Interview with Ahmmad Brown and Ritu Tripathi on DEI Global Case Writing Competition Win
I recently sat down with MSLOC/ELOC faculty members Ahmmad Brown, PhD, and Ritu Tripathi, PhD, to learn more about the case competition award they won this fall. In the edited transcript of our interview below, Ahmmad and Ritu talk about the case, what types of learners and learning it is meant to support, and the importance of linking strategy to implementation.
Ahmmad and Ritu, congratulations on your award and kudos for your highly valuable work to develop this case. Please share more about the competition.
RITU TRIPATHI (RT): The Global DEI Case Competition is held by the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan. The competition guidelines require the cases entered to focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. The philosophy of the competition speaks to the good and important role pedagogy plays in equipping people to bring about change in organizations. Cases have a great role to play in that problem-based learning process.
How did your partnership come about? What do you each bring to the partnership?
AHMMAD BROWN (AB): Ritu and I teach two courses together: MSLOC 442 Leading Global Change and ELOC Reimagining DEI for Strategic Change. Through our work together, we talk about our different disciplinary backgrounds and where they intersect—Ritu is trained as a psychologist, I’m trained as a sociologist. We always work with our students to push and challenge thinking and assumptions about what DEI work is, can be, or should be for them. A lot of what ended up in the case is rooted in our conversations about doing DEI work in a way that does not engage in ethical imperialism. For example, when Ritu introduces variances across regional cultures, it can challenge what students think inclusion is, that “it is always inherently better to include people, all the time.” Surfacing those conflicts, and challenging ideas about what is experienced as inclusive across different cultures, is a key part of our design of our courses. This case is a great way to illustrate and explore these ideas. Cases also allow for integration of different disciplines in ways that practitioner and scholarly pieces may not be able to.
This case, “Global Firm and Local Labor: Delivering Paid Parental Leave,” is based, in part, on a real person and situation. We had a high-level mental model of what this case would be, and when Ritu brought the WDI Competition opportunity to us, it flowed naturally. We knew we could bring it to life in a way that would be compelling and, since it’s in case format, we would have some flexibility that other formats (e.g., practice pieces) don’t allow.
In this case, paid parental leave is a central issue for our protagonist and the organization. When looking at a policy and practice like this, we have a lot of questions, such as:
- Who has access to the benefit?
- Does formal access differ by gender identity? Does that make sense?
- What are the informal reasons why people are or are not using the benefit?
- Why are people not taking the benefit if it’s available?
RT: In our teaching, we are trying to connect the macro and the micro together. We are looking at how interpersonal dynamics affect policy in workplace. And when policy-level initiatives exist, does the level of implicit bias in the organization still persist, in this case, that women get penalized when they take the benefit? Perhaps there’s a taboo, or a stigma. This area of inquiry is where our work—Ahmmad’s and mine—interfaces quite well.
What need did you seek to fill? And for which learners?
AB: We developed this case with students in MBA, policy, organizational development, change, and/or HR programs in mind. For all learners, whether their learning experience is coming in an academic program or organizational workplace setting, we are focused on extending, challenging, and even replacing their mental models of what “DEI work” is. At the end of the day, this is a strategy and operations case with some culture elements. This case poses the question: what do you do as a leader when there is significant complexity and disagreement across people, policy, strategy, and operations? That’s not what people typically think about when they think about DEI, which is a problem.
RT: This strategy operations case weaves in how strategic, policy-level decisions meet the culture of the organization. What are the challenges in policy implementation? When middle managers receive a new mandate and do not know how to implement it, what happens? How are we defining terms, i.e., who do you call a “parent” in different cultures and places? Institutionalizing is one thing; implementing is another. Implementation strongly resonates with me because that’s where I see the future managers and leaders struggling.
AB: Often the strategy and implementation are separated from one another in MBA and other graduate coursework. Fundamentally, what we are doing at MSLOC is integrating both – conceptualizing the strategy, connecting strategy to implementation, conceptualizing the implementation. This is different in our [MSLOC] program – we ask, what does it look like to implement this on the ground? The C-suite can come up with a great plan on paper, but the more diverse the organization is, in the literal sense of the word, the more we are going to need to think about what that means for implementation.
RT: So often, strategies, and institutionalization of policies, appear very grandiose and appealing in the headlines. But it falls through the cracks the moment it is out there waiting to be implemented.
What are your hopes for the case and how it’s used?
RT: We hope it will be used for many different groups and in a variety of ways for learning and discussion. I recently used it in an undergraduate class, with many students without work experience, and the students were able to pick up the gist of these tensions and nuances in the case.
AB: We are using it in our MSLOC Leading Global Chance course right now. I’m also speaking to an organization’s board about the case, as an illustration of doing DEI work and discussion of an analogous situation they are working on in their organization. No matter the setting, we hope this case will help stakeholders and students to engage in conversations they may otherwise resist. Getting professionals more comfortable with complexity is the meta level goal.
Last question: How can professionals, including non-academics, access the case?
RT: Anyone can access it through WDI Publishing.
AB: It can definitely be used in organizations outside academia.