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Growing concern about the shortcomings of diversity training programs has prompted calls from a number of scholars for an alternative approach, one which encourages employees to learn about and from the different perspectives in their workplace (e.g. Anard and Winters, 2008; Chavez and Weisinger, 2008; Moss-Racusin et al. , 2014). We respond to this call by developing an integrative framework that leverages the range of ideas, information, knowledge and perspectives present in a diverse workforce, and we do so with the aim of simultaneously promoting respectful relationships and improved organizational actions.
By integrating the diversity learning (Rainey and Kolb, 1995); organizational diversity integration and learning perspective (Ely and Thomas, 2001; Thomas and Ely, 1996) and deliberative democracy theories (Thompson, 2008) into our framework, we propose the following criteria for effective diversity learning to take place in the workplace: inclusion of minority group members in the organizational decision-making process; organizational random and stratified sampling to establish multiple teams that reflect the heterogeneous composition of an organization; equal opportunity and equal turn-taking to speak in each team; enlarging and challenging participants' perspectives through interpersonal interaction with different employees; and the final decision is reached in a form of common agreement or positive dissensus (i.e. disagreement while preserving diversity).
Over the last three decades, diversity training has become a cornerstone of organizations' diversity initiatives to reduce employees' prejudices, stereotypes, and biases toward different employees (Bezrukova et al. , 2012). In the USA, an online survey conducted by Virtcom Consulting revealed that over 80 percent of 265 HR professionals and diversity specialists from organizations with 5,000 to 10,000 employees reported that they had either mandatory or voluntary training for all levels of employees, with average budgets of $500,000 to 750,000 per year (The New York Times , 2007). In total, US businesses spend approximately $200 million to 300 million a year on diversity training programs (Vedantam, 2008). Although the importance of diversity training for changing employees' attitudes and improving working relationships has been acknowledged (Bezrukova et al. , 2012; Ehrke et al. , 2014), it has received criticism for its tendency to reinforce the differences between social groups and thus potentially promote prejudices in the workforce (e.g. Anard and Winters, 2008; Bregman, 2012; Chavez and Weisinger, 2008; Dobbin