Oltre la certificazione: costruire una cultura della diversità e dell’inclusione

“I prefer exceptions,” writes Polish poet and Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska in Possibilities, celebrating uniqueness and inviting us to look beyond predefined categories and forms of belonging. Szymborska’s poetic language raises a profoundly organisational question. Every organisation defines, explicitly or implicitly, what it considers “normal”: which profiles it recognises, which behaviours it rewards, which careers it enables, which voices it listens to, and which differences it risks making invisible or leaving at the margins.

Talking about diversity and inclusion (D&I) therefore means questioning precisely how this “norm” is constructed. It means asking whether differences are regarded as deviations to be eliminated or corrected, exceptions to be tolerated or, instead, a constitutive feature of organisations and communities, capable of broadening their perspectives, possibilities and capacity to create value.

For a scientific society in the field of management, D&I is therefore not only a matter of values, but a fundamentally managerial concern.The management we study, teach and help to shape as a scholarly community is not neutral. It produces categories, models and practices that affect how organisations create and distribute opportunities, recognise merit and give people a voice, shaping contexts in which individuals can contribute without having to conform to a single implicit model of belonging and success. Business Ethics calls attention to the moral responsibility of organisations, while Humanistic Management places human dignity and the intrinsic value of the person at its core. This perspective is also reflected in the SIMA Manifesto for Management Studies, which calls upon the scholarly community to embrace its responsibility to contribute to the common good and advances a renewed agenda for the discipline, in which diversity, equity and inclusion, business ethics and a “new humanism in management” have a clear place.

Engaging with D&I within SIMA does not therefore mean adding another topic to the already broad agenda of management studies. Rather, it means translating the vision expressed in the Manifesto into practice and, as a scholarly community, contributing to a form of management capable of recognising human dignity, valuing differences and removing the barriers that constrain opportunities and participation.

It is also from this perspective that we should understand the recent renewal of SIMA’s Gender Equality Certification under UNI/PdR 125:2022. The certification recognises SIMA’s commitment to translating the principles of equity and inclusion into verifiable organisational practices through the adoption of a gender equality management system based on measurable policies, processes, objectives and indicators, subject to ongoing monitoring and continuous improvement.

The renewal is part of a process that, over recent years, has progressively embedded these principles in the life of SIMA, both as an organisation and as a community of people.. Attention to representation and gender balance has extended to governing bodies, working groups, panels, round tables and scientific events. In parallel, SIMA has worked to promote inclusive language, raise awareness of stereotypes and unconscious bias, and adopt organisational measures attentive to work–life balance. The significant presence of women in governing bodies and leadership roles further demonstrates how this commitment is reflected in the governance and representation of our scholarly community.

The same orientation has progressively shaped SIMA’s external engagement through research, education and public engagement. Make IT a Casedeveloped with Invitalia as part of the Women’s Entrepreneurship Programme, and initiatives promoted through the Festival del Management on stereotypes, bias and inclusive leadership have brought these issues into dialogue with students, businesses and institutions. In research and internationalisation, the EDIR – Equality, Diversity, Inclusion, Respectconducted by a SIMA research group in collaboration with the British Academy of Management (BAM), explored these issues in Italian management departments, providing a comparative replication of the study conducted by BAM in the United Kingdom.

The SIMA Strategic Plan 2026–2028 consolidates this trajectory and makes it more explicit, giving D&I full strategic standing while further strengthening its cross-cutting nature. D&I is therefore not a separate domain confined to dedicated initiatives, but a perspective that cuts across research and scientific development, education and third mission activities, as well as other strategic areas such as internationalisation, communication and NextGen.

Proprio NextGen rende particolarmente evidente il significato di questa intersezione. Guardare alle nuove generazioni significa non soltanto sostenerne l’ingresso, la crescita e la partecipazione nella comunità scientifica, ma anche creare le condizioni perché possano portare sensibilità, linguaggi, temi e strumenti nuovi. Mentoring, micro-formazione e confronto tra generazioni diventano così occasioni per ampliare le opportunità e, insieme, per interrogare e rinnovare pratiche e modelli consolidati.

The challenges ahead therefore concern not only what SIMA will do in the field of D&I, but how we will do it together: through the Society’s everyday choices, the questions we ask in our research, the language we use, the opportunities we create and the voices to which we choose to give space. A strategy can set a direction and a certification can measure progress, but an inclusive culture takes shape and is sustained only when it turns into shared practice..

Possibilities is the poem by Szymborska with which we began, and also the aspiration with which it seems fitting to close. diversità ci chiede di riconoscere le differenze; l’Diversity asks us to create the conditions for those differences to open up new possibilities. Building those conditions together is a shared responsibility and, for a scholarly community, a way of contributing to the future of management.

Maria della Lucia

Coordinatrice gruppo di lavoro Diversity & Inclusion