Taking up the challenge of organizational inclusion: A conceptual framework for including “diverse” individuals in organizations.

In the last few decades, inclusion has captured the attention of corporate leaders and prominent researchers. Business organizations, as non-spontaneous social systems, are particularly prone to be non-inclusive venues due to diversity among organizational populations which consist of groups of coworkers who are usually not entitled to choose their colleagues. This paper aims to enrich the understanding of inclusion within organizations, investigating its social dimension (the extent to which individuals feel woven into the social fabric of their organization) and the occupational dimension (the extent to which organizational members are involved in critical organizational processes). Building on the different bodies of literature on diversity and inclusion, leadership, human resource management, and organizational culture, the present study develops a conceptual framework on the dynamics of inclusion at the individual-organization level, emphasizing the roles of leadership and human resource management practices in establishing an inclusive culture and the subsequent synergistic inclusion of diversity within the workplace.