—but anonymizing résumés ironically tends to be a reliable and effective method of increasing diversity" (Daniels 2025).

How to Improve Decisions About Organizational Diversity

In prior research, my colleagues and I showed that businesses have enormous financial incentives to get diversity right. As a result, it's crucial for managers to realize that their gut feelings regarding which diversity strategies should be used will often be systematically biased—and even counterproductive. The three biases highlighted by IWT give managers a useful, practical checklist for evaluating potential diversity strategies. Here's the key question managers need to ask themselves: "Am I really choosing this diversity strategy because it will be effective, or simply because it feels salient, positive, or certain?" To do better, executives need to be willing to try using diversity strategies that feel counterintuitive and uncomfortable. Executives who do manage to transcend these psychological barriers will enjoy a substantial competitive advantage when it comes to managing critical organizational challenges involving diversity. Companies that truly seek to reduce discrimination and boost diversity must start to prioritize empirical evidence and true effectiveness over what feels intuitive.