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Understanding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Co-Designed by Aalto EE in Singapore and Helsinki
A healthy and successful organization is built on diverse skills, competencies, experiences, and backgrounds. Each organizational member plays a role in nurturing an inclusive work culture.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are critical issues across industries for organizations of all sizes. They support successful growth by enabling a better understanding of customers and communities and fostering innovation capability and creativity through diverse perspectives and competencies.
The Understanding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program, co-designed by Aalto EE in Singapore and Helsinki, enables you to reflect on diversity, equity, and inclusion from a truly global perspective. The program brings together participants from the Asia Pacific region and the Nordics to help you understand the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. Together you will create a better understanding of your own and others' behavior to strengthen your own and your organization's diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. During the program, you will learn to assess your organization's diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and ambitions and work on your personal emotional intelligence development plan.
By the end of the program, you will be able to recognize the individual and organizational factors supporting diversity and inclusion. You will also get practical tools to support implementing and designing a diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy in your organization.
Engage in deep discussions with the Asia Pacific and Nordic participants to open new ways of thinking.
World-class facilitated learning sessions designed to accelerate change personally and in the organization.
Align diversity, equity, and inclusion thinking with business goals.
Benefits
The program is both action and reflection-based. During the program, you are challenged to think of questions such as how, diversity, equity, and inclusion play out in daily organizational interactions, and what kind of culture and values would best support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. What is your role in building an inclusive and respectful organizational culture, and how can this culture support the organizational strategy?
Reflect on yourself as an individual and your diversity, equity, and inclusion practices
Learn to better understand unconscious biases versus culturally smart attitudes and make conscious adaptations in your own communication and behavioral style
For
The program is designed for managers and business leaders who want to improve their understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion and its importance in the workplace and are looking to put their diversity, equity, and inclusion plans into action.
The program is also relevant for managers, leaders, experts, and specialists who aspire to develop their emotional intelligence and self-awareness to grow as active organizational members of diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces.
Contents and Schedule
The program consists of a blended setup of self-paced study and interactive live online sessions. It includes the Fundamentals of Emotional Intelligence online course and has two interactive live webinars with distinguished faculty from Aalto University.
The program begins with an orientation on the topic. Pre-material and a self-reflection assignment will prepare you for the first live online session, which focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusion in organizations. After the first module, you will complete the Emotional Intelligence online course at your own pace and start to work on your personal Emotional Intelligence Workbook. In the second live online session, you will learn how knowing yourself better contributes to the well-being and success of an inclusive, equitable, and diverse organization.
Program Structure
Pre-module period of 2–3 weeks
Orientation, Individual preparation, Emotional Intelligence asynchronous online course.
Two half-day modules
Intensive live online contact learning sessions with instructors and peers.
Post-module period
Emotional Intelligence workbook in action
Modules
Instructors
Rebecca Piekkari
Rebecca Piekkari is a Marcus Wallenberg Professor of International Business at Aalto University School of Business.
Professor Piekkari has extensive experience studying the management of large multinational corporations, with a particular focus on internal communications, organization design & architecture, and corporate culture & diversity management.
Since 2004, she has been a Professor of International Business at Aalto University School of Business. Between 2011 and 2014, she was the Vice-Dean of Research and International Relations. She teaches 'Managing in a Global Context', 'People Management in Multinational Organizations', and 'Case Studies in Business & Management Research' in the M.Sc. and Ph.D. Programs at Aalto University.
Before joining Aalto University, Piekkari was a Research-Fellow at the Hanken School of Economics (Finland), a Lecturer at the University of Bath (UK), and the University of Sheffield (UK). She has held many visiting positions at foreign universities and business schools like INSEAD, Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), and Stanford University (USA).
Piekkari devotes 50% of her time to teaching and supervising M.Sc. students majoring in International Business. In addition, she focuses on language and careers. She is interested in using qualitative methods, particularly in International Business. Rebecca Piekkari has a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in International Business from the Helsinki School of Economics.
Timo Vuori
Timo Vuori is an Associate Professor, Strategic Management at Aalto University School of Science, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management.
Professor Timo O. Vuori is a strategy consultant and professor at Aalto University. His research on the psychological aspects of strategic management has been published in leading international journals and won several international awards. He has taught and presented his research at leading universities like Harvard and INSEAD.
Professor Vuori's research and teaching focus on how companies formulate and execute strategies. He has written two books with senior business executives on these topics. "Living Strategy" describes scenario-based strategy making in an ever-changing world. "Platform Strategy" describes how incumbent firms should and can renew themselves in the digital era. The books detail both the "hard" factors, such as technology and business models, and "soft" factors, such as people and psychology, influencing strategy and renewal.
Professor Vuori works extensively with companies, often collaborating with a leading strategy consulting company. Vuori helps the client organization formulate and evaluate several strategic options in strategy formulation projects. He uses advanced psychological techniques to help leaders unleash their strategic creativity and overcome thinking myopias and personal biases. This approach is based on his cutting-edge international research, also described in the Platform Strategy.
In strategy execution projects, Professor Vuori specializes in helping the client firm optimize the psychological engagement of the whole organization. He analyses the psychological impact of the intended strategy execution program and modifies it to maximally leverage the emotions of the organization's members' for effectiveness.
