Starbucks won’t have any idea whether its diversity training works; The Washington Post, April 23, 2018

By Hakeem Jefferson and Neil Lewis, Jr., The Washington Post; Starbucks won’t have any idea whether its diversity training works

"Without the expertise to know what makes an intervention more or less successful, it is hard to imagine that Starbucks or any other organization stands much of a chance of developing a successful diversity training program that has long-term, sustainable effects on its culture. Moreover, Starbucks claims that it is interested in knowing whether the training program it will implement will be effective. As social scientists, we know firsthand how difficult it is to measure the effects of an intervention, and we wonder who on Starbucks’s team is sufficiently equipped to do this. The track record of those Starbucks has included in its announcement is remarkable, but it is social scientists — not lawyers or activists — who are trained to adequately and rigorously assess whether this intervention works, or if it will join the long list of those that don’t.

The inclusion of social scientists at every stage of the process can make diversity training more than feel-good PR moves that are of little consequence. Yes, engaging the scholarly community will mean that the process will be slower. But as bias expert Brian Nosek said, if Starbucks and its corporate peers think interventions like this are worth doing, they should certainly think that it’s worth doing well."

Social scientists set to decipher various shades of ethics; The Peninsula: Qatar's Daily Newspaper, 12/1/16

Irfan Bhukhari, The Peninsula: Qatar's Daily Newspaper; Social scientists set to decipher various shades of ethics:

"On the academic landscape of Qatar, an international ethics summit is set to appear which will cover dozens of topics having contemporary importance from corporate citizenship in global context to ethics revolving around gender, religion, business and conflict.

A three-day International Ethics Summit themed “Morality in the Global Era: Theory, Policy and Praxis” will start from December 4 at HBKU Students Centre at Education City.

The summit will be an international opportunity for scholars, academia and audiences representing various segments of society to explore and understand a number of issues such as: Ethical Leadership and Social Responsibility; Ethics in the Professions; Integrity in Business; Corporate Citizenship in a Global Context; Ethics and the Environment; Immigration and Moral Tragedy; Ethics and Technology in the Global Age; Ethics and Sports; Ethics and Gender among others according to university’s call-for-papers and leaflet pertaining to programme-details. The summit is being sposored by RasGas."