Twenty-second International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are implementing many initiatives to foster equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). Based on a community-driven approach, I take the case of local action groups such as departmental committees. Most of these groups rely on volunteer work and do not necessarily have available extensive resources to justify and validate the effects of their actions. I use an ethnographic approach combining observations and nine interviews with members of a “Diversity in Physics” committee launched in 2014 in a French-speaking university in the province of Quebec (Canada). I present four committee roles as perceived by its members. This provides insights about the members’ aimed repercussions and the collective underlying intentions behind the committee’s numerous actions. To support an identity work analysis, I argue that when individuals interact about EDI issues within their organization, they revisit their own systems of values and beliefs. From this analysis emerges an alternative auto-evaluation frame for EDI action groups. This frame is centered around two evaluation criteria: “create change in individuals from the community” and “adopt a reflexive process as a group”. These criteria can offer insight to EDI action groups on the process of integrating EDI in a university context.