Diversity and inclusion remain issues in the agendas of today’s organizations. Despite significant advances in managing workforce differences, there are still challenges to face in order to truly achieve fully inclusive organizations. Diversity management is set up as the key success factor in recognizing and integrating employee differences, so it is particularly relevant for companies to become aware of the need to improve their management capability in this area. This article provides a literature review of the terms diversity and inclusion, the analysis of the main effects they have and their management and the specific case study of functional diversity. A conclusion section is provided in the last section of the article.

The lack of gender diversity at CEO level is a critical problem in many industries, as it prevents organisations from taking advantage of the whole pool of available talent. Women have progressively been incorporated in all professional domains. Although this process is taking place with unevenness, women are in positions that were traditionally occupied solely by men. In parallel, legal recognition of women’s labour rights evolved and many legal systems worldwide have advanced towards a mandatory non-discrimination approach. Nevertheless, women remain underrepresented in power and decision-making positions. A variety of theoretical approaches, from organisational theory, sociology, psychology and economics have tried to unravel the causes behind that and the possible solutions to change the tendency. We consider that to advance, we need a theoretical framework that integrates these perspectives in order to achieve: 1) an understanding of the whole personal, academic and professional life cycle; 2) identify the key determinant factors along the life cycle, and 3) study in depth the relative importance of each determinant and their interactions from women’s perspective, decision-making and context. This perspective provides new insights to approach the problem, which is complex and multicausal, in a comprehensive and practically oriented way.

Evidence-based people management is an approach to the profession and practice of people management that focuses on increasing the use of critical thinking and the best evidence available for decision-making. This article puts forward several reasons why people management practitioners do not adopt a more evidence-based approach and argues how useful this approach can be for organizations. A seven-stage process is presented for making decisions that make better use of evidence: identifying, asking, acquiring, appraising, aggregating, applying and assessing. There are four sources of evidence that can improve the quality of decisions in people management: scientific evidence, organizational data, professional experience and stakeholder input. Finally, practical suggestions are offered for implementing this approach in organizations, as well as the main objections presented by managers are outlined.

Justice has always been considered a concept that is very separate from business management and has only been considered legitimate as a social objective. Economic theory has never produced anything that is specific to organizations. In particular, one of the fathers of economics, Adam Smith, wanted to show what was good for the world, which can be paralleled with the concept of eudaimonia (happiness) proposed by Aristotle. In a simplistic view of economics, the ‘invisible hand’ implies that companies must maximize profits and that doing so would already contribute to this social eudaimonia. That is their role. Rethinking this objective proposed by Smith, we can see that eudaimonia can only be achieved if, when companies are analysed, their decision-making incorporates values and virtues. This requires them to decide the goals they have to set and consider the benefits as results that will only be realised by making the right decisions or, in other words, with the inclusion of these values. In this essay, our aim is to show that generating justice must be one of the basic objectives when running a company because, if this objective is not incorporated within the decision-making process, the decisions made incorporating injustices can result in the same organizational structure. For companies, therefore, decision-making must generate justice and, as such, it cannot be directed in any way. This justice must be applied with Aristotelian logic or, in other words, on a case to case basis that judges each situation on its individual merits. This is how you can generate profits, which you will never be able to ascertain whether or not they have been maximized, but which are satisfactory, thereby achieving the ultimate goal of eudaimonia. This would align what Aristotle said with what Adam Smith proposed.

The psychological wellbeing of workers derives from a proper balance between, on the one hand, motivating challenges and obstacles faced and, on the other hand, job and personal resources to overcome them. Managers or supervisors are in a privileged position to make this balance possible, through their daily behavior shown in their leadership style. Leadership styles can be ordered according to their impact on job stress, from the most negative to the most positive style: abusive, passive, transactional and transformational. The article explains the ways in which managers can affect employees' psychosocial wellbeing and the specific role of each leadership style. Finally, it concludes by giving responsibility to develop more positive leadership styles not only to individual managers, but also to companies and institutions, as well as educational institutions.